Books
Unlike what we are used to at home, owning your own textbooks for every class is the norm here. The libraries may have, at the best, a copy or two. Textbooks, unfortunately, are very expensive (averaging $40-$50 per book, i.e., between $120-200 per semester). It would therefore make sense for you to visit your local bookstore, and buy the Eastern Economy Editions / Indian Edition of standard textbooks in your area of specialization. It would be a good idea to get in touch with one of your seniors at UIS who's in the same field as you are who can advise about the books you can get with you from India. Also, computers and keyboards are an unavoidable part of life here, so a good way to spend your free time now would be to practice typing.
Note : We have received a lot of enquiries from students asking us to advise them of some books that they must bring from India. And below is an answer from one of the webmasters :
Subject : List of Computer Science Textbooks " It would be very difficult for any of us to give you the list of Textbooks that are followed here for the below mentioned reasons :
- The courses offered are constantly changing and a course offered this semester might not be offered next semester.
- Also the Instructors teaching the courses might change which means the textbook followed by them will change too.
- Kindly E-mail the instructor regarding the current text books
used. Email addresses of instructors can be found at http://csc.uis.edu/people/facstaff.html
Clothing
Clothing, like everything else here is pretty expensive at normal times; (Wait for amazing deals at the Prime Outlets or at Christmas and Spring clearances!), so bring adequate amounts of clothing with you. Come armed with some light woolens, jackets and umbrellas to carry you through the first few days of fall. It gets quite cold here in winter - with temperatures occasionally dropping to (-10) to (-20) degrees C . The padded winter jacket that you need then is best bought here. Also, it does get fairly hot in summer - as high as 35 deg. So bring along some cool comfortable cotton clothes too. (Again, Cotton is expensive here.)