Counselling at Your Hands (Part 2)

Friday 27 Mar 2020

ICC students already possess the basic concepts of university planning, some basic knowledge from counselling, and know what kind of help they can obtain from university counselling. Services include:

In order to help students in sensibly and scientifically choosing their majors according to their strengths and social needs, we have designed a complete and fully fledged career guidance programme  with “career test- subject navigation– career day- internship”. In addition to work that can be carried out in school, we also invite elite performers from different industries to introduce their jobs, so that students can have a clear understanding from real-world situations of the paths they may seek. For some students, internship suggestions will be given, which can help them in finalising the right choice.

 

Last semester, we invited some famous universities from Europe and North America to speak to our students. They including Savannah School of Art and Design, University of Bristol, University of Nottingham, Lausanne School of Hotel Management in Switzerland. Although we face the coronavirus epidemic this semester, we successfully made arrangements with the admission officer of Bath University to make their introduction through the School’s online teaching platform TEAMS.

 

Peer support is highly influential. For this, we have been using  resources of every teacher since last semester. We also invited senior students from Emory University, University of California, Berkley, and EHL to share their own experience with our students. This includes their high school experiences, university applications, learning experiences, internship experiences and so on. As a learning community, we even had our Principal’s daughter from England to share her experience at Durham University. This semester, we  invited Chen Yitao, a senior of Columbia University, to share his experience with the ninth-grade students online. His successful university and job-hunting experience has brought huge incentives to the students.

 

About academics, activities, reading and writing 

We emphasise that a solid academic performance is always the top priority for students. It is  not always enough to excel in high school exams, and students need to do more to showcase their academic abilities. A typical example is language tests such as TOEFL or IELTS. If a student pays more attention to basic reading and the use of language, they will do better in exams. It is also very important to use sensible and efficient methods for study. Please note that academic strength is not the same as taking many external tests or high SAT scores.

For extracurricular activities, students should not misunderstand “the more, the better”, “the higher the position or title, the better”, ” better if its abroad” or ” better if money is spent on it”. Students are encouraged to find their real interests/ enthusiasm, invest time, and keep thinking. These activities are not about abundance, but about refinement. Only by doing an activity continuously can we bring real growth and experience. In addition, students should pay attention to reading and writing, and expression  as these can significantly improve thinking abilities and problem solving. These will play a crucial role in interviews too. Presently, traditional interview modes are not being adopted at some famous American schools. Recruiters and students can  meet in places like coffee shops for two hours. During those meetings, students’ thoughts, expressions and opinions can be  seen directly by the admission officers.

 University application 

In the course of my work, I  have summarised many questions that Chinese parents often ask, and they are very pragmatic. For example, one of the most popular questions is ”What is the key for the success of an application?” I have summarised this in four points;

1. Full preparation 2. Clear strategy 3. Attention to detail 4. High quality essays.

If the students are clear about their goals from the beginning and carry out their plans well, the application will be automatically successful. As counsellors, we will help students to do their own core competitive analysis during the application season. They will , upgrade, and integrate all activities, experiences, stories, backgrounds, thoughts, and finally form a unique picture of a unique applicant.

At present, our school has shown its strengths in the following fields; huge investment in art and music has provided great help for art students to prepare their portfolios;  rich summer school cooperation projects with famous schools in the United States; more personalised education exploration  in the 4 years of learning; colourful fun-filled house activities bring a lot of opportunities for students to participate in extracurricular activities.

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