Originally Posted by mrahul

You will need a letter from your college to request an SSN. For that, you will need a letter of offer of employment, which should be usually an on campus job offer. That will be library, food court or so on. Once you have a job offer, you could go to your international admissions office and they will issue a letter of SSN request which you will submit along with your passport, I-94 record, I-20, etc. After you get the SSN (usually around 2 weeks after you apply), you could apply for a prepaid credit card - which is the easiest way to start to build credit. Or, if you have a family member who has a credit card in US, you could ask them to add you as an authorized user as it will help you build credit faster. After a few months (5-6), you will be getting offers to apply for credit cards. That would be the time you could try to apply for 1 of the cards.