<p>Hey, I'm an international student and I'm applying to US universities for an MS in CS.</p>
<p>I'm looking to get hired during or immediately after my course (and stay). Meaning the college would preferably:</p>
<ol>
<li>Be in a tech heavy state (California, Texas - JUST examples) so that the area has good software companies to get opportunities at and make connections with</li>
<li>Have a strong-ish employer reputation </li>
</ol>
<p>Obvious examples could be Berkeley and Stanford in California and Austin in Texas. (again EXAMPLES)</p>
<p>If I’m not mistaken, as an international student, you have to agree to go back to your country when you finish your education. So you should do a little more research into your plan.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats, you are mistaken. Internationals don’t have to promise anything and can stay if a company sponsors them, but that may be tough to get.</p>
<p>In any case, look through the USNews rankings for CS. Also, Ivy/Ivy-equivalents should be fine too.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan International students studying at any accredited four-year institute are granted student visas. Although each student visa is granted on a case-by-case basis, international students generally have at most three months, or 90 days, to find full-time employment after the time they graduate. The way the legal system is set up, they are basically forcing you to go back to your country because the chances of getting a full time job straight out of college is astronomically low.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats, I’m not going to comment on your job forecasting abilities besides saying that you don’t seem to have real-world experience in this particular field, but what you said is not the same as “have to agree to go back to your home country after you finish your education”.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan You do have to agree to go back to your country. That’s part of getting a visa. It isn’t permanent. That is applicable for any field. So sorry, your little attempt to patronize me didn’t work.</p>
<p>I think you’re both right. Student visas are for being a student, so international students have to at least say that they intend to only attend school here on a student visa and, theoretically, that they intend to return to their home countries after finishing. However, many, many international students end up staying on a more permanent basis once they get hired in the U.S. by a company that’s willing to sponsor them. So on the practical side, there’s nothing far-fetched or wrong about OP trying to go to a U.S. institution with the plan to get hired by a U.S. company willing to sponsor him/her. I would also say that their chances of getting hired within 90 days are not “astronomically low” - it depends on where they go and what kind of experience they get. I worked with some international undergrads, most of whom got hired before they graduated from their elite Ivy institution. An international student at a top CS program with in-demand skills wouldn’t be crazy to expect to get hired within 3 months of graduation.</p>
<p>That said, CS isn’t my field so I don’t have great answers for this question - only the schools that I know have good reputations in CS, which would be Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Caltech (which I think only offers PhDs in this field), Georgia Tech, Cornell, UCSD, Purdue, UW-Seattle, Princeton and Columbia. University of Maryland and UIUC. Some of those aren’t in places typically thought of as hotbeds of tech jobs (Purdue, UMD and UIUC particularly) but there are tech jobs everywhere, and top programs will attract recruiters from all over the country. In fact…you may find less competition in less tech-heavy places in the country. All of the top techies want to go work in Silicon Valley; probably fewer of them are thinking about Atlanta or DC as places to parlay their skills. BUT like I said…not my field, so just educated guesses.</p>
<p>International students who graduate from a U.S. institution can apply for Optional Practical Training (OPT) and this permits them to stay for up to 18 months before having to leave the U.S. However, if they can find a sponsor to support their H1-B application, they can get a 6 year visa to work in the U.S. in practice many students getting a CS degree are able to find work during an OPT period and even get an H1-B visa or apply and get into another degree program. i have seen many students from Illinois Tech graduate with a M.S. in CS and take this course and my International Ph.D. students have almost all gotten jobs here in the U.S. after graduation.</p>