What should American universities pay attention to when choosing a school?
1, admission conditions
Admission conditions mainly include three aspects. First, the requirements of American study abroad schools for applicants, including GPA and TOEFL scores. Although admissions officers will examine students in many ways, standardized scores should be carefully considered as admission tickets to American universities. Unless you are confident that you can improve your grades quickly or win an international prize to make up for the lack of scores, Sheng Boyou still suggests that students should not easily apply for schools that are too different from themselves in light of their own conditions. This will not only bring no motivation, but also bring too much pressure to yourself.
Secondly, students who want to study in the United States should refer to the school's annual admission rate. Applicants should have certain application difficulty and can give students the motivation to fight for it. For schools with too low admission rate, we should also choose carefully and be prepared to be rejected.
In addition, a good employment rate is also a factor to attract parents and classmates. Tiandao's overseas study teacher suggested that the tuition fee is also a considerable fee for four years. Therefore, most students should also consider the future employment situation in the process of choosing an American school to study abroad.
2. Comprehensive ranking
When choosing a school, many students often have the plot of a famous school, attach importance to the comprehensive ranking of universities, and think that the school has a high comprehensive ranking and high visibility, and will have face when showing themselves to others. Although comprehensive ranking is a factor that cannot be ignored, professional ranking is often more valuable than comprehensive ranking for students with clear professional goals. The professional knowledge obtained by the graduates majoring in water science from famous universities is not enough to make them have an absolute advantage in employment. It can be seen that when choosing a school, we must compare it in many aspects and avoid ranking as the only measure.
3. Occupational characteristics
Before studying abroad, don't blindly set up majors according to your hobbies, but understand the characteristics of different majors themselves.
For example, law schools and medical schools in the United States do not recruit undergraduates. Students who want to study law in the United States need to have professional backgrounds such as history, politics, philosophy and engineering. And meet the requirements of applying for IBT and LSAT in order to have the opportunity to study in depth; The same is true for medical majors. At the undergraduate level, you need to choose relevant science and engineering majors, complete pre-medical courses and pass the MACT exam. In addition, it takes a long training period to become a doctor in the United States, and attention should be paid to the time cost when choosing.
When applying for graduate students, some master's courses have requirements for background. For students who decide to go abroad for further study, it is best to see the requirements in advance so as to be fully prepared. There is also a certain relationship between major and the breadth of future employment. If the main purpose of studying abroad is to find a good job in the future, then students should be prepared before choosing.
4. Internship opportunities
Internship is closely related to future employment. From the perspective of company HR, everyone hopes that the employees they apply for should not only have excellent professional knowledge, but also have work experience in related fields. If a school can provide abundant internship resources, it will undoubtedly increase students' advantages in finding jobs after graduation.
5. Comprehensive cost
Studying abroad is a big expense for every family. How to provide children with the best learning resources at the most appropriate cost is a concern of most parents.
Tuition fees are not directly related to teaching level and employment prospects. Tuition fees in general public universities are often lower than those in private universities, but the teaching quality is not necessarily poor. For example, the comprehensive rankings of Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Purdue University at West Lafayette are seriously underestimated. Both the employment rate and the average salary of graduates are comparable to those of other famous private universities, especially students from engineering colleges are hot items in the job market.
6. Immigration opportunities
For the small partners who plan to stay in the United States after graduation, the choice of major is particularly important. Due to the current economic development in the United States, there is a huge job gap related to STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). To this end, the government has provided many preferential policies to help students in related majors find jobs.
Generally, international students studying in the United States will have 12 months of OPT (optional training) after graduation.
During the internship in the United States, the OPT of STEM students lasted for 36 months, which greatly improved the chances of students getting employment and obtaining a green card in the United States. For students who choose a school, it is also necessary to consider carefully how to determine the specific major in the four general directions and clarify the school.
7. Geographical location
Geographical location is also a consideration when students choose schools. American educational resources are mainly concentrated in Massachusetts in the east, California in the west and Michigan in the middle. There are many famous schools such as Harvard, MIT, Boston University and Boston College in Boston alone. California's unique Mediterranean climate has brought it bright sunshine, and the rapid development of Silicon Valley has made California the center of American electronics industry. Plus, this is the closest place in the United States to Chinese mainland, so San Francisco and Los Angeles have become the two cities with the largest concentration of Chinese in the United States.
The surrounding environment of the school, including convenient transportation, weather and climate, and urban conditions, will have a great impact on life in the next few years. Please pay attention to do your homework in advance when applying!
8, security issues
When going out, parents are often most worried about their children's personal safety, especially in foreign countries. Whether the surrounding environment is safe or not has become an indispensable consideration for parents and students when choosing schools. Students can know the crime data in and around the campus in advance, so as to have a certain judgment on the school. You can learn more about studying in the United States on the related channels of Tiandao Study Abroad.