Congratulations on having been admitted to the Stevens CS undergraduate program. Information technology is an exciting and fast-changing field, and your undergraduate major is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to obtain the skills set that will last you throughout your career. Given that the state of the technology is changing so fast, you must be prepared to constantly learn new things to stay current. It is not an exaggeration to say that the most important thing that you will learn as an undergraduate is: how to learn!

You should consult the FAQ for undergraduate students, that may answer some questions that you have (including some that you may not have thought of). Some things that you should know about:

1. All students enrolled at Stevens have a Stevens Pipeline account automatically created for them. This allows you to access on-campus email (your-userid@stevens.edu), register for courses on-line, and access WebCT classrooms. WebCT is an on-line course tool that is used both by classroom and on-line instructors. If an instructor has requested a WebCT shell for their class, all students registered for that class can enter it via pipeline or via the WebCT web site (using the same userid and password for both).
2. Some of your courses will require that you do assignments on Unix machines. For these, you will use a separate ISSA IT account for the CS Lab, which provides access to machines running Linux, NetBSD and Solaris. You can find information about how to obtain the password for this account in the undergraduate FAQ.
3. Stevens IT provides pipeline email (your-userid@stevens.edu) and ISSA IT provides Unix email (your-userid@cs.stevens.edu). No matter where you read your email (Pipeline, Unix or somewhere else), please make sure to have your email forwarded from all places where you may receive email, to the place where you read email. Enable forwarding on your ISSA Unix account by creating a (publicly readable) .forward file in your root directory, that contains the email address where you read your email. See the CS lab FAQ #6.2. Pipeline can be configured from your account to forward email (Follow the Email | Options | Auto Forward menu path in Pipeline).

We look forward to seeing you at freshman orientation!