stats of a student who got in U of T and UIUC

水中大虾UID: 163439

I am very happy to see there are so many ambitious students here. Here is a real case. Hopefully it can help u a little bit.
( j& B: a! s% i$ z# C0 lA high school student who got into U of T EE with $5000 scholarship, stats:
0 y% e( A, T5 [8 _! x* a+ _) A# Y7 h, lTOEFL: 273 CBT(writing 5)
* p- C9 C9 w& h! f8 F- A/ D* w4 G( aGPA: 3.97 (4.08 in junior year)
$ o; H. t  Q# a4 g& L, ISAT: 780 math, 480 verbal : (
SATII: 800 math and physics, 540 writing : (
APs(Advanced Placement Tests): Calculus BC, Physics B, Chem all 5s. now taking CS AB, Stats, and Phys C.
some extracurricular activities such as Science Olympiad Team, Math Team, blah blah... (not too important)
Awards: AP scholar, Science Olympiad Tournament 3rd place in Physics lab, AIME: 5 and some other small awards and honors.
: @" Z7 p- s% C) ?9 g2 z9 X' NReally good recommendations from US high school teachers.
0 ]/ w; t. _  J; a
3 _" e+ h" x2 Z6 y" j, M/ ZAlso got into U of Illinois-Urbana Champaign/physics and SUNY Buffalo/physics with $5500 scholarship. but was rejected by Cornell, UPenn, USC, Rice...
# {6 ~$ I* i5 C2 P% K
1 i- b1 Q" m8 [2 mMy opinion: junior year is the most important year if u apply US unis. Senior year is the most important for Canadian unis. Do ur best in these years. GPA from a Chinese high school is not that important because it's a different system and the transcripts can be made up. Writing good essays seems to be more important. In my opinion, for a student from the mainland to get in a top 20 unis in US and get full scholarship, SAT must but above 1400(verbal 600 & math 800), some international or national awards can help a lot, good teachers' recommendations can help a little bit (if the teacher knows how to write one, that is). Plus try to show ur unique personality in ur applications(important!!!).

6 L. A4 j5 W6 X8 Z; fReality: I believe most students from the mainland are not able to get a 600 on the verbal(500 is a good score in my opinion). Thus, unless u really have some BIG international awards, u don't have a big chance to get in any of the top 20 unis. U can try though, it's just a long shot.
  o: T( s3 h/ l9 i' @$ T
Wish you good luck!

子轩寒冰UID: 153540

Are you from Taiwan? It's very weird that you mentioned "mainland" a lot.
I cannot say I agree with you about the chinese high school transcripts. How can you say they can be "made up". Top high schools will never do that.
3 s% t  W# S6 k* i- b' n
: C- _+ z7 U+ L; PYou are lucky cuz you attend high school in the US, but there is no point to look down upon chinese high schools.What you say?

水中大虾UID: 163439

This is funny that some people misundetstood me!! I just want to give you guys a reference so you can apply to colleges that match your stats(at least you can save some $$). I came to the US more than two years ago and I am not from Taiwan. There are two BIG characters under my name--"Wuhan". Why didn't you just take a look carefully^_^? The reason I said "mainland" is because students from Hongkong and Taiwai have a different situation(richer, better Eng) and they are treated differently by most of the admission committees. The reason I say transcripts can be made up is because MOST of the chinese high schools do not keep tracks on students' performance on daily basis. After all, the College Entrance Exam is the only thing they care about. I don't know how good a school must be to be a top school, but I have studied in a high school which is ranked top 100 in China and they did not have a standardized grading system. Maybe they did record my final grades in each semester, but the grades can not be compared with grades in the American system. For example, 120 out of 150 is a good score for Chinese, and 130 is a good score for English, but when u convert them into ABC grading system, it's a B! Anyway, I have attended both American and Chinese high schools. I know them well enough: ).

子轩寒冰UID: 153540

1. Most of the applicants are from China, so they are in a totally different situation.
/ Z& ^. \2 g0 P# v2. I don't agree that students from Hong Kong speak better English. On the contrary, due to the cantonese speaking reason, most of them have a very strong accent. I was born in China and lived there for 18 years before I came to Canada, but lots of canadians think I was born here. If you study hard, you will have good English skills. You can see in this forum, lots of chinese students get amazingly high marks in TOEFL and GRE, even in SAT verbal.Taiwanese and HK citizens are richer, but I don't see any reasons why that is related to admission issues. Also there is NO EVIDENCE shows that the admission committees treat them differently.
3. Who told you 120 out of 150 is a good score in China. You are correct. It is a B! Plus when we ask for transcripts, we will also ask for the average score provement and the school profile. McGill, UT, Queen's all accepted my transcripts and gave me acceptance letters. I DID NOT made up the transcripts. Please take your words BACK cuz it really HURTS!
4. Only for canadian universities, you don't need those tests. TOEFL will be just fine, plus your transcripts. After reading your stats, people will think it's really hard to get in schools like UT. But actually it's pretty easy. I got 607+6 in TOEFL and that's it. No SAT,no awards. But I got in McGill and UT anyway, plus McGill provides my $6000 a year so I decided to come here and cancel UT.(Please don't say McGill sucks or I will be extremely mad, I think everyone in gter knows that). I think you were saying that if we wanna get in a god univ, we should attend US high schools. I can tell you if my family were rich and we operated the US consulate, I would. But unfortunately I have to finish my high school in China before I could come to Canada, and I appreciate that cuz I think chinese high school really helped me a lot. I have visited Lamar high in Houston, so trust me, I know what yankee schools are like, and I believe they are not suitable for most of chinese students.
: t5 E: ]9 P7 A5 p7 ]) `5. Congratulations. I like UIUC a lot.

水中大虾UID: 163439

I don't know why people got so touchy when I mentioned Chinese high schools and US high schools... Did I say anything bad about Chinese high schools? They are just different! It's a fact^_^.
! O( d+ F8 `  D" D1. I am talking about applying unis in BOTH Canada and US!
( i5 v, q' ~% g" ?/ o0 L/ W2. of course being rich is easier to get accepted. Didn't the university ask you to prove you can afford the tuition when you were applying? Speaking about undergraduate students from Taiwan and Hongkong, I have visited Cornell. I saw a lot of Chinese students there, but most of them were from either Hongkong or Taiwan. I don't think they are much better than any of us. They just have money and the unis likes getting $$ from them. For a student who wants to get scholarship, it is much harder because there are limited amount of $$ to give out.
3. Fine, I misused the word "made up", I didn't mean to make a fake one. I meant that student have to calculate the grades by themselves and ask the school to sign it most of the time --not too official(though u may disagree).
4. Anyway, I don't want to trigger a dispute here. Maybe not all of what I said is correct, but I had the experience and I think it's worth to consider those factors.

子轩寒冰UID: 153540

I didn't say your experience is not worth considering. All I'm saying is, your situation is different. For most students in China, we have different way of applying.

Still I cannot say I agree with you on the financial issue. Maybe it's because I only appied canadian univs, but none of them asked me for any financial provement.

  D  y. [5 p* x2 M! |About the "chinese made up trancripts", I can tell you that my high school did everything for me. Of course if you calculate it by yourself and simply just ask the school to sign it, it's a bit"made up". But I haven't even seen my transcripts since they were sent directly to the univs, and the only thing I need to do it to pay for that.

水中大虾UID: 163439

Your school must have a lot of students going abroad to study. I might be the first few students in my high school to go abroad. So I had to translate everything. I think most of the high schools in China do not have the service that your high school provides, so we can't argue about that. Anyway, thanks for the corrections. it's just that different people have different situations, even among applicants in China.

TonyinbcUID: 82342

u coming over to uiuc?

水中大虾UID: 163439

在美国版,大家都建议我上UIUC.我也对那里的physics department仰慕已久.2003年的Nobel Physics Prize那里有一个吧.但无奈家里有很大的困难付那一年近两万的学费和一万的生活费,所以只好去多大了...郁闷哪!不过我估计到多大学两年后再Transfer到那里也应该不难,到时再在UIUC相聚!

JohnshopkinsUID: 163821

楼 上 :
你 不 必 讲 那 个 人 怎 么 厉 害 ,其 实 牛 人有 好 多 ,但 是 it's not worth to mention it all the time, the only thing that u have to concern is in ur circumstance  what u should do. Because the most important thing is u are not that person~, u don't have to convert to that way. Be true to yourself, it's the point we should make.
+ ?2 b; j# P! c% f7 {) r, I9 e你 转 呀 , 不 错 我 朋 友 已 经 转 去 那 了

水中大虾UID: 163439

呵呵,楼上难道真的没看出来那个人就是我?汗哪!!我只介绍我自己的情况,也好让你们报学校的时候有个底,别像我Ivy报了一大堆,得到的是据信一大堆.

JohnshopkinsUID: 163821

你 怎 么 说 多 数 从 中 国 大 陆 的 VERBAL考 不 到 600以 上 .......简 直 是 昏
好 多 人 都 考 过 了 , 而 且 光 我 知 道 就 有 人 得 了 800在 VERBAL, 其 他 的 简 直 就 是 太 多 了 不 过 我 接 触 的 这 些 在 这 里 上 学 的 中 国 人 反 而 500左 右 ......
你 很 厉 害 嘛 . SAT 对 於 中 国 人 在这 里 上 学 的 考 到 1300+ 就 很 好 了 .