I just graduated from UCLA this year, although unfortunately caught up with the epidemic, which has brought various inconveniences to everyone's life, especially for international students to study and find jobs.
I also take this opportunity to review my application and life, including my personal experience, and hope to provide some help to the younger students.
Undergraduate (2+2):
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China - Microelectronics - GPA 382
iowa state university——electronic engineering——gpa 3.99
toefl：
103 (Reading 28, Listening 26, Speaking 24, Writing 25).
gre：
Admissions:
【offer】
UCLA: Bioengineering PhD, full award.
UIUC: ECE PHD, Half Prize.
Purdue: ECE PhD, full prize.
【ad】
stanford ee ms
cmu cs ms
phd：
ucla——bioengineering
Although most of the students who read this article may already have plans to study abroad, I will share with you the experience of studying abroad graduates.
First, it can strengthen everyone's confidence in studying abroad, and second, you can also post articles to share or tell about your classmates or family members who can't live studying abroad.
First of all, no matter in terms of the rankings of various institutions or people's reputation, most of the world's famous universities are still in Europe and the United States, especially the United States. Not only in the accumulation of academics and time, but also in the education system of small departments, schools to communities, cities and the whole country is a relatively complete system.
Especially for the environment of scientific research, it will bring about the strength of the whole country's scientific and technological strength.
Therefore, whether it is reading thousands of books or traveling thousands of miles, aspiring young people should come and learn from them, not only in terms of professional knowledge, but also in expanding their horizons in society and humanities.
In the end, it is beneficial to stay or return home.
In 2012, Obama came to the school to canvass for votes.
The biggest lesson of my application experience is:Prepare early! Prepare early! Prepare early!
After entering the undergraduate, I planned to go abroad when I was a graduate student or above, but after the end of the freshman year, the school notified me that there was an undergraduate 2+2 program, so I went to listen to it, and I also learned:Unless you are a top 10 school in China, other schools are treated as second-rate schools, and because of some people's fraudulent behavior, American schools do not trust the transcripts and recommendation letters of domestic schools that have not heard of them, so it is a big disadvantage to apply after undergraduate.
2+2 will take an undergraduate diploma from an American school and a letter of recommendation from an American professor, so the credibility is high, so I suddenly changed my strategy at that time and prepared to go abroad for 2+2.
Although it is a school project, it is also done with an intermediary, and the application process is all done by an intermediary.
The preparation for the application was very hasty, although I only had to prepare the TOEFL at that time, and the essays were written by the agent, but because there were so many classes in the sophomore year, every day was full until the evening, and I remember that there was no class only on Thursday afternoon.
Therefore, there is a lot of pressure to find time to prepare for the TOEFL and maintain the results of the professional courses.
At that time, I applied for a TOEFL class at a training institution, and I frantically memorized words and did questions every day.
The deepest impression is that there are a lot of TOEFL listening in the mobile phone, except for class and sleeping, I listen with headphones at other times, and I don't have to fully understand the meaning, mainly to exercise the context.
At first, of course, I felt that the speed of speech was so fast, and I could only understand a few words in one sentence.
After listening to it a lot, I felt like I was hearing and basically understood.
The first thing you say is to speak more, learn to speak by yourself when no one communicates, and then record it and listen to it again, so that you can clearly find your pronunciation problems and correct them.
Writing mainly depends on templates, and at the same time, you must have several sets of templates that you are very proficient in memorizing, so that you can adapt to the situation.
Looking back now, I was relatively young and experienced, so I could learn after a semester of intense study, and I remember my mom saying that every time I washed my hair, a lot of hair fell out in the bath.
Haha, so it's really hair-consuming to study, and younger students have to protect it from elementary school!
At the same time, my dad told me many times that I should prepare early and learn more about the school, for example, if I took the TOEFL test in my freshman year, my sophomore year would not be so hard. Therefore, I learned a lesson from the application for a master's degree and a doctorate, and I had to prepare early.
After the application materials and transcripts were submitted, I waited for the admission results, and then my magic plot came, when more than 10 of our same batch of applicants to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMN) were admitted, but I was the only one who was not admitted, and now I forgot how the agent told me the reason at that time, anyway, I told me a lot, but I feel that they should have forgotten to apply.
Because my grades are very high in the same batch of students, my major at the end of my freshman year is the second in my major, and when I applied for it, I planned to apply for the University of Washington Seattle instead of UMN, but the agent said that the application of the former may be more difficult, so I changed it to UMN, and then added IOWA State University guarantee.
At that time, I was very angry to learn of such a result, but since I chose 2+2 and was ready to pay so much, I had to accept this result.
Therefore, in the subsequent application, I resolutely do not go through the intermediary, and I have to rely on myself throughout the whole process.
Although the process is definitely hard, I belong to the type of "once bitten by a snake for ten years afraid of the well rope", after suffering this loss, I no longer dare to put my future in the hands of the intermediary.
But I still want to tell my younger brothers and sisters that although I didn't apply through an intermediary or anything, DIY is indeed a hard road, and everyone should be cautious. If your time is not so sufficient, your strength is not so good, in fact, semi-DIY is a good choice, in the case of admitwrite, the tutors are all seniors with a famous school background, and they can better help everyone apply if they have application experience.
I won't say much here, so as not to make you think it's Hiroko, and if you're interested, you can learn more about it
When I was an undergraduate, I fought countless days and nights in the study hall of the EE department.
After one semester at Iowa State University, I began to consider and prepare for my master's and doctoral applications.
Because the previous application was prepared in a hurry, this application began to plan early.
So I would like to remind my younger students that the application for studying abroad will never say that you are ready early!
You can start preparing for the TOEFL GRE test as soon as you enter the freshman year, which will leave more time and forgiveness for the future, otherwise you may be overwhelmed by all kinds of things piled up in the back, and even if you resist it, you may lose a lot of hair!
After getting to know the seniors who came last year, I found that studying for a doctorate was more suitable for me.
Doctorates are basically full awards, and undergraduates can directly apply for doctorates, which can save the time of intermediate masters, and at the same time, they can also be converted to master's degrees in the middle.
In addition, the employment options for PhDs in the United States are wider than those for M.S., and the competition is smaller. For example, to be a professor, you must have a doctorate, in fact, being a professor is equivalent to being your own boss, and you are not too pressured by the external environmentTherefore, at that time, the principle of doctoral application as the main application and master's degree as the supplement was considered, and the preparation for this began step by step.
First of all, the Ph.D. application needs to be sufficient compared to the master's degreeScientific research experience, so in the second half of the first semester (equivalent to but), I began to contact various professors and wanted to enter the laboratory to increase my scientific research experience.
At that time, I was fortunate enough to join the department chair's laboratory, studying the use of coils to stimulate magnetic fields to stimulate the brain** some diseases, such as Parkinson's disease and depression.
At that time, I majored in electrical engineering (EE), and after being exposed to this research, it was a major change in my research career.
I didn't expect that electronic engineers tinkering with chips, circuits and electromagnetic fields for a day could actually cure diseases and save people in the end!
I didn't expect it at all, but the excitement and happiness brought by seeing that there were really patients who accepted **and** had never been before when designing chips and circuitsSo I'm going to go in this direction from now on.
In addition to continuing to complete scientific research in the summer of the third year, the main thing is to prepare for the GRE.
At that time, I also returned to China to register for a class, so that the preparation could be more efficient, and I knew that the class in Beijing was the best, so I went to Beijing and booked a hotel nearby for half a month.
My dad was actually more nervous about my application, and during my classes in Beijing, he even sent me a long text message in the middle of the night explaining the importance of applying for a PhD, including getting a good GRE.
Because this is the last time I applied and changed schools when I was a student, and I didn't go to a so-called prestigious school before, so this is my last chance.
The first thing to do when you return to school after the summer vacation is to get rid of the GRE test as soon as possibleFirst of all, it was very painful to memorize words, because the GRE has a lot more vocabulary than TOEFL, and it was also a headache to memorize words according to the timetable of the memory curve at that time.
There are not many reading and fill-in-the-blank skills, the main thing is that you know all the words, and you can basically do it.
So you really have to memorize the words well, otherwise can you imagine a fill-in-the-blank question, although the meaning of the sentence is understood, but the 5 options can't be understood? Or 2 fears that they know the meaning, but it's clearly the wrong answer?
Compared with the TOEFL essay, the GRE pays more attention to the logic before and after the article, and the word count requirement has also increased, so the typing speed must also be practiced.
Domestic colleges and universities arrange many courses in the freshman and sophomore years, but American universities mainly arrange them in the junior and senior years, so my undergraduate is basically the most intense of the two situations.
In the first semester of my senior year, I usually took advanced professional courses, and while I had to prepare for the difficult GRE, I basically stayed in the study room of the college building every day until the last time when I returned to the dormitory by bus, because I knew that it would be not efficient to study if I went back early.
At that time, I really felt a lot of pressure and couldn't prepare, but at the same time, I knew that this was the only chance for me to apply to a prestigious school. At that time, I also watched some chicken soup**, and it also helped.
A month later, I successfully passed the GRE test, which can be regarded as worthy of my own efforts.
The next step is to choose a school, which I mainly choose based on the geographical location of the schoolColleges and universities in the United States are mainly located on the east and west coasts, with a few in the middle.
Because the application requirements on the school's official website are relatively low, I also considered those prestigious schools, and finally decided on about 10 schools.
The eastern Mit and Princeton are as sprintsBecause there are many unknown factors in the application, everyone's situation is different, so how can you know the result without giving it a try?
The main schools in the central part are UIUC and Purdue, which are relatively large, and the western ones are the University of Washington Seattle, Stanford, UCLA, and UC Berkeley.
The application for a doctoral degree in the United States is special, first of all, you can apply directly from undergraduate graduates, and you do not need to have a master's degree, but you need to have scientific research experience.
Therefore, some schools, such as Stanford, can be applied for with a master's degree and a doctorate.
Other schools such as Cornell, Upenn and CMU are also available.
Because I also considered it to be the last time to apply for a degree, the school may have applied more recently, so that I can be more proactive and have more choices when making a choice in the end.
After the school selection is over, it is time to prepare the application materialsThe most important thing is the statement of purposeIn addition to seeing your hardware indicators and grades, admissions officers also want to know who you are, your background and experience, and more importantly, why you want to study and why you want to study in my school.
This is what the admissions officer wants to see in the essay, hoping to see your vivid story, your motivation for studying, and what contribution the school has cultivated as a person like you to the school and even to society.
At that time, I was mainly applying for a PhD, so I mainly started with my research direction, digging deeper into my motivation to impress the admissions officer, and at the end I had to add an understanding of the school, which is different for each school.
So that others can see that you are a real person preparing for this school application, rather than writing a template, ** like this.
Finally, in order to ensure the fluency of the essay, I also found the students of the corresponding school through some online platforms and asked them to help revise the essay.
I think it's important to make the essay more American-minded, and more importantly, to help improve the essay as a person who has come before.
For three letters of recommendation,One is from the tutor who is researching in the laboratory, the other is the teacher who communicates with me a lot in the professional class, and finally the teacher who manages the school club.
This is also something that admissions officers (with a master's degree or above) would love to know about.
For doctoral applications, the most important part is to set up magnetism with professorsBecause in most schools, the admission of PhDs is led by professors, because the scholarships are also mainly provided by professors.
Therefore, sending emails to your professors is a very simple and efficient way to increase your chances of admission.
There are many precautions for sending magnetic-mail, and I will briefly mention a few points hereFirst of all, you have to go to the school to **find the professor**, and you have some understanding of his project, and you can also delete which professor you want to apply for and which one is not suitable.
A school can contact up to 3 professors, don't worry about communication between professors, how do you think you contact everywhere, it doesn't seem to mean that you want to be my student, the United States is still very open-minded, and the email subject should be direct, such as potential phd candidate from....
If there are younger students who apply for a doctorate, please come to me for information:) In the end, my doctoral application offer basically relied on the efficient and magnetic application with the professor, and then arranged an interview, and the professor-led admission.
My Ph.D. major is called Bioengineering at UCLA, which is actually a typical interdisciplinary discipline, mainly to transfer the knowledge and technology of other engineering disciplines to biomedical aspects.
For example, my undergraduate research is to generate magnetic fields through coils and electric currents to develop transcranial nerve diseases (such as Parkinson's disease and depression).
And the current technology is basically non-invasive or minimally invasive.
During my Ph.D., my research focused on the use of artificial intelligence algorithms in clinical disease diagnosis and monitoring of patients' health.
The current technology basically belongs to the generation of artificial intelligence, and the application prospects can cover almost all walks of life, so this is the emerging technology direction in the future, and interested students are welcome to consult me.
Employment (full-time) in the United States is mainly restricted by the status of non-US residents, so the employment situation will be very related to the major, such as EECS and other STEM majors, it is easier to find a job than other majors, especially CS majors, the current demand is still quite large, so some students come to specialize in CS majors in order to find a job.
Of course, the specific major depends on whether you like it and whether it is suitable for you, just like falling in love, the twisted melon is not sweet, don't care too much about other people's opinions and other people's choices, because in the end, only you can be responsible for your life.
Of course, now that the motherland is developing with each passing day, it is also a good choice to return to China to work, and it will not be limited by status.
So how to go on the road, it doesn't matter what others say, and even what parents say doesn't count, and in the end it is up to you to have the final say.