AUG. 23TH
DUODUOLAND JOURNAL
AUT UMN
After living in Lausanne for more than a month, I feel that it is very quiet and harmonious. Lausanne is a city in french-speaking Switzerland, on the north side of Lake Geneva, across the lake from the French town of Evian. The view is very beautiful, and the campus can overlook the snow-capped mountains on the other side of the lake.
Photo / Swiss landscape
For more than a month, the daily curriculum was filled with six major compulsory courses, one professional elective and one humanities elective. Everyday life is probably about online lessons, homework, running along Lake Geneva, and cooking your own meals. On weekends, I will go to the surrounding attractions with my classmates. There are a total of 27 people in the whole project, only four Chinese, and the remaining students come from all over the world, which is very diverse. A lot of the assignments are done in small groups, so I meet a lot of international friends.
Occasionally, when you are in a daze and meditate on the beautiful scenery, your heart will be full of peace. I would have thought that a year ago, at this time, I was still preparing to apply, and I still wanted to be grateful to myself who was methodical and planned a year ago. I would like to share with you my DIY application experience and hope to help you.
One
01
DIY Application: The path to leveling up monsters from the beginning of your freshman year
01. Freshman to junior year
GPA and related courses:
If you really want to go to the US or uk for Postgraduate Studies in Finance/Business, it's really important to pay attention to GPA! My GPA is 3.83, and I made a lot of efforts to brush up the GPA in my sophomore year, and I thought that the biggest advantage I had in applying was the GPA.
Here are two points to share with you:
1. GPA shows a higher trend is more eye-catching.
2. If you apply for metalworking/mathematics majors in mathematics/computer science/finance, the difference in scores is not too big.
Photo / Graduation photo
Language Score:
I personally feel that in the case of limited time in the application season, if TG has 105+/325+, it can basically relax. I brushed six professional courses while preparing for the TOEFL in the first semester of my junior year, brushed the GRE while memorizing words while practicing in the second semester of my junior year, and completely brushed the TG in October, leaving more time for the application season to paperwork and resumes. Therefore, it is recommended that the students get the language done before the summer vacation of the third year, at least to get the TOEFL/IELTS score, because the language proficiency test score has a threshold line, and the GRE does not.
exercitation:
In the first two and a half years of undergraduate, my plan was to brush up the GPA and get the language score, after getting these two, I had a lot of time to spend on internships or scientific research, I did not skip class internship, both sides were taken into account, and the time was coordinated.
Photo / Birthday gift received during internship
02. Senior year
Material Preparation and Application Schedule:
In my spare time during the summer vacation, I went through the admission information of major forums and collected some school and project introductions from major intermediaries. After basically determining the school selection, you can carefully browse the official website of the project and organize all the key information into a table, including whether you need to send paper transcripts, whether you need TOS score certification, and other details. Around the end of September, I was done with the selection of schools and the sorting out of application requirements.
Based on factors such as school selection, material requirements, and application deadlines, I planned the progress of the application and produced a timetable, including when to send the recommendation letter and when to complete the first draft of a project document.
Figure / Tracking table made with software (example)
resume:
I think resumes are important in applications, and a good resume can make a good impression on the other professor. First of all, it must be concise, that is, the layout is neat, the font is good (it is recommended to use Calibri), and the number of words in the whole resume does not exceed three; secondly, in the content, you must highlight the quantitative ability, you can explain through your model results, how much data to process, etc., when explaining each boot point, use the STAR rule; third, pay attention to the rich use of words, you can Google some synonymous websites to seek tricks.
In addition, a friend gave me a foreign website for revising resumes, VMock, which is a platform that provides automatic revision suggestions for the resumes of many college students in the United States. I heard that some colleges and universities will also use the platform to screen student resumes when recruiting, and more than 85 points is considered an excellent resume. After clicking on the link to register, you can upload a copy of your resume, and the system will give you scoring and modification suggestions in various aspects.
Instrument:
The paperwork was the most devastating part of the whole application process and the one that I gained the most.
Writing an essay is probably a process where you tell the school "Why I need you & Why you need me." I think the interesting thing about writing a document is that you can do a clear and deep digging into your own life.
The first step is to study the details of the project from the official website. The first thing to understand is the curriculum and training direction of the project, which is like looking at the job description before hiring and then matching it with your own ability. Some projects are written in more detail, and you can see the introduction of each course. It was in these introductions that I looked for parts that would fit my future career path.
The second step is to dig up the material. The material I was collecting in the logical order of the paperwork at the time was: motivation, career goals, academic/professional achievements. I had never thought about my career path before the application season, because the application was "forced" to think hard about this issue and gradually confirmed my career direction. Motivation and career path I probably thought for a while, if the idea is more casual, the content written out will appear to be not sincere enough, must reflect the personality, try to avoid the idea of rotten street, even if your real original intention is indeed very superficial, but also think of more meaningful reasons to reflect their sincerity. My career path was inspired by my two internships and driven by my own values. I think this is very important, and it is also a place that reflects your unique.
The third step is to write the document, before the hands-on code word I will make an outline, what to write first and then write what to write, so that the whole document seems logical. Because the projects I applied for were almost similar, the basic content of all the instruments would not change, but the specific focus would be adjusted according to the requirements and characteristics of the project. The style of business writing will be a little different from that of pure science and engineering, the former I will write a little "literary", with a little emotional color in it, the latter may simply talk about scientific research details a little more.
Figure / Do brainstorming when preparing paperwork
In addition, I don't think the paperwork is an extended version of the resume, and there is no need to put some repetitive information into it, such as GPA or the like. Write more about your own ideas and details, reflecting your soul.
Changing the writing is also a very important step, because most Chinese students' logical way of thinking is more Chinese, so many expressions are not very authentic and they are not fluent in reading. Here is a highly recommended Fiverr website, you can find relevant professional people to modify the instrument. I was looking for someone with a science and engineering background on Fiverr to fix, it was an Indian sister who helped me revise the application for Tandon, she was an EE master of UWM, changed very professionally, and the subsequent documents I modified based on Tandon's documents.
interview:
Because metalworking is one of the most competitive projects in art research, there will be many interviews during the application process. In the case of GaTech, for example, an application requires a video essay and a live interview two months later.
For machine interviews, pay attention to instrumentation, clear speech, etc. The three live-action faces I've experienced have all been behavioral, without too many technical problems, probably just to learn about your motivation and communication skills.
02
Apply for 14 programs – Extreme Time Management for Studying Internship Life
01. Four-year period management of the university
In my freshman and sophomore year, studying professional courses and dealing with various problems made me develop the ability of multi-task, and in my junior year, I focused on overcoming language scores and completing professional homework on weekdays so that I could have a full weekend to review language tests. As a senior, I am very grateful for the good multi-task ability I have developed over the past three years.
A core experience of senior year time management is doing things at what time. Also, to make the most of some bits and pieces of time, such as commuting to work, I use this time on the road to think about my own paperwork framework and intracranial brainstorming.
My time management skill is to arrange work in advance. My usual habit is to make weekly plans, especially during my senior year, when I ask myself what I have to do this week. Another way is to use two software, Forest and Tick List, one that allows you to develop a sensitivity and concentration to time, and one that manages what you need to do. These two tools can help me not to procrastinate tasks and use time efficiently.
02. Apply for the overall management of 14 projects
The first step in the overall arrangement of the application project is to divide all the projects in a grade, and it is better if you can arrange a specific order according to the degree of preference for the project. In my application process, like most applicants, I divided my school selection into sprints, main applications, and guarantees.
I will apply for a guaranteed school first, one of the most important reasons is that it can be used as a stepping stone for polishing documents, and the other is to simulate my own online application speed, which can provide a reference for the rhythm of the school applied for later. However, it is also necessary to take into account the flexible adjustment of the deadline of each project, and the application deadline will inevitably be arranged in advance, and if the project is better, enough time needs to be arranged for inspection and modification. In a word, the time plan is to plan in advance, the more detailed the better, and do not delay according to the plan!
03
Application Result: Final choice of EPFL ——
to explore more possibilities
Photo / EPFL next to the lake view
Due to the severity of the epidemic and visa problems this year, I finally gave up the option of the United States and chose THE EPFL in Switzerland. I really liked the setup of this project. Different from the application courses in the United States, EPFL's core professional courses focus on mathematical fundamentals, with many hard-core mathematical courses such as stochastic processes, optimization methods, etc.; at the same time, this project also provides a very comprehensive financial curriculum, from basic financial accounting to advanced derivatives.
In addition, the project also has about 30 points of elective courses, which contains the most popular financial technology direction of electives, mainly some computer science, cryptography and other courses started by some computer schools.
Most importantly, the EPFL graduation requirements include a hard internship and a graduation thesis, 30 credits, and students complete master thesis during the internship. This is very attractive to me, and it is also the biggest feature that distinguishes it from the Us project.
Photo / The first offline class in 2020
- END -
Interview | Dong Yuge
The manuscript | Cheese egg burger, tea sauce, Wang Ruyan, Er Huang
Typography | Tea sauce
Illustration | Cheese egg castle
Cover art | Uncle Ohki
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- Message in this issue -
What other challenges have you encountered during the DIY application process?
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