Students from overseas who come to the US to pursue a higher degree usually get an F-1 visa. The conditions and restrictions of the visa are complex and frequently change, both in substance and interpretation. You are best advised to go to Columbia's International Student and Scholars' Office (ISSO) for professional advice. The material on this page represents a snapshot of experience from the 2004-05 academic year and should not be taken as the final word.
That said, one frequent topic of questions and issues for international students concerns so-called practical training, limited periods of paid employment within the US allowed to students on F-1 visas. There are two kinds of practical training: Curricular Practical Training (CPT) and Optional Practical Training (OPT).
Optional Practical Training is a period of up to 12 months of working that can be taken directly after finishing your degree. (You can also take OPT during your degree e.g. during the summer break, but that time is taken away from your post-completion OPT.) Check with the ISSO to make sure that you apply for this at the right time - you have to apply before finishing your degree. Failure to meet the English requirement will lose you the opportunity to take OPT because you will no longer be enrolled in the degree program, yet you will not have completed the degree.
Curricular Practical Training does not have the same 12 month limit, however, it is restricted to work that is demonstrably integral to the the curriculum i.e. some experience to give the student specific skills as part of their degree program. This rarely applies to programs in the EE department. In particular, there are no established industrial experience programs as part of the MS EE program, so CPT is not relevant to MS students.
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