Dear
New Students,
Congratulations
and welcome to join in the Chinese community at the University of Pittsburgh!
Hope you all successfully obtain the US visa and get ready for your journey to
flight across the Pacific to chase your dream here. Besides all the joyful tears
and valedictory words, now it is time for you to get excited and, maybe, nervous
to enter into an entirely new phase in your life! Are you ready for that?
As
experienced senior students, we totally understand your worry about your
prospective novel living and studying environment. But before that, the first
problem for you when you land on this continent will be: How can I get out of
the airport to my university? Well, as you explore our wonderful website, you
will find the New
Student Handbook is so handy and accessible for information
regarding housing, dining, and transporting. Moreover, in this letter we will
offer you important
notice regarding services for the airport pickup. Unless you have
already secured a transport to take you from the airport to the place you are
going to stay, you should pay attention to the following notice.
Before
you read the following information, please make sure that you have read the OIS
package carefully on airport pick-up and housing issues in advance! The
following information will be supplemental to your OIS
package information!
A
piece of very good news for this year’s new students is that the
Office of International Services (OIS) at the University of Pittsburgh
is offering airport pickup in certain dates and time before the week of new
student orientation. We highly recommend you to plan your flight schedule
accordingly to fully utilize their resources. The registration process is quite
easy. Just click on this website Graduate; Undergraduate and input your information. If possible, please print a copy of the
pickup location and contact information from their website in case any delay in
the airport transit. OIS staffs will pick you up in the airport, drop you off at
William
Pitt Union (WPU), which locates at the main campus, and we will give you a
ride to your temporary living location.
Unfortunately,
so far the University of Pittsburgh does not offer dormitory to graduate
students. Considering the limitation of funding of CSSA and our voluntary
services, we will not be able to offer individual airport pickup (besides the
time listed by OIS) and temporary housing. We sincerely apologize for the
inconvenience. However, we are still trying to provide the following services to
assist you find temporary housing and other help.
To
better assist you in finding pick-up procedures and housing facility, we suggest
you to do the following things as soon as possible.
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First,
you may contact your department advisers and/or secretaries for help. You
may also contact senior students in your department and ask them if they are
able to pick you up from WPU (or the airport directly) and whether or not they
can provide you with temporary housing. A list of contact information is
attached in the end of this letter. If you can’t find your department contact
person there, please send an email to CSSA for further assistance. The email
address can be found at CSSA website.
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If you cannot get help from senior students, CSSA will try to contact some
local Chinese families, and see if they can offer temporary housing for you.
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For airport pick-up, you can also call the local taxi
company (Yellowcab, http://www.yellowcab.com/
, Phone: 412-321-8100) to pick you up in the airport. Usually, it costs 20
dollars from the airport to the Oakland area (University of Pittsburgh).
l It
is also recommended that you can book a hotel room to stay for a few days before
you locate an apartment for rent. Normally, the hotel fares are ranging from $40
to $100. Hotel information can be found at www.priceline.com,
or other online sources.
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If you want to find an apartment for lease, besides housing information on
university website, you can search information on our
website and BBS.
Please check our website frequently for the latest updated information. Another
useful resource is www.craigslist.org,
which is a website frequently used by students to find apartments (Please
consult with more people before you make any decision in case of fraud online
information). The apartment information will also be gathered and printed in
free hand-outs and local guides, which you will be able to find around campus.
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Probably you already know from internet that some religion
communities are able to offer you airport pick-up and temporary housing.
However, since CSSA is a non-profit, non-political, non-religion association, it
is inappropriate for us to contact these organizations for you. However, you may
contact them by yourselves and see if they can offer you help.
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For those organizations (except CSSA), families and people
who offer you help in airport pick-up, we suggest you to pay them the
accommodation fee. Usually, it costs 10 dollars/day in average to rent an
apartment in Pittsburgh.
To
be noticed, once CSSA confirms that our volunteers will pick you up in the
airport or offer you temporary housing, PLEASE DO NOT contact other
organizations or individuals in other arrangements. If it is necessary for you
to change your plan, please notify us at least three days in advance, so that we
won’t waste valuable resource from our volunteers.
One
important and kind suggestion is that please DO NOT totally rely on CSSA
in the whole process since we have only limited resources. But please do not
hesitate to send emails to or call the person(s) listed in the contact sheet and
make relevant arrangement with them to make sure everything is settled down
before your flight. Since we have so many new students coming this year, we have
to apologize if we do not response your request promptly or offer you a
satisfactory answer to your question. We will definitely do our best to assist
you. Since all of our services are provided by our generous volunteers, your
understanding and support of their service is very important to us. .
If
you should have any question, please feel free to send
an email to CSSA. We will reply as soon as possible.
Last
but not the least, CSSA will hold a new student welcome party some time at the
end of August, before the fall semester begins. We would like to invite you to
the party, so that you can learn some important survival skills and get to know
other new, as well as senior, students here. If you would like to come to the
party, please make reservation by clicking the attached link and fill in your
contact information. Thank you!
We
hope to see you soon in the near future and wish you have a comfortable journey
to Pittsburgh!
Best
regards,
Chinese
Students and Scholars Association (CSSA)
University
of Pittsburgh
April 2008