NYU Undergraduate student shares: Let Me talk about My "Tortuous and bizarre" Experience of studying in the US

Date：2022-05-16   Author：admin

Student Wang

High school: Meishi School (IB Curriculum System)

Standardized test scores: GPA3.9/4.0, TOEFL 105, no SAT

Admitted institutions: New York University/University of California, Davis/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/University of Connecticut

hello, friends! At the end of the college application season, I was regulated from NYU's waitlist and became a member of the Spring 2022 freshmen. Looking back on that period, it was still quite a tough time.

01. Before high school

"Going to university outside China" was a concept that never existed in my mind when I was in the second year of junior high school, because before that, I had basically never left the country since primary school. The first time I went abroad was to Laos. I felt that it was basically not much different from Yunnan in China. Therefore, I am filled with common stereotypes about all the countries that hold discourse sovereignty, such as Americans being cheerful and enthusiastic, the British being elegant, the Japanese being reserved, South Koreans being trendy, and so on. Most of my junior high school years were spent with a tacit attitude of "studying at a university in China and leading a simple life".

It was not until the third year of junior high school that I learned of my parents' intention to send me abroad. My dad told me to study in the United States because there might be more opportunities in my life after going there. At that time, I had no idea what it meant. Besides, I thought that with my ability, I might have no chance to compete with so many smart people in China at all. So I chose to go to high school. However, as a result, I had to part ways with many people I got along well with in junior high school. Well, it's not the best of both worlds.

In conclusion, under my parents' expectations, I have decided to go abroad for college in the future.

However, since I was a child in my family planning to study abroad at university, we had no experience of studying abroad at all. This made me suffer a lot and shed many tears during my high school years.

02. High School

Although I had A-level, AP and IB courses in high school, for some unknown reason, perhaps because my outstanding high school grades were those of IB graduates, I was chosen to study IB. Since I was in my first year of high school, that is, I didn't start the international curriculum until the 10th grade in foreign countries, I skipped the MYP stage of IB and the two-year IB-DP stage, which was nominally starting from the 11th grade of high school. My course thus lasts for three years, of which two years are the formal high school life. However, because I lost a year, it also brought me some minor troubles. But it doesn't matter now.

The IB program is the most challenging among the three courses I listed above and also the one that is not cost-effective. Moreover, due to our family's lack of experience, my summer vacation in the third year of junior high school was basically spent on traveling and strange things, which cast a shadow over my second and third years of senior high school in advance.

During my first year of high school, I was in a daze, getting used to the process of teaching in English.

The difficulty of IB courses starts to soar from the second year of high school. The specific system of IB is extremely complex, and I will not elaborate on it here. In short, it requires several thousand more words of papers and laboratory reports than AP and A-Level, as well as A huge amount of courses. Many of them must be completed and meet certain requirements; otherwise, one cannot be issued a graduation certificate by the IB official.

As I mentioned earlier, my family had no experience of studying abroad, so my history of hardship officially began.

Studying abroad involves studying in a country where the native language is completely different. Therefore, an important key to opening the door to foreign universities is the score of a standardized language test, abbreviated as "standardized test". There are mainly two types of standardized tests: TOEFL and SAT for studying in the United States, and IELTS for studying in Commonwealth countries. It is well known that Americans are very strict about the quality of international students, so studying abroad along the Commonwealth route offers better value for money. So, coincidentally, not only did I choose the demanding United States as my study abroad route and the highly challenging IB for high school courses, but my family had no experience at all, which led me to waste a precious summer vacation in my third year of junior high school at the beginning of high school. The outcome was no surprise - I started a weekly psychological counseling session at the end of the winter vacation of my senior year of high school. And I once asked a thesis ghostwriter to help me write the first draft (but I still completed the final version myself). I was so angry because the ghostwriter was really bad and obviously didn't pay much attention to my thesis.

But I believe that if I hadn't persuaded my parents to find a study abroad agency in my second year of high school, my experience might have been even more painful. Fortunately, I found a rather reliable agency and ended the application season relatively smoothly (so smoothly that I can't remember what else I did besides writing a few application essays during the application season). All I need to do is wait for the result and focus my mind on other things.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my senior year of high school started several weeks late. I almost didn't finish the IB courses and failed the SAT exam. However, as a result, several parts of the IB exam were reduced. Many universities set the SAT scores that were originally required as optional submission scores. Therefore, I didn't have to prepare for the IB exam so hard and didn't have to care about the SAT at all.

I believe some people might think this is just a money-making advertisement. But that's not the case. It's just a poor student with a tortuous and strange experience of studying in the US sharing her personal experience. I personally support finding an agency, but not completely. Not all the agencies in the market are reliable. For instance, two of my friends approached an educational institution that had a car crash. The entire company's fate was uncertain. Fortunately, they had both completed their applications at that time and didn't need much assistance from the agency; otherwise, the experience would have been very poor. So when looking for an agency, it's important to find a reliable one to alleviate the troubles of the application season and college selection, and at the same time, they can also push some resources. I've heard that many former client students of Explore have received project opportunities, research opportunities, or even competition training opportunities. I myself once got a chance to take a programming experience class. I have to say that it was precisely because of this experience class that I have basically determined my future professional direction now. So, this institution is quite good.

In conclusion, with the joint assistance of the psychological counselor and the teachers from the study abroad agency, I graduated from my senior year of high school and even received a decent offer.

03. United States

As a freshman in the spring of 2022, my university semester doesn't start until the end of January, so I got a break period of almost half a year. Now it seems to be a buffer period before entering the busy days of university. University is much more difficult than high school.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I arrived in New York almost two or three days before the start of the school term. Time was extremely tight, but because of this, I received guidance from many seniors. Nowadays, I can basically handle my daily life all by myself. I have socializing and entertainment. I've even started planning to move out of the dormitory.

But university courses, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, are much more difficult than those in high school. Although students only have two or three classes each day in university, due to the limited class time, if they do not proactively send emails to professors to ask questions or make appointments for office hours, they basically have no chance to ask questions and it is also difficult for them to get familiar with and build a good impression of the professors. Moreover, each student's course is different. Basically, there are different students in the classroom for every class, and it's hard for students to connect with each other. Besides, my English is at most suitable for daily communication, and I basically have no chance to socialize with foreigners.

Because it was hard to form a close connection with anyone, no one urged me to study in college - as long as I wanted to, I could sleep in every day, and each student basically didn't care about others' grades. So such critical moments were very challenging to one's self-discipline. Fortunately, my dad used to constantly instill in me all kinds of inspirational quotes, such as that one should be self-disciplined and overcome inertia. Moreover, I attended boarding schools during my junior high and senior high school years, which not only enabled me to take good care of myself but also maintain basic self-discipline. Therefore, there wasn't too much of a problem in this regard.

Because I used to live in a boarding school all the time and my parents were used to my long absence from home, neither of us missed each other very much, so it didn't cause much psychological burden. And even if my mom really misses me, she can still use wechat video calls.

In terms of diet, among the international students I know, I am one of those with a mild "Chinese food withdrawal reaction". A girl from Beijing I know basically feels comfortable only after having rice noodles three or four times a week, while a boy from Beijing I know has almost memorized the addresses of the Chinese restaurants around his dormitory. And every time I suggested going to the cafeteria for a meal or recommended some Western restaurants I could try, they would look at me with strange eyes.

And New York truly lives up to its reputation as a metropolis. Even the Asian supermarket just two blocks away from me can only be reached by car from my friend's suburban university. While my other friend's favorite tiramisu from Italian supermarkets is nowhere to be found in her small county university, there are two chain stores in New York. Every time I tell my mom about the above things, she has more than once exclaimed, "You really did choose the right school."

All in all, I'm quite adapted to my current college life. Wish all the students struggling in the application season a pleasant journey.

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Ms.Ou., Academic Director of Yisi Bole
Student Wang studies at the IB Curriculum Center of Meishi International School. The student is a very well-behaved girl. Her academic performance is also good. She has received several student awards from the school. At the same time, she has rich experience in extracurricular activities. It is worth mentioning that under our planning, she successfully enrolled in the credit-based academic summer school of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, which also laid a good foundation for her subsequent application. The student has very strong execution ability. The tasks we assign to her can often be completed in a short time.

Student Wang is rather introverted. At first, most of the time, he just listened to our suggestions but seldom expressed his own thoughts. Later, with our continuous encouragement and as we became more familiar with each other, the students began to gradually express their own opinions. Especially when it comes to application documents, I will discuss with the document teacher what I want to express and my own qualities and characteristics. Throughout the entire process, we also found that students gradually developed the habit of independent thinking and were able to view problems dialectically. So we incorporated her dialectical thinking in the application documents, which is also a point that American admissions officers pay great attention to. It is called critical thinking in the United States. Student Wang himself has a very strong passion for writing. In terms of the textual expression of application documents, he can produce a lot of non-standard words, which also caught the attention of the admissions officers among millions of applications. I believe everyone can also get a glimpse of it from the above text.

Student Wang's dream school is New York University, and he also chose to apply to New York University through Early Decision. However, due to the pandemic, she was unable to take the SAT exam. With a TOEFL score of 105, she did not have much competitiveness at the highly competitive New York University. Therefore, the school initially placed her on the waiting list. However, we did not want to give up on the student's dream school easily. After communicating with the student, we wrote a sincere application letter and included the academic projects she had done at school in it. As a result, all our efforts paid off and Wang was admitted to her dream school, New York University. In addition, she has also been admitted to UCD, UCSC, the University of Connecticut, UIUC and the University of Toronto.