Now my application is over. Although I haven't decided which school to go to in the end, I already have a good full prize offer. From the failure of the application in 2009 to the success of 10, there is always an unspeakable feeling in retrospect. I decided to write down my application experience, not only to record this past, but also to give some inspiration to those who are interested in taking this road. Because although the number of China people studying communication in the United States has been increasing in recent years, the overall number is still very small. We are basically the first generation of people crossing the river by feeling the stones. I took a detour and hit the south wall, but I hope my compatriots can walk more smoothly. After all, we are all from China.
Let me introduce my background first. I graduated in 2007, majoring in English with a bachelor's degree. My alma mater is a key university whose aura has gradually faded in New China. For various reasons, I chose to go abroad to study correspondence, so in the autumn of 2007, I came to this university which can now be called my alma mater. My major is network and society, which has been very popular in American communication circles in recent years.
In the summer of 2008, I decided to study PhD. On the one hand, it is difficult to find a job in the United States, and more importantly, because I think I am very suitable for being a university professor and like to be a teacher in a university, I want to study for a doctorate. By the way, I remember Baidu CEO Li Yanhong once said that people should learn to appreciate themselves. If you want to gain a foothold in this society, you must learn to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, learn to maximize your advantages, and minimize the impact of your disadvantages on yourself as much as possible. This requires us to evaluate ourselves objectively, learn to see clearly our strengths and weaknesses, and find the job that suits us best. Of course, it's hard. Only you can see yourself clearly, and no one can replace you. After studying for a doctorate in liberal arts and social sciences in the United States, I basically became a teacher in the future; If you don't want to be a teacher, don't spend your four years of youth on reading, writing, teaching and scientific research.
In the United States, Ph.D. in Communication generally only has the program of admission in autumn, so he applied for admission in autumn of 2008. I remember that the winter of 2008 was particularly cold, which seemed to correspond to the extremely depressed economic situation at that time. In the words of Li Qingzhao, right? This time, what a sad sentence? . As a direct result of the economic downturn, a large number of Americans choose to enter graduate school. One of the basic characteristics of communication and its related majors (journalism and advertising) is that it requires extremely high language and culture. Therefore, when a large number of Americans flood into these professional PhDprogram, the application pressure of international students is great. Another influence is that it has brought great difficulties for international students to apply for scholarships. Because only public schools in the United States generally offer doctoral programs in communication, and the economic downturn will affect the government's income and reduce the financial allocation to public schools, many doctoral programs in communication have also reduced their funding for doctoral students. To put it simply, the problems faced by international students applying for PhDprogram in communication in the past two years are: 1, a large number of applicants, 2, a small number of people who can be admitted and offered scholarships, and 3, high language and cultural requirements.
Tell me more about my application conditions in 2008. I'm ashamed to say that there are hardly any. Apart from my GT scores and GPA, I can get by, and several research projects have not yet produced results. The masterprogram in the United States is basically completed in two years. It is difficult to ask students to produce some decent research results within two years. I am not excusing myself by saying this, but because most master students in communication, especially international students, have no research results. A few years ago, I might be able to get an offer from a general school. But in the face of the severe winter of 2008, I only received an admission notice from an ordinary school.
I was very depressed when my application failed. Especially when I heard some gossips in my hometown read my jokes and said that my parents were difficult to obey, I was even more annoyed. For the first time, I deeply felt that my success was linked with my parents, although they never put pressure on me. I don't shy away from this experience of failure, because I think it is a valuable asset in my life; It makes me stronger, more confident, more optimistic, more assertive, and have the ability to face setbacks in life. It is not terrible to encounter setbacks. The terrible thing is to be crushed by setbacks and never recover. After learning a painful lesson, I decided to postpone my graduation and reapply. A year later, three conference presentations and/kloc-0 conference papers appeared on my resume. I've got a full-prize admission notice from one school and another (they haven't issued scholarships yet). The program director of the school called me earlier and told me that they only gave two full prizes last year, but they were very satisfied with me. The whole Committee gave me the highest score, so they decided to give me a full bonus. I am very happy and proud to get such achievements in a major dominated by Americans, because it has been proved that we China people can do better than Americans as long as we work hard. In the following chapters, I will introduce you to the application of communication PhDprogram according to different topics and my own personal experience.