Nanjing Morning Post, October 5, 2014

The first IntroAmerica Jiangsu Star Students Search was held in Nanjing yesterday. Sixteen US colleges are offering 5 million dollars to top Jiangsu high school students. More than 300 students from over 30 high schools attended the interview. One of the important perimeters for a student to be considered a scholarship is if he can present his uniqueness.

16 Colleges Offering 5 Million Dollars for Talented

Top colleges, such as Boston University and University of Mississippi, are among all 16 colleges coming to Nanjing. Altogether they offer more than 5 million dollars scholarship, among which, University of the Pacific is offering 10 full-tuition scholarships, equal to $140,000 for 4 years. This is attractive for regular families who are considering sending kids to study in the US.

Not a lot of undergraduate international students get scholarships from US colleges. These 16 colleges offering such high scholarships are aiming at the most talented students. The first stage of the program is essay writing, during which students were asked to write an essay about one of the three topics: How you will spend your day? An incident or time when you made a mistake or experienced failure, how did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn? Describe a place or environment where you feel happiest, what do you do there and why is it meaningful to you?

Simon Wang, one of the organizers from IntroAmerica, explains that when offering scholarships, US colleges do not focus on test scores, and rather, they want to see the uniqueness of each student ’s point of view from their writing. However, many students are deliberately catering to American admission officers, leaving their own thoughts and personality behind. These students are less likely to get any scholarships.

US College Rankings Are Not Everything

When choosing colleges for their kids, parents tend to rely heavily on US college rankings. Experts reveal not all rankings are fair, and many colleges play tricks to increase their rankings.

One college representative explains that it’s possible to increase a college’s ranking without doing anything to improve education quality. Some colleges have found that admission rate is one key element of a known college ranking, and that the lower admission rate they have the higher ranking they get. This particular college then lowered the admission requirements and increased the body of students who apply. With the same number of students admitted, the ranking of this college increased dramatically. Some other rankings requires peer scoring, which is to ask colleges to score each other. If a college works with their peers and asks them to do it a favor, that college can definitely get much higher score and higher ranking.

It is common that America students do no pay much attention to college ranking. Mostly, parents and students put major in priority. “We suggest students in China not rely on college ranking, and instead, they should focus on major.”

More than 30% International Students can not Complete Study

More and more students go to the US to study in recent years. Phillip Wang, the president of Yinzhuomei, reveals that among all, 30% to 40% of these international students cannot complete their study.

Phillip suggests that there are mostly three types of students who have to drop out from college: those who cannot continue study, those who quit to start their own business, and those who are expelled for cheating and other violation. In general, most of them suffer from maladjustment. As this body of population getting larger, there emerge a few groups that are focusing on help Chinese dropouts.

He believes students have to be good at English before leaving China for abroad study. Unfortunately, some students were sent to the US by agencies and they don’t even know how to say “water.” In addition, failing to choose a suitable college or a major is also one of the reasons why many students drop out. For family who are thinking about sending kids to study abroad, they need to be well prepared, otherwise it’s wasting their kids’ time.

The article is translated by Intro America team.

Original article link：http://njcb.jschina.com.cn/mp3/html/2014-10/05/content_1125399.htm

This article is also reprinted by the following media:

1. Chinese Social Sciences Net
http://www.cssn.cn/dzyx/dzyx_jlyhz/201410/t20141005_1351569.shtml

2. Longhoo Net
http://news.longhoo.net/nj/njxw/content/2014-10/05/content_11384716.htm

3. Xinhua Newspaper Group
http://js.xhby.net/system/2014/10/05/022048627.shtml

4. Nanjing Daily
http://www.njdaily.cn/2014/1005/955989.shtml

5. Northeast Education Net
http://edu.dbw.cn/system/2014/10/05/056029233.shtml

6. Jiangsu China Net
http://jsnews.jschina.com.cn/system/2014/10/05/022048481.shtml