How to get offers from 7 famous universities including Columbia University? This senior WKUer gives a solution…

Keeping GPA3.8+ for four years, working as overseas volunteer after school, serving as the Chairman of overseas volunteer project department…

“Study is first, play is second. ”

“Making full use of time without regrets,” is Zhang’s best description of her college life.

Wenzhou-Kean, a great platform which emphasizes one’s self-learning ability

What was the experience of studying at WKU?

When being asked, Zhang has her own insight, “there exist some competitions here, but at the same time, the competition stimulates one’s inner motivation.”

In her opinion, studying at WKU can greatly improve the ability of self-learning, because class scores account for a large part of the total score. This kind of evaluation requires students to engage in every course.

“Almost every professor has their own rules about participation. In order to interact efficiently in class, we need to preview before class. This is also very helpful to deepen our understanding on key points.”

Zhang said that in her sophomore year, she was once reluctant to have interaction. “I was not prepared enough, afraid of making mistakes, and I didn’t have the confidence to communicate with professors at that time.

So, I had to make full preparation before class.

When I started asking questions and repeated the process several times, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. My lack of self-confidence overwhelmed me.”

In addition, Zhang believes that it is important to keep up with her teacher. At the beginning of the course selection or beginning of course, one should get to know teacher’s teaching methods, in order to make full understanding of what has been taught.

Explore the world, take an active part in extra-curriculum activities

She also actively gained extracurricular credits to accumulate experience and broaden her horizon, preparing to embrace reality after Ivory Tower Life.

In the winter vacation of her sophomore year, Zhang went to Indonesia and began her one-and-a-half month volunteer program.

During that period, she went to five local primary and secondary schools, teaching courses on culture for children.

For the first time, she spent more than a month alone in a foreign country. The local customs, religious beliefs and living customs were strange to her at the beginning. She experienced culture shock. But since then, she better understood the world and decided to explore the world. When she found those children were showing interested in Chinese culture and China, she felt a special sense of accomplishment.

She also served as the Chairman of overseas volunteer program, responsible for seeking more WKUer with suitable volunteer programs. In her view, this work is similar to a real company, crisis management and team management are her biggest challenges.

Wisely enough, she quickly summed up and created her own methods.

She drew up her weekly training content, designed a set of clear flow charts, and set up a group competition mechanism and a work progress assessment and follow-up system by referring to the training methods of matured volunteer teams in other schools. Under her leadership, her team attracted nearly 200 students in summer and 80 in winter to participate in the winter/summer overseas volunteer recruitment activities on campus, and more than 250 students applied for the club’s recruitment.

Zhang admits that this experience not only gave her a sense of responsibility, but also helped her develop an interest in her career.

“This work stimulates my interests in jobs like operations/marketing, which also helped me find the direction of my future internship and further study direction in postgraduate,” said Zhang.

The best is yet to come.

As a famous Ivy League university, Columbia University is one of the five oldest universities in the United States, and one of the universities with the largest number of Nobel Prize winners. It ranked No. 3 among the best universities in the U.S. News 2019.

The offer from Columbia University, is undoubtedly the best affirmation of Zhang’s excellence.

She also shared her application experience when being interviewed: firstly, one needs to study hard to ensure good GPA, which is the basis; secondly, one should accumulate more experience in internship and practical projects and improve personal skills.

“Some people may only apply for one major, but some people may try a variety of majors, and I am the latter one.”

Zhang said that she applied both British and American universities, including marketing, management, economics &finance, business analysis and so on.

Therefore, the contents of the documents prepared are not exactly the same, and various types of cases need to be used to reflect my experience and ability in each field.

” I think more project/internship experience will make it better.”

She suggested that all kinds of projects for professional courses on campus, and if they are of high quality, all can be used in papers and interviews.

She also mentioned that schedule is essential for application.

Finally, adequate interview preparation is also significant. “The Columbia interview took me the longest time to prepare. After searching various interviews online, I prepared about 20 examples/experiences to deal with various problems.

As for the future, Zhang hopes to head for data analysis/market analysis and make a breakthrough in the consulting industry or the Internet industry.