In 2013, I began my undergraduate career as a literature major at a public university on the West Coast of the United States.
Since I was a child, I have loved reading, writing, and watching movies, and I have always done well in Chinese classes, and I really want to develop my interests in college and receive a humanities education in the United States.
At that time, there were still very few Chinese students who went abroad to study as undergraduates, often majoring in programming, engineering, mathematics, and chemistry, and they were surprised to hear that I was studying literature, and there were very few Chinese students in literature classes.
Later, I did a master's degree in East Asian Studies at an Ivy League university, where I combined Western theories with Chinese texts.
But seven years later, with the development of Chinese society and the growth of the study abroad career, I have witnessed more and more Chinese students coming to the United States to study humanities majors for personal interest development, and further their studies in master's and doctoral programs.
At an alumni event in Beijing, I even heard that high school students at an elite high school are now starting to learn American undergraduate humanities knowledge in advance and do research with professors in order to apply to better undergraduate schools.
But I think it will be helpful for many students and sisters with similar aspirations to write about my own experience for reference.
When I went abroad for the third time to get vaccinated for my Ph.D., the aunts who were queuing up and were running abroad for their children heard that I was majoring in liberal arts, and they quickly came over to me and asked me all kinds of things, "My daughter wants to study sociology, what should I do if I want to find a job in the future?" Does going to UChicago for a summer proofreading help with the application? I suddenly realized that although information is developed now, if you don't know anyone around you who has experience going abroad, it is still difficult to make plans for yourself or your children to study abroad.
Therefore, I would like to write about my own experience, and I believe that this article will be of little use to students who need help.
Undergraduate:
university of california, san diego;
literature/cultural studies
gpa:3.77
Master's:
columbia university,department of east asian languages and cultures
gpa:3.93
gre:
Master's Admission Offer:
1、columbia university, department of east asian languages and cultures
2、duke university, critical asian humanities track
3、cornell university, ma program in asian studies
4、ucla, east asian studies ma program
5、washington university, seattle, the jackson school’s m.a.i.s. program in china regional studies
6、university of pennsylvania, department of east asian languages and civilizations
Academy.
Why Study Humanities in the USA: An Atmosphere of Freedom and Well-rounded Development
If I were asked what was the biggest difference between studying humanities in China and humanities in the United States, I think the answer was the atmosphere itself.
There is a fundamental difference in the university system
If you want to change your major, you just need to log in to the online system to submit an application, and the system will reply to you the credits and course selection requirements required for your new major in one day.
Since there is so much freedom to choose a major, students who majored in the humanities are often very interested in this knowledge and enthusiastic about taking classes. When students are enthusiastic, professors become more enthusiastic about teaching.
If the students are all in class with the mentality of making do and messing around, then it will be difficult for the teacher to be interested in preparing for the lesson seriously.
But there's something even different about American universities:
Even American students who take humanities courses for the sake of "general education" are full of curiosity and desire to learn.
Sometimes 70% of the students in the class are not humanities majors, they may be studying computer science, mathematics, or practicing sports in the school team, but they also do their homework and reading seriously, although the results they present are not very "professional", but the studious attitude is already there.
I observed in my American classmates:
They are rarely utilitarian and discriminating, rarely think that something is "useful" or "useless", and dare to express their opinions.
Many Chinese students studying science and engineering are very resistant to humanities electives as soon as they hear about them.
I also ask myself, if I take a science course, or if I am not familiar with European medieval literature or Middle Eastern history, can I be as serious as my American classmates?
Moreover, many American students are still both civil and military (good at studying, still a member of the school team), both arts and sciences (many double majors, or minor in a humanities major), and they are still far behind in terms of mentality.
Most students in the United States have an open-minded and serious attitude to face every class, be consistent, and have the courage to expand the boundaries of their knowledge.
I've heard a number of American professors who study China talk about "why you should study China as a career choice?" and their answers are very similar:
Because I read the English version of the Analects when I was in high school, I became interested in China."
Because when I was in the fifth grade of elementary school, I turned to the Tao Te Ching, and I thought it was very interesting."
When I was a child, I lived in a very closed place, and I wanted to see the world. ”
They all chose their careers out of curiosity, and there was nothing "utilitarian".
But curiosity alone is not enoughEveryone knows that an American optical Chinese is very difficult, not to mention mastering classical Chinese, doing academic research, and going to China to do field researchThis level cannot be achieved without a tenacious will and a defense of one's own curiosity.
At first glance, this may sound like a "bitter" thing, but according to my observation, these professors who use their interests as the driving force for their lives all seem to be ten years younger than their peers, and they still maintain their vitality and have a very positive attitude towards life.
There is an American professor who studies medieval Chinese history, who is over 70 years old, and when he mentions the new ideas and perspectives of the doctoral students he just reads, his eyebrows still flutter with excitement, and he does not look old at all.
I think that vitality comes from their pursuit of truth, their sense of responsibility to teach and educate, and the academic environment in which they live in a way that allows them to freely develop their interests.
When I first started as an undergraduate, I felt that the topics of the course and the research topics were very strange, "trauma and modern American literature", "eco-criticism", "food and postmodern culture", and "fatigue and literature", which were not at all like the "history of Western literary theory" and "history of Western aesthetics" as I imagined.
But in fact, these courses reflect the most important issues in the current American academic community, that is, the most cutting-edge academic topics.
When I asked an American professor why there was a lack of "textbook" literature courses in American universities, such as Western literary theory starting with Plato and continuing with postcolonial criticism, the professor said, "We believe in the interests of our students."
If you read the reading that mentioned Hegel in the class and become interested in Hegel's philosophy, you can read it yourself.
If Hegel is interested in Plato, read it yourself.
Everyone has his own intellectual pathIt is most effective to go along your own path. ”
If textbook-style teaching is a kind of indoctrination, then the teaching method of American universities is closer to free research, where students choose topics of interest and dig deeper, and in the process, they re-evaluate and reflect on the achievements of previous human scholarship.
I would like to use a simple example to illustrate the difference between "Modern Literary Studies" in China and "Chinese Literary Studies" in the United States:
When we were in junior high school, we all studied a text, Lu Xun's "The Scream" self-preface.
It talks about how Lu Xun saw the numb Chinese in the slide when he was studying in Japan, and realized that it was not enough to make the Chinese physically strong, but also to transform their spirits.
This is the famous "abandonment of medicine and literature" incident.
For this classic work, which can be described as the "origin" of modern Chinese literature, our past textbook explanations are:
Lu Xun was stimulated by the slide incident, which stimulated his patriotic enthusiasm.
But in the eyes of American scholars of East Asian literature, this "slide event" can be interpreted in a variety of ways:
Professor Rey Chow of Duke University, for example, has noted that previous researchers have only paid attention to the content of the "slide event", but have not noticed that the "slide" itself is a new medium: film.
Lu Xun's strong reaction to the slides was due in large part to the fact that film is a visual medium that faithfully records the scene of violence.
From this point of view, Professor Rey Chow asks a series of questions: What is the relationship between Lu Xun and film? (In fact, Lu Xun loved watching movies very much, but rarely talked about the movies themselves.) Why did he choose the traditional path of literary creation instead?
Professor Haiyan Lee of Stanford University revisited the "slide incident" from another angle:
Lu Xun studied abroad at the end of the Qing Dynasty, when the modern sense of "country" had not yet been formed - that is, "patriotism" did not actually become and could not become a common emotion of the Chinese at that time, perhaps the "insensitive" spectators in Lu Xun's eyes did not have the consciousness of "compatriots" at all (the original meaning of "patriotism" in English is patriotism is "love for compatriots").
This question involves another question: When did "patriotism" as an emotion and emotion become the consensus of the Chinese?
Other scholars have discussed the "slide incident" in a variety of ways, but the two examples just cited illustrate how overseas China studies take a critical view of the popular interpretations that we thought were "foregone conclusions" long ago—sometimes the bold ideas of one researcher can even completely overturn the assertions of his or her mentor many years ago.
Nowadays, "digital humanities" is very popular in the humanities, that is, with the help of "big data" and programming technology to analyze literature and find the universal laws of literature.
In the past, humanities scholars demanded "close reading" of texts, while Professor Franco Moretti, who proposed "digital humanities", argued that we should digitize literature and conduct "distant reading", which in turn influenced a generation of young scholars who have learned programming languages and tried to challenge their judgments about literature with new technological tools.
At the same time, there has also been a wave of "affect theory" in the field of film studies, shifting the focus of film studies from the study of film content to the interaction between film and other cultural media.
UC Berkley's Professor Bao Weihong noticed that there were a number of "fire films" that were very popular with movie fans during the ** period, such as "The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple".
They all share a puzzling ending: a fire burns down the building (the villain's home base).
Although these "burned" films have not been preserved, Professor Bao analyzed and pieced together the film criticism, social movement history, and philosophy history of the time, and found out why "fire" became a popular film image in the period, and published a monograph "Fiery Cinema" ("Burning Film").
I remember a professor once commenting in class, "Professor Bao is a genius." she even wrote a book on a film that doesn’t exist!(Professor Bao is a genius.) She went so far as to write a book for a movie that didn't exist! Although Professor Bao is unique, her new attempt is also inseparable from the exploration of "media theory" in the American academic environment.
These examples are just given to illustrate:
East Asian studies in the United States are not as boring and boring as most people think, but are full of whimsical ideas, full of intellectual, intellectual, and methodological innovations of generations of scholars.
Of course, no matter what discipline you're engaged in, you'll experience this sense of novelty and challenge at an American university.
But the unique significance of East Asian studies and China studies to us is that they allow us Chinese to re-look at the experience we know from a different perspective, which may make us feel overwhelmed, but after a short period of discomfort, we can open up a whole new world.
If you ask what it's like to study in the master's program in East Asian Studies at an Ivy League school?
I might say: it's like reading a "big five" or "six" by myself.
It is more like an extension and deepening of undergraduate learning.
For example, the courses in my program are generally divided into two categories:
One is with an undergraduate student (graduate and undergraduate mixed) and the other is with a doctoral student (doctoral and graduate mixed).
Due to the different backgrounds of the students in the master's program and the different education systems, they need to go through a period of trial and integration of Ivy League education before it is possible to continue their doctoral studies.
When I was in class with undergraduates, it was as if I had retaken all the undergraduate courses, so it felt like finishing my senior year and then coming to my fifth year.
But studying at an Ivy League school is very different from my old public school undergraduate:
The first is demanding.
In the past, professors would give face-to-face lectures two or three times a week, and each time they would read dozens of pages of articles, with forty or fifty students in each class.
In the Ivy League, even if it is an undergraduate class, it is only once a week, and it is a small class of no more than 20 people, and each time it will be assigned to read an academic book of about 300 pages, and at least 500 words of reading notes will be sent to the teaching platform before class, so that everyone can read each other.
Of course, it is inevitable that people will be lazy and skim or skip the week's reading assignments. It's okay to be lazy, but everyone will do a public book report at least once or twice a semester, and you can't go on stage without reading the assigned books carefully.
We also have at least three classes per week each semester, which means reading three books a week! If this kind of reading is the beginning of the undergraduate program, it is not difficult to imagine why the undergraduates from the Ivy League schools generally have a solid foundation and talents.
As mentioned above, everyone has to post what they write online before each class, and the students who teach and host the book report in class will also comment on it.
Because of the consideration that others will also come to read what they wrote, everyone's enthusiasm immediately increased a lot, for fear that they would show their timidity.
Moreover, the undergraduate students from the mainland, at least at the level of Tsinghua University, Peking University, Renmin University, and Beijing Normal University, no one wants to lose face in their school.
At the end of the semester, I obviously feel that everyone's writing skills have improved, and the preparation for class has been enriched a lot.
I remember one class where a student from a university who came here to study for a master's degree in anthropology had a stumbling reading of a book report for the first time, and when it was his turn to do a book report for the second time, he was extremely fluent in English and did his slides very carefully.
I think this is not only due to his own efforts (he is often seen reading hard in the library), but also because of the peer pressure in the Ivy League school environmentEveryone is working hard, and you're embarrassed if you don't fight.
In the end, this student successfully applied for a doctorate in anthropology from another Ivy League school and began his academic journey in the United States. ）。
I remember a few months after I arrived at the Ivy League, the most common thing we talked about was, "I feel like I've become more interested in learning." ”
Interest in knowledge is inseparable from the cultivation of a good environment, which is the meaning of studying at an Ivy League school.
In addition to studying, Ivy League schools offer a wealth of academic activities. Every week, dignitaries from all over the world come to visit and give speeches, and many students around me often register in advance for dinners to welcome dignitaries.
Even in our relatively small department, there will be professors from other universities or writers, artists, and ** to give speeches at least four days a week, and there are large-scale seminars almost every month, and dozens of scholars from all over the world gather together.
If you have academic aspirations and aspirations, you can listen to the latest academic research and build friendships with other scholars, especially young scholars of the same generation.
Every month, the department also holds a "happy hour", where masters, doctors, and professors from all over the department get together to drink and chat, express stress, and exchange ideas.
Before discussing specific application issues,I must first explain the relationship between Chinese students studying abroad and the graduate school system in the United States.
As I mentioned in the previous section, the primary purpose of master's programs at American universities is to train doctoral students.
For example, students who are not ranked high in undergraduate schools, if they are interested in academic careers, often need to go through a period of time in the Ivy League master's program, accumulate some experience, "make up for the course", and then apply for a better doctoral program after two years.
Of course, there is also a situation in the master's program to make up for the knowledge of some professionals, some American students have a military or diplomatic background, and they need to learn about East Asian culture to come to the short-term master's program, not to do their own doctoral studies.
However, for the vast majority of mainland undergraduate students, although some of them plan to continue to study in the United States for a doctorate, most of them are still in order to obtain a life experience of studying abroad, not only for their own life experience, but also for the future job search to increase their weight - after all, Chinese society is still a "society of academic qualifications", and a "foreign degree" means an extra advantage.
But students with this mentality may be contrary to the direction of American college admissions.
Many American undergraduates will join the workforce as soon as they graduate, and do not think that studying for an extra master's degree will have any decisive impact on their employment and promotion, so the teachers in charge of admissions generally follow the direction of looking for "academic talents" to select master's students.
When applying for a master's degree, the most important thing is to highlight your enthusiasm for academics, have a clear research plan, and clearly explain how you can help your supervisor's research plan. This requires an understanding of current academic progress in the United States.
If you are an undergraduate student in the mainland, you can pay more attention to the foreign affairs activities of the department, which American professors come to give speeches, just as mentioned before in the Ivy League schools every day of the speech, the invited professors must introduce their latest research progress, as well as the current development of the field, from them can know how to embed their own experience into the development of American academics.
When I applied for my master's degree in East Asian Studies, I made it clear that I wanted to take a popular academic topic "Sinophone Literature" as my research plan, and carefully read an introductory book, Sinophone Literature: A Reader, to understand the current development of this field.
In each statement of purpose, I should indicate which teacher I want to do research with, what research this teacher has done, and why it is related to my plan.
Of course, not every prestigious university has a corresponding teacher to do Chinese language research, which means that I can't blindly apply for a school selection.
After writing my personal statement, I consulted my undergraduate advisor, wrote letters of recommendation from two other professors I was familiar with, and asked a professor of German literature to help me correct the grammar of the writing sample, and quickly submitted my application materials and GRE scores.
After submitting the materials in December, I received an admission to the East Asian Department of Penn in March, and later the admission letters came in one after another, including Duke University, Cornell University, and so on.
But I also made a mistake when applying:
Some East Asian studies programs are divided into two parts, one for politics, economics, military affairs, and diplomacy, and the other for literature, history, language, and philosophy.
Some belong to the "Area Studies" category, which is part of the School of International Relations, and some are separate departments of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.
Because I didn't notice the difference between the two, I missed the admissions deadline for Stanford University's Department of East Asian Languages, so I had to apply for a regional studies program, and as a result, I was not admitted.
When I was studying for my master's degree, I found that students who chose area studies were often studying international relations, history, and journalism, while students in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations were more likely to study comparative literature, religion, and philosophy.
Therefore, the undergraduate major has a considerable relationship with the final admission, and choosing a program that suits your major can improve your chances of being admitted.
I believe that every student majoring in humanities has a passion for the pursuit of truth, a sensitivity to art, and a desire to experience life.
But there is always an end to the days of study, and unless you go on to study for a PhD, most people still have to take the ordinary path of job hunting.
So, if you are studying literature, history, and other "useless" humanities majors, how should you apply for a job in the future?
To be honest, I don't have a definite answer to this question :
You can engage in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, journalism and communication, law, new **, publishing and even studying abroad, or even study abroad applications, and even go to a technical master's degree, depending on your choice of career path.
Either way, your previous humanities experience is not "useless", and you can use these opportunities to enhance your resume.
For example, working as a research assistant for a professor is a very good opportunity to not only get a letter of recommendation from a professor in the future, but also to get a lot of guidance in your daily study and life.
Another is summer internship, there are quite a few think tanks and media in the United States that offer summer internship positions for students, which is also a very rare experience for Chinese students.
For students who want to return to their home countries for development, they can at least improve their English during their study abroad.
Although some students will feel that the master's program is not very useful to them, and the things they study are mysterious, and they will not encounter a second time in their lives, at least in the high-pressure environment of the Ivy League school, you can quickly improve your English reading and writing skills.
Going through 300 pages of an academic book will definitely improve your reading skills;
Doing a book report or presentation in class, or even a regular class discussion, can help you improve your speaking skills, let alone communicate with your American classmates.
For example, some East Asian master's programs also offer short-term language study abroad in the summer, such as studying Japanese in Kyoto and Korean in Seoul.
These valuable experiences can add points to your resume – no matter what, don't just "rest" on vacation, there are plenty of things to do.
As mentioned before, the Ivy League school has a wealth of activities, don't just soak in the library, or stay at home to play games when you are free, participate in more lectures and activities will learn a lot from the experience of others and broaden your horizons.
There are also plenty of social activities that are great for making new friends.
Many experiences may seem like nothing to do with your future at first glance, but if you do it seriously, you will play its role one day, and every small opportunity will be transformed into a big opportunity in the future.
For example, if you take your master's degree very seriously, maybe your content will not be of much use in the future, but the research ability and detail-oriented spirit you have exercised in the process of writing will always be with you.
The meaning of studying abroad will be constantly reviewed and rewritten in the long course of life in the future.