Many parents said that they have read so many experiences and strategies about applying for overseas universities, but they will still make mistakes they should make when applying. Instead of falling into the dilemma of "I understand all the truth but I just don't know", it is better to study first and avoid common misunderstandings in the application! The editor has summarized the following content based on common problems encountered by parents and students who have been consulted in previous years and in recent years for your reference!
Misunderstanding 1: Ranking is the only standard for school selection
Most students’ first step in choosing a school is to refer to ranking.
Worldwide QS World University Rankings , THE Times World University Rankings, U.S. News World University Rankings , ARWU World University Rankings, and Canadian McCorlin University Rankings. However, the inspection standards and proportions of different ranking institutions are different, so the ranking will be biased. For example, QS emphasizes reputation, THE emphasizes academics, soft science rankings focus on quantitative scientific research indicators, and it is best to refer to the ranking that suits you.
In addition, when choosing a major, we should give priority to our interests and hobbies, future career planning , and also consider major rankings, school geographical location, alumni and employment resources, local work visa policies for international students, etc. For example, , known as Harvard in the north, Yiwei Business School of Xi'an University of Dali, , actuarial and computer majors, , Waterloo, , and , which is very outstanding in petroleum engineering, can all be used as options for students.
Therefore, ranking is an important factor for us to consider a school, but it must not be the only factor. Don’t miss some strong but unknown treasure universities.
Misunderstanding 2: Is it imperative to impact prestigious schools?
Many people have the dream of being a prestigious school, but Shenben Shenyan is not a joke, nor is it a thing that can be successful with just one passion. Successful application requires hard work, strategy, wisdom, and even some luck. Therefore, when choosing a school and setting a major, you need to consider it carefully and act within your ability.
When choosing a school, you must open up the dimensions: challenge impact, ability matching, and guaranteed, and three types are combined with each other. Do not choose all the famous schools and popular majors with fierce competition, otherwise you may be able to get water from the bamboo basket.
Choose some colleges that are not that competitive and not ranked high enough, but still have excellent majors, not belittle their abilities, but rather give themselves more confidence to sprint to the dream school! What's more, getting an offer is one thing, and whether you can graduate is another.
Misunderstanding 3: Only focus on popular majors and ignore "combination of hot and cold"
"What major is a good major?" I believe that almost all parents and students who have experienced further studies have asked this question. In fact, there is no difference between good and bad in a major, only the difference between hot and cold. Blindly squeezing into popular majors is actually very unfavorable to the long-term development of many students.
First of all, even children with good software and hardware strength will fail when competing for popular majors because there are too many monks and too little porridge. Secondly, even if you are lucky enough to be admitted, because this type of major is full of talents, it is difficult to gain a favorable advantage in future employment choices and work.
There are indeed many positions that require professional background, but more positions do not value the major you are studying. They value your math, writing, communication, foreign language or analysis skills more, and most majors can obtain these abilities through exercise.
So you don’t need to choose a major in marketing or business school just because you want to develop in the business world; you don’t need to continue to study law school just because you choose a major in philosophy or political science.
What is more important than considering your future career plan is to consider your own characteristics. Only by choosing a major that matches its characteristics and leverages its strengths and avoids its weaknesses can it generate sustainable motivation.
Misconception 4: Choose a major only to look at the surface, not to understand the connotation in depth
Some students will choose based on the name of their major, and do not understand the connotation of their major. Some majors with similar names actually have certain differences.
For example: Environmental Science major vs Environmental Health Engineering major; Journalism major vs Communication major; Social Work major vs Sociology major; Finance major vs Financial engineering major, etc.
The differences in the courses and development directions learned between different majors are very large. Therefore, when choosing a major, you must understand the connotation of the major in detail.
Generally, you should understand the following aspects: What are the core courses of this major? What are the subdivision directions below? The professor's research direction and the graduation destination of the alumni, etc.
In addition, there are many students who make the decision to choose a major after reading the course introduction, but the study of many majors in the upper grades is very challenging, and it is very different from those reduced-level course introductions in terms of ideas, methods or complexity.
Therefore, before choosing a major, it is recommended to learn about senior or advanced courses first. You can go and listen, or even take advanced courses in advance before making a choice.
Misunderstanding 5: Only look at the "hardware" and not the software
Many students believe that as long as they prepare their language scores and beautiful GPA, they can wait and receive offers. However, standardization is only the most basic preparation.
Good GPA scores are of course very helpful for applying to the school, but the problem is that the school will not judge whether your student is suitable for this university from this dimension alone. At this time, "software" is needed. For example, whether you have competition awards, what social practice experiences do you have, whether it can reflect your international vision, critical thinking, innovative ability, leadership, etc., and these are also important materials for writing application documents.
Misunderstanding 6: Blindly participating in the competition
Although the competition can add points to Shenben Shenyan, when students cannot achieve sufficiently excellent results or rankings, in the eyes of the admissions officer, the competition experience will only be a line with no memory points in the honors column. Therefore, whether it is academic competition or summer school scientific research, students should consider whether they need to participate from the following points:
1. On the premise of ensuring that the school’s GPA and standardized scores can reach the basic threshold, reasonably arrange time to participate in this type of project. It is unrealistic for a student to have not even scored 100 points in , TOEFL 5, and think about going to compete, attending summer schools, and conducting scientific research all day long. Even if you can win a lot of awards in your competition, you can still get a professor's recommendation letter in your research at the Xia School. If you don't have a good GPA score and a standardized score that meets the threshold, you will not be admitted to a top university.
2. Don’t be too utilitarian. Being interested is the first premise. Find projects you like and are willing to invest time and energy to participate in. You can truly learn something and gain something during the process of participation. This will be better reflected in the application documents later.
3. You can consider projects related to your major application, competitions or scientific research projects, and show your academic competitiveness to the admissions officers and invest their energy and enthusiasm in a certain academic field.
In addition to these contents that can reflect academic competitiveness, do not ignore extracurricular activities, recommendation letters, and application documents related to them. What overseas top universities want to recruit diverse students, not a machine that only knows how to learn and compete.
Misunderstanding 7: Piling up resumes without purpose
application documents Although the purpose is to leave the admissions officer with the impression that the applicant has strong ability, the degree of "praising himself" is not so easy to grasp.
The most common thing is that students are eager to show their excellence and can’t wait to list their extracurricular activities in the documents that are not related to their professional and personal abilities. In fact, there are no more activities, competitions and internships.
"Finally start" as the goal. You think about the following questions before preparing:
● What are my clear professional direction and goals?
● What are my shortcomings and how do I supplement those abilities?
● What kind of experience do I need? Have a title or a highly relevant experience?
● How do I show my skills in my resume?
with this goal, and finally summarized his overall experience into four categories through document sorting (taking Shenyan as an example):
● Professional Experiences
3 Scientific research and internship experience are all centered on human rights, which not only has common goals, but also reflects academic research capabilities, external communication and expression capabilities, and project research and execution capabilities.
● Volunteer Experiences
contains two volunteers for more than 2 years, with long-term feelings and experiences and a strong sense of social responsibility.
● Academic Projects (Academic Projects)
Most of them are related to major course assignments. You can display your own quantitative background, academic writing, research methods and quantitative skills one by one.
● Activities (Activities Experience)
three student activity experiences demonstrate their organizational and management abilities in leadership.
Therefore, under the premise of appropriate "boasting", you should use appropriate space and appropriate text to show that you are a talent with clear goals, planning and ideas.
Misunderstanding 8: Should the author of the recommendation letter be invited to a famous tutor?
More famous than the school cares more about whether the person who writes your recommendation letters really understands you and makes objective evaluations of your strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, students must maintain good attendance rates in professional courses, use the professor's office hours to get familiar with the office, and actively discuss academic issues and career development with the professors. When choosing a professor, you must give priority to professors who are highly willing to recommend and know you very well, rather than professors who are famous but do not know you.
Misunderstanding 9: GRE/GMATh and other standardized tests are finalized?
Although many schools will not clearly give clear admission standards for GRE/GMAT, in fact, the admissions committee of each school has a clear standardized minimum score for different majors.
However, in recent years, with the rapid increase in the number of Asian applicants, especially those with mainland educational backgrounds, generally the scores of standardized tests are higher; therefore, the importance of the GRE scores of Asian applicants must be weakened during admissions and examine more things other than scores.
Therefore, when students apply for the postgraduate, don’t forget to ask yourself: Apart from the impressive standardized test scores, is there anything else that can impress the admissions officer? Can the application materials allow admissions officers to realize your uniqueness at a glance, so that they can feel that you have the same views as the school, and are the same type of people as the faculty and staff working for the cause of education?
Misunderstanding 10: Interview is just a process?
In the Sponsor, in addition to the business and engineering majors of top Canadian universities, G5 schools in the UK, especially Oxford University and Cambridge University , and Ivy League schools in the United States all require interviews, and everyone needs to take the interview seriously. For example, the interview for G5 schools in the UK is mainly conducted online discussions through Zoom or the school’s admissions officers directly interview, and the interview will directly affect the application results. Although there is no veto or approval in Canada, it is also one of the three elements in university applications, namely scores, personal application documents and interviews.
When applying for the study, the interview is also very important and will affect the final admission results! Being able to receive an interview notice from the target graduate school shows that the applicant's comprehensive strength has been initially recognized, but the school needs to enhance subjective understanding through face-to-face communication with the applicant. Therefore, applicants must seize this opportunity to show their abilities and potential to the interviewer.Most of the interview questions will revolve around the applicant’s understanding of the major he will study in the future, his career plan after graduation, and why he chose the graduate school and major. The reference content of
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