Personally, I would either get a meaningful internship or spend it partly relaxing and studying. A meaningful internship doesn't have to be at MS or GOOG. It c

Personally, I would either get a meaningful internship or spend it partly relaxing and studying. A meaningful internship doesn't have to be at MS or GOOG. It could be anywhere where you'd build a real system so you'd get to see first-hand how such systems are built(technical and non-technical challenges). Bonus points if you can do something that relates to field you wish to pursue(so distributed or AI or graphics...) If the internship is a no-go, I would spend the time relaxing a bit and preparing. Most MS students that I've met are bright when it comes to academic questions but don't have a clue about how software is built. So I would use the time to build what I would've built in that internship. Preferably on an open source project so you'd get to interact with people.