All Cornell students - undergraduate, graduate, and professional students - are assigned a Cornell NetID. This four to six character alphanumeric code is your unique Cornell identifier. Unlike your Cornell ID number or your Social Security number, your NetID is public. You'll be asked to use it to identify yourself for a range of purposes around campus.
Your NetID is your username on the Cornell computer network. When someone searches for you on in the Cornell directory, your NetID plus ``@cornell.edu" (e.g. abc123@cornell.edu) is the e-mail address that will be given by default. Furthermore, Cornell, and the College of Engineering in particular, use this e-mail address to send out important announcements. You should make sure that you check your e-mail here on a regular basis. If you are given a separate e-mail account by your department, you should check both addresses; you will probably want to forward the e-mail from one account to the other.
Finally, you will need your NetID to access Cornell's Bear Access and Just the Facts systems. Bear Access allows you to send e-mail, access the web, search the library card catalog online, and connect to Just The Facts. Just The Facts lets you check your registration status, bursar bills, and transcript, pre-enroll for classes, and change your mailing address, permanent address, and summer address listings. Bear Access and Just the Facts are installed on the computers in all of the CIT public labs.
For these reasons, it is important for you to find out what your NetID is. The easiest way to get your NetID is to go to the walk-through registration for new grad students at the Field House. Look for the table where they are handing out NetIDs and passwords. If you miss walk-through registration, or want to get it before then, you should go to the first floor of the Computing and Communications Center (D4). Wherever you pick up your NetID and password, you will probably be urged to take the CIT computer training. This one-hour class used to be obligatory, but it isn't any longer. Most graduate students who have been using e-mail and computer networks for several years don't find it useful. If you choose not to take it immediately, CIT offers this and other workshops (such as how to design a webpage) for free at other times throughout the year. You can also get information about using the Cornell network, Bear Access, and other CIT resources at the CIT webpage: CLICK HERE.