1. Senior high school curriculum and curriculum intensity

2. Average product point

3. Standardized examinations (TOEFL, SAT, ACT)

The above three aspects are used to measure students' academic ability.

4. Letter of recommendation

5. Documentation (PS and Why Documentation)

6. Extracurricular activities

Let's talk about each factor one by one.

Course intensity

Although each university has its own unique trial process, most of them are similar. Top Ivy League universities will use academic indicators (AI) of academic indicators system to grade applicants academically, with the scoring range of 1-5 (some schools are 1-7), with the lowest score of 1 and the highest score of 5.

Most schools will evaluate students' applications twice. Suppose the first admissions officer gave you five points, that is, a perfect score, and the second admissions officer also gave you five points, that is to say, you got a perfect score of 10 in the course intensity. If you only get 2 points (the lowest score) after two rounds of assessment, it means that both admissions officers only give you 1 point.

This is good news for China students. The difficulty of college entrance examination in China can reach 4, 4+, 5- even 5, which shows that American universities recognize the difficulty of high school courses in China.

In addition to ordinary high schools, many domestic applicants attend international high schools.

If you take an A-level course, you can basically get a perfect score of 5 on the course intensity, because the A-level course is very intense.

IB course: If you take 4 advanced courses, you can get 5 points; If there are less than 4 courses, then the admissions officer will give you a score below 5 points, which may be like 4 points.

AP courses: AP courses above 10 can get the highest score. 7- 10 AP score is 4 or 4+; If you have less than 7 courses, you can get a medium score and 3 points.

There is a problem here: students have the ability to take more AP courses, but some high schools can't meet the students' desire to take 10 AP courses because of their own curriculum. In this case, students should try their best to challenge the intensity of the course and complete the AP course that the school can provide. When reviewing, the admissions officer will understand and will still give 4 points.

If you take a lot of difficult courses, but your grades are not good, it will be bad for your application.

GPA (high school average)

The score is divided into five grades of ABCDF. If the score is 90+, it belongs to A students. The score is between 80 and 89, which belongs to B, and so on.

A piece of 90- 100

B 80-89

C 70-79

Sixty to sixty-nine years old

F is lower than 60

At the time of application, American high school students provide grades of grade 9-1 1 (grades 3 -2 in China). If you are a straight A student, that is, all courses are A (all courses are above 90 points), then t A can get full marks. If the perfect score is 5 and both admissions officers give 5, then the student's score in this item is 10.

If there are 1-2 B's on the report card, students may also get 5 points, provided that this B appears in grade 9 (grade 3 in China) and 10 (high school 1 grade) at the latest.

It is not enough to just look at the grade point. In addition to the average score, the admissions officer will also look at the trend of the results. For example, there are two students with the same GPA in high school, both of which are 3.7, and one of them has a downward trend, from 4.2 in grade 9 to 3.6 in 1 1 grade; Another student's grade is rising, from 3.2 to 4.7 in grade three (AP courses will be weighted, for example, the full score of ordinary courses is 4, and AP courses are 4.5 or 5). In the eyes of admissions officers, these two students have different scores and academic potential. Admissions officers don't like students with falling grades; The second student, although his grades were not very good at first, worked hard and his grades kept rising. In the opinion of the admissions officer, such students will maintain such a good state after entering the university.

standard test

Let's start with TOEFL. Foreign students applying for American universities need TOEFL scores, but you may not know that TOEFL scores are not in the scoring range. If domestic students want to apply for top universities in the United States (Top 10), it is recommended that your TOEFL score reach 1 10+. If the TOEFL score is slightly lower, you can choose ED to apply.

There are SAT and ACT in the scoring system. Universities have no preference for these two kinds of exams, so they can choose by themselves. If you apply to a top university, you can submit SAT+SAT2 or ACT+ACT writing.

Apply with ACT, and it is recommended that China students score more than 33 points; If you get 35 or even 36 in the exam, the admissions officer will give you a standardized project full score, that is, 5 points, act 34 4.5, act 33 4, and so on.

Apply through SAT. If you want to be admitted to a top university, it is recommended that you take 680+ in the reading part and 800 points in mathematics, and the total score should reach 1480+. If you read below 680, the admissions officer will question your English reading and writing ability.

The above mentioned three factors to measure academic ability-course difficulty, GPA and standardized score, and then talked about the latter three factors-extracurricular activities, recommendation letters and clerical writing.

The fourth factor: extracurricular activities.

Many students and parents have a misunderstanding that grades are the most important. But in fact, the standardized score only accounts for 1/6 of the application, and only accounts for 1/6 of the whole scoring system. How to arrange your summer vacation? Many students mistakenly used these 2-3 months to study, and their grades improved slightly. For example, the increase of ACT from 32 to 33 is meaningless to admissions officers. What makes you stand out from the applicants is that you have spent these months doing in-depth extracurricular activities to change the community, or carefully planning and writing concept documents. This is more important than improving your grades by one or two points.

Standardized scores are definitely not the most important factor for top university applications. Like Duke University, hundreds of students with perfect SAT/ACT scores are rejected every year, because the school can't judge whether the students have the ability to change the school and influence the community from their grades. What a prestigious school values is what you can contribute to the school.

More than 90% of the applicants for prestigious schools are from top student, and high scores are not enough. However, it is easy for domestic students and parents to fall into a misunderstanding, that is, they pay too much attention to exam results and often spend their holidays on exam training instead of spending time on improving their soft background.

When I first came to China, a close friend told Willie that to understand China's way of thinking, China students should also have American thinking when applying for American universities, and should not be misled by China's thinking.

The thinking of real Americans is this: the school will not admit you directly according to your standardized grades and academic performance in high school, and your grades are just a stepping stone. The school won't consider admitting you until it sees your excellent grades. Famous American schools want to see what you can really bring to the school and what you can bring to society in the future. So you need to prove to the admissions officer through extracurricular activities that you are a person with leadership, sincerity, social responsibility and leadership.

How to judge whether students are worthy of admission (they will become contributors to the school after admission)? Admissions officers will measure the degree of matching between students and schools. How to measure? He will analyze students' academic potential, hobbies, talents and skills, and match these aspects with the mission, values and available resources of the school. If the match is high, students will be admitted.

Extracurricular activities are very important reference factors. Extracurricular activities can be in any field, that is, it doesn't matter what extracurricular activities you participate in, what matters is what you can give back to this club or organization. The gold content of extracurricular activities is evaluated through these three aspects: 1. Sustainability II. Depth 3. Leadership.

China students and parents' understanding of extracurricular activities is voluntary service, which is also a misunderstanding. When should you volunteer? Only when you really want to make a contribution to the disadvantaged groups can it really make sense, because you want to do it. If you don't like this kind of activity, don't do it.

You can combine your interests and specialties to do activities. You like writing, you can publish articles in the school newspaper or other publications, you like debating, you can become an influential debater, you like science and engineering, and you can also do your own special activities in this field. Wait a minute.

When it comes to sustainability, it doesn't mean that an activity will take two to three years, but a series of activities around a theme. For example, you should carry out extracurricular activities around environmental science. You are a student in Qingdao, you love your hometown, you care about the environment in your hometown, and you see the phenomenon of seawater oxidation caused by Enteromorpha and green algae. You should study how to improve and control the invasion of Enteromorpha prolifera, write a blog to express your views, and organize people and government personnel to discuss this issue. At the same time, we can also make some charitable donations and charity sales to raise funds and make contributions to the future management of Enteromorpha and the improvement of the marine environment. This will show your continuity.

Talk about depth again. Doing activities can't just be superficial, but take the above marine environmental management as an example. You can't say that fishing for green algae a few times at the seaside is a deep activity. You can't just say that you are interested in environmental science, but you have no activities. Blogging appeals to the public, raising funds and other actions are the real changes that affect the community, and it can be called deep participation. Admissions officers will judge whether you can also bring changes to the university community in the future through your current use of resources.

Leadership. Leadership is not a title (president of the student union, etc.) ), not a title, not giving orders, but the ability to organize, cooperate and lead. Of course, you have these abilities, and it is best to have a specific title.

document

Documents are the most important application factors. Through the document, the admissions officer can know what kind of person you are, what characteristics you have and whether you will contribute to the community. Still an old question. Many students prefer to spend the whole summer vacation studying TOEFL and ACT instead of spending time doing extracurricular activities and thinking about very important documents. If your document is wonderful, it doesn't matter if the standardization is lower.

Here are some principles for writing documents.

1. Don't list activities and awards. Almost every student who applies for a top prestigious school has awards and activities. The document shows your thoughts and values. You can choose an activity to describe why you did it, what feelings it brought you, and what thoughts you have. ...

If you want to apply for a prestigious school, especially the top one, remember this: clerical writing is an arduous and challenging process. If it is easy, then everyone can apply for a prestigious school. Because it's difficult, you should spend time and thought about it and ask yourself why you want to apply for this university. Every prestigious school is different and provides different resources. You should think about how to combine the resources of the school with your own background, how to make the best use of the resources of the school and see if this university is really suitable for you. And if you don't do your homework before you start writing, no matter how good you are, the university won't admit you.

3. Don't just look at the rankings when choosing schools. Every university is special and has its own characteristics. For example, Harvard's liberal arts is better, and MIT is a school with strong science and engineering. Before applying, you should think clearly about your interests and specialties and what kind of person you want to be in the future. If you want to be a top engineer, you will choose MIT instead of Harvard. You should take the time to study the matching degree between yourself and the school.

If you write a wonderful document, you can get 4 points in the admissions officer's scoring system. This is very prominent. Few students can get a perfect score of 5.

Recommendation letters

Each university needs three letters of recommendation, one from the counselor. If there is no counselor in China, you can find a class teacher. Besides counselors, we need to find two academic teachers. For example, if you like science and engineering, you'd better find a reference for a science and engineering teacher.

In addition to these three necessary letters of recommendation, you can also submit additional letters of recommendation. When you attend a summer course in an American university, the recommender can be a university professor attending the class. You have done some research (experiments), and the research tutor in the project can write you a letter of recommendation. It should be noted here that you should not write letters of recommendation to people who you think are important and famous but don't really know you. The admissions officer will think that you are looking for someone to flatter you, which is actually a disadvantage in the application.

The Admissions Committee wants to know about your school and your class from the letter of recommendation. The recommendation letter provides your background information, so that the admissions officer can evaluate you better. This kind of recommendation letter often talks about your ranking in the class, the calculation method of school GPA, the depth and breadth of your course, your influence in the school, and your participation in extracurricular activities.

You must have a good communication with the teacher before asking him to write a letter of recommendation. What kind of ability and quality do you want ta to show in your recommendation letter, so that you can work together to write a good recommendation letter, although you have no right to read the content of the recommendation letter.

The perfect score of each of these six application factors is 10 (both teachers give 5 points), which adds up to 60 points. Few students can reach 60 points. For a China student, if ta scores 46-47, when applying for EA and ED, ta is likely to be admitted to a prestigious school. If ta can reach 47, 48, 49 or even higher, it can also be admitted to many top American universities when applying for RD.

Finally, the question and answer session.

Q: If you are interested in economics, do you have to ask an economics teacher to write a letter of recommendation?

A: Not necessarily. American universities will not limit your academic interests.

Q: The first SAT test, reading 730, the second SAT test, reading 680. Will it affect the application?

A: If it is a university that accepts spelling, it will not affect it. Because universities only look at the highest scores. For some universities that look at all the scores, don't care too much, because the school will also focus on the high score of 730.

Q: Are these six application factors in order of importance?

A: No, students just need to maximize their own advantages. The above activities and documents are important because most students have similar academic performance and it is difficult to distinguish them. If you are strong in extracurricular activities and documents and weak in other aspects, you will not be admitted.

Q: Do American high school students have an advantage over domestic high school students?

A: Yes or no, it depends on the students' performance. If your grades in American high schools are not as good as those in China, you will suffer in applying to American universities. If MGM makes you better and gives you American thinking and strong reading and writing skills, in this case, you have an advantage, and you can adapt faster than domestic high school students after entering the university.

Q: Is summer school useful for application?

A: My answer is no. You can take summer courses, which means that your family has money, but most American students actually have no money to take summer courses, which will lead to unfair competition.

Q: If you have a second major, such as Japanese or Spanish, do you have to take the corresponding subject test of SAT?

A: Not necessarily. Only some American universities require SAT2. If you are not an engineering major, you only need to take any two SAT2 exams to meet the requirements (depending on the requirements of the school). If you apply to an engineering school of a top university, the school will make requirements for your subjects, for example, you must take a math 2 exam, as well as physics or chemistry.

Q: Does winning the grand prize in the National Olympic Mathematics Competition help your application?

A: Very helpful. China's Olympic Mathematics Prize contains a lot of gold. If you are high flyers majoring in mathematics and computer science, American universities will like it very much, because they want you to go in and make some contributions.