WLSA Shanghai School - Sanny classmate
Admission to Mimoto: University of Chicago – Political Science and Philosophy
Ranked 6th in the U.S. Comprehensive University Rankings, the University of Chicago is known for its academic excellence and is a dream school for many Chinese students.
Today, we have specially invited Sanny, a classmate from WLSA Shanghai School and ED recorded by Chitta that year, to share the story of how she turned the dream she sowed as a child into reality!
I started writing this article exactly a month after I received my acceptance letter from Chicago. Fading the excitement of receiving an offer from dream school and the joy of making my dream come true, I was left with a vision for the next four years of study.
01
Originated in Chicago, sowing the seeds of dream school
First stop: Chicago, Goodrich Elementary School
In the first grade, I didn't know how to speak English, so I stepped into the Goodrich Elementary School in Chicago. Maybe the unique name of this elementary school has doomed me to belong 12 years later: be a good, mentally rich person.
We live in the Chicago countryside and drive around downtown on weekends, passing by the University of Chicago campus many times and looking at its Cobb Gate in a daze. As the only Chinese student in the whole elementary school, I joined the community of local classmate great s and found the first key: open-minded in personality. During that time, my English ability took a qualitative leap.
▲ In Chicago, when I was a child
The second stop: Shanghai, Jincai Experimental Primary School + Jincai Experimental Middle School
After returning to Shanghai, I studied under the middle school examination system for seven years and met many mentors and friends. These seven years of experience have taught me how to find my own happiness in a high-pressure learning environment, and I have also seen different communities in the world. In this environment, I found the second key: dedication leads to success.
The third stop: WLSA Hsinchu Garden + WLSA Shanghai School
In the second year of junior high school, I brushed the mathematical finale of the middle school entrance examination while teaching myself a bilingual development course, although the pressure was very high, but I always told myself that I had to face the difficulties and bravely meet all the difficulties encountered in life. In 2018, I received a transfer acceptance letter from WLSA Hsinchu Garden, and I also received a total grade of the top 5% of the junior high school.
In my second year of junior high school, I decided on my future study abroad plans, because as I grew older, I found that my thinking patterns and personality traits shaped by my diverse upbringing backgrounds were more in line with international schools.
02
WLSA gives wings to dreams
1 A wide selection of courses to connect university courses
WLSA is the first international high school in the country to achieve the "Hayep hemp" Grand Slam, of course, not by hardware advantages, but by giving students rich spiritual food!
WLSA's courses have elective courses, and students have a high degree of freedom in choosing courses. My advice for choosing a course is: choose the one that suits you + what you like = the best learning experience.
In my sophomore and junior year of high school, I took two unpopular courses, philosophy and art history. In the science elective, chemistry (chemistry, biology, physics is a choice). I chose chemistry because I learned it most easily and have always achieved an A in the past.
But I also hope that the students will understand a truth: the end of learning is not GPA. I have many classmates around me who have achieved AP5 points in a certain course in the second year of high school, but they still chose this course for GPA in their third year of high school. Although it is easy to get an A, that year's study was like "fried cold rice" and did not learn anything new/meaningful.
Interest is the best guide on the road to learning: philosophy and art history are both academic fields that I am very interested in. Even if philosophy has hundreds of pages of after-school reading and 8-10 essays per week for the midterm final exam, art history recites hundreds of titles, author names, painting materials, periods, and so on. Interest has helped me maintain my enthusiasm for learning and bring these potentially boring knowledge points to life.
As we all know, learning philosophy is very laborious
WLSA's curriculum is well integrated with the U.S. curriculum, and it also fully connects the curriculum content of some universities.
The Humanity and Social Sciences contained in Chicago's Core Curriculum are very reading-intensive, and even require students to have a basic understanding of philosophy. But throughout my sophomore year of philosophy, I found that some of the required reading lists required by college had been read a lot in high school, and the philosophers who appeared repeatedly on the college syllabus also appeared as the protagonists of our though experiments or discussions. The "textbooks" of our philosophy class use the textbooks of the MIT freshman philosophy class!
2 Event planning
Almost every week or every two weeks, WLSA's further education teachers send out many activities for students to participate in our group chats. The variety and richness of activities can meet the needs of each student, such as economics, debate, public welfare or leadership.
People will ask: What is the difference between the activities shared or encouraged by the school and the activities recommended on the general public account and the summer school? The answer is: high gold content + niche.
When applying to school, the most I hear from people around me is: Make yourself stand out. Grades aside, the activity list is one of the places where we can show our uniqueness and specialness. Unlike many popular events, the number of programs recommended by the school is generally small and the admission rate is relatively low. Some of the Programs I attended only admitted 3-4 students in Chinese mainland, and even there was only one student for me.
▲I took a group photo of the team member in the project
The school is also very supportive of students' ideas for activities, for example, I wanted to do a TED Talk, so I applied to become an organicizer, the attitude of the school is very recognized, the teacher in the great help to the students at the same time, but also encourage us to play freely, in the activities to improve their soft power.
▲ TEDx scene
3 Planning for further education
The college teacher regularly sends a link to the university presentation in the group chat. And many college presentations are open only to WLSA students. In particular, you should take advantage of these opportunities, especially the interactive Q&A session with the AO, and the information obtained can be written in your why school paperwork.
WLSA's path to higher education begins the moment we step onto campus in high school, and guidance plays a vital role in both CC (College Counseling) classes and regular face-to-face meetings. Through several years of getting along, the counselors are not only teachers who help students apply, but also understand the personality, personality characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of each student, just like the existence of elders.
"The application season is a game with yourself", I am very grateful to the WLSA teachers for one thing: believe in students, believe in students' dreams, and be willing to fight for students.
I was hesitant to ED UChicago, and my teacher told me, "Go for it, UChicago is your dream school for so many years." "So I began the long journey of revising the paperwork, and I will never forget the 1:30 a.m. voice call of the ED application season, the interview in the conference room again and again, and the colorful marks on the A4 paper. Without them, I can’t be who I am today.
03
Apply for the season to beat yourself
It wasn't until a month before the ED filing deadline that I finalized my decision to apply for Chicago. Saying that it is an application, the more accurate description is that I used all the strength in my body and struggled to chase my dreams.
Many students, like me a few months ago, may occasionally doubt themselves: am I not good enough, whether I am not high enough. I want to tell you that this kind of thinking only makes me more anxious. "Excellent" and "successful" are not just one definition. The application season is a game with yourself, and the only thing you need to defeat is yourself.
▲ When you are stressed, go to exercise and embrace the sun!
Countless nights, countless revisions, countless tissues to wipe away tears and continue to fight. The biggest difficulty I had was overcoming myself. You have nothing to lose, a phrase that accompanies me through every day of the application season, helps me face peer pressure and self-doubt. This sentence to yourself, but also to the rising star of tomorrow, every one of you with a dream.