<p>I'll be transferring from UC Berkeley to Virginia Tech next fall, so I was just wondering what the overall feel of the place is like. Is it a closed campus? How do you get around? Eating places at VT? School Spirit? Partying/Nerdying? How do you like it there?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I'm not an international but I can answer a few of your questions. In order of how you asked.</p>
<p>It's an open campus. You and everyone else are free to come and go as you please, student or non-student. To get into the dorms you have to be a resident or be with a resident, because you have to swipe your ID to get in. The academic buildings are generally unlocked although they do lock most of them later at night.</p>
<p>If you live on campus everything is easily walkable. I suggest getting a bike since it's quicker. Also, as a student you can ride the Blacksburg Transit buses for free. One just goes around campus while the others go around the town of Blacksburg or over to Christiansburg (a nearby town with a big theatre and mall and some other stuff.) It's kind of a pain to get over to Christainsburg via the bus I suggest finding someone with a car, but if you need to you can get there via bus. The buses run till 2am on weekend nights and run to all the bigger apartment complexes so you have a way to get back home after partying.</p>
<p>On campus we have some of the top dining halls in the nation. We hover somewhere between first and third in the rankings. West End is the best, and it's a la carte. D2 is the major buffet type dining hall. Owens is pretty good, and is a la carte. There are a few other dining halls and another one under construction right now, and pretty much every food type is well represented. You can even get stuff like steak or lobster (as in "they're alive in a tank and we cook them" lobster) at West End. Off campus there are a lot of good smaller restaurants.</p>
<p>School spirit is pretty huge. We have about 65k people show up to every football game and enough students that want to go that they have to do a ticket lottery to see who gets to go to the games, unless you're an upperclassman and buy a season ticket. A lot of people wear VT stuff around campus or off, and there aren't many people that wear other school's stuff, especially not rival schools. You'd be absolutely fine in a UC Berkeley shirt, but somebody in a Georgia Tech shirt is going to get a few dirty looks walking across campus.</p>
<p>Theres a lot of partying. Not so much in the dorms but like I said, you can bus out to the apartments and find something. Theres also people up late in the library and stuff too though. It's a 20k person campus; theres going to be a little bit of everything.</p>
<p>I really like it. The location couldn't really get much better. Great food, good transportation, good atmosphere, beautiful campus. Great place overall. Let me know if you need to know anything else.</p>
<p>May I ask why you are transfering from UC Berkeley?</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply chuy. A few more questions-
Are there any jobs available on and around campus? What is Blacksburg like? Are the dorm rooms good? What is security on campus like? (No not the massacre, but general security; I recently got robbed at Berkeley..)</p>
<p>@guillaume - Financial issues.</p>
<p>Yeah, there are tons of jobs available in the dining halls and some other ones in the library/labs if you look around a bit. It seems like there are usually "now hiring" signs around Blacksburg but again, it's usually food services. Blacksburg is pretty nice. It's a college town through and through. There are a few places to shop and more on the way, but most shopping is done in Christainsburg (about 15 minutes away via car.)</p>
<p>Security is alright I guess. We get emails whenever theres an "incident" on or around campus, and they're relatively rare. You're safe during the day and generally safe on campus at night, but walking around Blacksburg at 3am isn't the greatest idea. Although it's not any worse than anywhere else, I wouldn't walk around much of anywhere at 3am.</p>
<p>Nice.</p>
<p>What are you majoring in? Would you happen to know where most VT engineering grads end up working?</p>
<p>Well, Berkeley is REALLY unsafe. There's strong arm robberies every other day here... So as long as its not worse than Berkeley..</p>
<p>As far as campuses go I'd say VT probably has one of the safest, especially now.</p>
<p>I'm majoring in Materials Science Engineering. There are so many engineering grads (and so many majors) that it's impossible to say at which companies most end up, since there are so many places. Many end up around DC because it's huge and close (and many students already have some roots there) but most say they're going to try and get out of the DC area as quickly as possible (1-2 years.) I'd wager heavily that the majority of the "quickly as possible" people end up working a significant portion of the rest of their lives in the DC area but that's another story.</p>
<p>There is a pretty huge two day job fair put on by the Student Engineering Committee where hundreds of interested companies come looking for employees and interns. Career services are generally very solid here, and since VT has been pumping out Engineers for a long time and people like to hire people from where they went to school it's relatively easy to make connections at companies. </p>
<p>If we're talking about location the solid majority work on this side of the Mississippi, but it's not unheard of for people to be working out west, especially in California because of how many companies are based there. It's generally easier to get a job closer to the area you went to school (not just for engineering and not just for Virginia Tech) but if you have an area of the country you're dying to work in you will probably be able to find something.</p>
<p>What type of engineering are you doing, by the way?</p>
<p>I'm planning to study either Industrial Engineering or Computer Engineering. Do you have any friends in either one? If yes, how do they like it?</p>
<p>The thing is, I want to eventually work either in New York City (have loads of family there) or in California (some family here too). Hence the concern about where graduates end up.</p>
<p>I suppose with a solid GPA, getting a job upon graduation wouldn't be much of a problem considering the fact that VT is indeed a really good tech school.</p>
<p>Oh, and one more thing; what's the off-campus housing situation like? Is it cheaper than the dorms? And how far is the city(town?) from the campus?</p>
<p>If you want to EVENTUALLY work somewhere you'll be fine. Get a couple years experience somewhere and if you're doing well you can get transferred/switch jobs (wanting to relocate is a great way to break it off with a job and have everyone be relatively happy) to the location where you want to work. I don't know how many engineering jobs there are in NYC.</p>
<p>One of my roommates is CE and he likes it well enough. They do a lot of projects it seems like.</p>
<p>Most people live off campus after there sophomore year, and a good number of people live off campus during their sophomore year. As far as cost goes it varies. There are apartments that are cheaper and there are ones that are more expensive.</p>
<p>I'd say in general getting a job won't be a problem but the way the economy is going it's getting tougher. Theres still jobs to get but they're getting more competitive.</p>
<p>Tech is basically in Blacksburg. To illustrate this here's a picture.</p>
<p>
<a href="http://i37.tinypic.com/2sbmp9t.jpg%5B/IMG%5D">http://i37.tinypic.com/2sbmp9t.jpg
</a></p>
<p>The red circle is a very rough approximation of campus. The "ring" in the middle is the drillfield, which is what roughly divides the academic from the residential side of campus. In the direction of Prices Fork and Kelsey Ln there are a lot of apartments but not many stores or anything. Most of the bars/shops/restaurants are in the direction of Otey St and Alumni Mall. Easily walkable from campus. Toward the bottom of the picture is mostly residential, and to the left of the picture is mostly cows.</p>
<p>I'm horrible with directions so I may be wrong with a lot of my directions, but that should give you the general idea.</p>
<p>Can't thank you enough for your help mate. :) Cheers!</p>
<p>No problem. If you need anything else just let me know.</p>
