It's said that you can get lucky if you pay attention to "studying abroad with jam"!
Today, we invited jam fungus to graduate from the school of physics, Nanjing University. She is a senior sister of Lisa, an engineer of a Dutch company. Today, she will share with you his reasons for choosing Western Europe and answer the application questions. She hopes to give some help to the students studying in Belgium. If she is interested in studying in Belgium Please keep reading!
"We know your ordinary and extraordinary"
——Jam study abroad
Hello, my name is Lisa. I graduated from the school of physics, Nanjing University. I got my master's degree in material engineering from the University of Leuven, Belgium last summer. Now I am an engineer of a Dutch company. I'm very glad to have this opportunity to share with you two or three things about my study abroad in the past two years.
Decide to go abroad
When I was studying in Nanjing, I went to the University of British Columbia (UBC) of Canada to participate in the summer program. After seeing the different natural scenery and cultural characteristics of Vancouver, I decided to apply for undergraduate study abroad.
Maybe it's just "restless". Even though the undergraduate school is excellent and the laboratory is also the best in China, I wanted to go to the distance and see more at that time, but I also gave up the qualification of this research guarantee and embarked on a long way of application and study.
At that time, I didn't make up my mind to spend at least five years studying at a university or doing scientific research, nor to cause too much financial burden to my family, so I didn't follow the trend of going abroad in the hospital at that time: applying for PhD or master of American all award. Europe has a profound history and culture, a large number of excellent schools, and most of them do not need GRE scores. Considering the relatively high living expenses and strict employment policies in northern Europe and Switzerland, I focused on Western Europe in my application. In addition, if I want to shift from theory to more application oriented direction, instead of applying for physical master, I will shift to engineering, such as electronic engineering.
I think this is also the first thing that you need to think about when you apply for planning. Why do you want to go abroad (for further study or to feel the culture, or to increase the richness of your resume, to find a job or to immigrate abroad), how much is your budget (how much can you bear at home, whether you are willing to do student job or teaching assistant / research Asset), master or PhD, UK, Europe or the United States, Canada and Australia. If you want to change your undergraduate major, you need to change your major. If you want to change your major, how can you highlight the key points in your personal materials to increase the probability of success.
Choose a school & meet Leuven for the first time
After determining the large geographical scope and professional direction, the next step is to further select countries and specific majors. First of all, in France, Paris high tech is a University Alliance composed of more than ten famous French graduate schools. It cooperates with several domestic universities and organizes selection (including resume, motivation letter and other personal data selection, written examination and interview) every year. After the selection, it will organize French learning in the second semester of the senior year (it doesn't matter if the French foundation is zero at the time of application ）Because French is used in high-tech courses, there are certain requirements for French. Most schools even organize students to arrive in France in advance for immersion French promotion in the summer vacation before entering school.
High tech is a very good engineering project. Maybe you can't find them in the top of the world university rankings, but it's determined by the special education and school model of France. In fact, these engineering schools, because of their small scale and elite education, have sufficient teachers and students, have an engineering degree (equivalent to a master's degree) and can speak French, which will make you Job markets in France are very popular. At that time, I made full preparation, even learned French foundation in advance in order to impress the interviewer during the interview (the fact proved to be very successful, the interviewer was very happy, hehe arrogant French), three schools threw olive branch, and I once thought that my application season would be terminated in advance, until an accidental appearance.
By chance, when I was talking about my application for going abroad with my undergraduate tutor, he mentioned that I could try to find his tutor when I was working as postdoc at the University of Leuven. I was very moved by the high ranking and popularity of the University of Leuven, but at that time I thought that the power of the master's admission tutor was not very large. Every school or department has a special admissions department, and most of the doctors in Europe need master's degree.
Despite all my worries, I sent a ceramic email to this tutor. Unexpectedly, he decided to provide me with a three-month award-winning visit with great enthusiasm Scholar (yes, I was only a senior student at that time), so in January 2017, I came to Belgium with my suitcase. Although I would not be able to celebrate the new year at home for the first time, although it was foggy and rainy on the first day (I didn't realize that this was the winter in Belgium at that time), the excitement and excitement still occupied the majority. Three months of lab experience passed very fast, and I got along well with my tutor. He strongly encouraged me to apply for the graduate student of University of Leuven. After I indicated that I didn't want to continue to study physics, he gave the suggestion of applying for electronic engineering or material engineering. Because it is related to the direction I want to do, it also has a certain degree of agreement with my undergraduate course, and he also has cooperation with several professors.
I also like the quiet and energetic atmosphere in Leuven, so I started to apply for the Leuven master on the spot. In the letter of motivation, I focused on what I saw and felt when I came to Leuven, and successfully got the independent admission of two departments. There is also a little episode in this. The e-mail sent me the admission notice early, but the materials have not been reported yet. The e-mail sent to the Admissions Tutor did not return. However, I was in a hurry because I had to decide which offer to go to, so I rushed to the Admissions Tutor's office directly. After a chat, I was surprised that I was exempted from the 6000 Euro one-year tuition fee.
Delft in the Netherlands also has a strong ranking of science and technology majors, more detailed professional courses and easy employment after graduation. However, the tuition (about 10000 euros a year) and living expenses are higher. Three months in Belgium also let me miss the chance to learn French with my high-tech students in China. Finally, free tuition plus relatively low living expenses (650 euro a month), English teaching environment, strong and long-standing major, enthusiastic professional professor (the original Professor even my master's thesis has been conceived), made me choose Leuven materials.
Apply for tips
If there are students who want to know and apply to the University of Leuven, I must recommend this link:
https://onderwijsaanbod.kuleuven.be/opleidingen/e/
Here is a clear list of each department's projects, including project description (application time, tuition, outline), department introduction (history, Graduate destination), detailed master's program list and admission requirements. All departments are different, so it is necessary to know the major of interest in detail and then apply according to local conditions, such as the focus selection of resume and motivation letter. In this link, you can see, for example, the master of materials program is subdivided into four directions (metal, composite materials, nanomaterials, biomaterials), which courses are available in each direction. However, the curriculum of science and Engineering in Leuven is mainly based on breadth, and there is not much differentiation between the various directions, because they have to learn, so that students can have a lot of time to do papers Multiple idea. If you are interested, you can click Apply now to apply. It's like a treasure link!
The admission of University of Leuven is not as strict as you think. Unlike some Dutch and British schools, which have mandatory 211 or 985 requirements for undergraduate schools, there is no rigid requirement for GPA. If it is hard, it is mainly about language scores, but it depends on departments. Some departments only need to reach 79, but some need to reach 94 (no less than 22 for each item), so the above link is very strong practical. As a whole, Leuven is a university with wide entrance and strict exit, so we should work harder when we are admitted, so as to successfully obtain this valuable graduation certificate.
Another difficulty: APS
After I decided to go to Leuven, I started to apply for APS when I returned home in April. Fortunately, Leuven only wanted APS after getting admission. Unlike German universities and Ghent universities, they need to pass APS before they can apply for schools. However, APS audit cycle is very long, so remind students to be prepared in advance, as early as possible.
If it's too late to find out, it's suggested that you play the spirit of chasing and fighting like me and rush to the APS audit department in Shanghai or Beijing to tell them that it's too late to start school, because their phone calls are never answered, and the probability of email reply is not high. It's better to have a solution in front of their counter with high efficiency. In the end, they will probably have a rate Add a recent interview for you.
APS is mainly to assess whether you have learned the subject in your undergraduate major and whether you can successfully get the graduation certificate when you go abroad for postgraduate study, so although you need to prepare carefully, you don't need to be too nervous. Take out your report card or course list, sort out the knowledge points in one course, without tangled details, but the course outline should know what you have learned and how these knowledge points can be applied, the connection between the course and the course, the senior students must prepare the content of graduation design, and some specialized courses should be prepared, because this is the interviewer's inspection of whether you have the The main standards of professional quality.
In the written examination, write the answers to the questions and think about how the interviewer might develop the question in the rest of the time (I guessed it at that time); in the interview, on the one hand, language fluency is very important, which should be prepared in preparation, that is, summarize each course in three or four sentences, on the other hand, professional knowledge is also very important, and draw more pictures and examples (this is the same as that of luwenda) It's very similar to the exam with interview). It's necessary to show your solid understanding of the basic knowledge points, and show how you think about this problem even if you're not sure. It's what foreign professors want to see most.
And you really don't need to be too nervous. The interviewer may not know your major completely. When I interviewed, the interviewer asked a very "stupid" question. He asked me why Bo was named like that. I said it was because of the name of a person, and then he was embarrassed to laugh. Hey. But the interviewers have been engaged in various professions for decades. They are really knowledgeable and can draw inferences from one another. Maybe they have a very happy communication during the interview. At the end of the interview, I was surprised to say that it was very short. Two interviewers laughed and said that it was very short.
Flying again
Then I packed my bags and flew to Belgium for the second time, to Leuven, but this time I was enrolled as a master. These two years can be said to add a lot of color to my life. Even though there are many twists and turns, I have no regrets now.
In learning, there are all the confusion from zero caused by the experience of changing to a major, and the struggle of going to school (of course, this is also the feature of the science and engineering major in Leuven, that is, it is too common to go to school and delay graduation, because if its examination is not a passing examination, it is more like a selective examination, once it passes, it is excellent, so don't be afraid of going to school and fight again in summer vacation!) I have experienced the pain of reading while crying in the library