“2016 Open Universities!”

In order to help senior high school students better prepare for the second part of their personal application to the universities, the Admissions Division of Soochow University held a “2016 Open Universities” seminar (a play on words with “Open Sesame!” in the Arabic tale of Ali Baba) for the first time on January 31^st at Pu-Ren Center in Waishuanghsi campus. It was attended by an estimated 300 students from 20 senior high schools in northern Taiwan who had applied for admission to college.

The seminar was divided into three parts: “Get Prepared for Personal File Reviews,” “Nail it at the Interviews,” and “Words of Wisdom from Predecessors.” Topics included all the details from how to prepare personal files to how to decide the order of one’s preferred schools.

In the section of “Get Prepared for Personal File Reviews,” professors Chih-Hao Chen of the Department of History, Yu-Hui Su of the Department of Accounting, and Jin-Xiong Xu of the School of Big Data Management gave the high school students an insider’s view of what a college professor expects to see in an applicant’s file. They reminded the students of the importance of making connections between themselves and the disciplines they intend to study. Students also need to prepare different versions of personal files in accordance with the different disciplines or departments they apply to. Most of all, they must give the interviewers an irresistible reason to grant them the admissions so that they may outperform other competitors in the file review process.

As for the interview skills, professors Ke-Bao Su of the Department of Japanese Language and Culture, Jung-Hui Wang of the Department of Chemistry, and Hung-Yi Hsiao of the Department of Law shared some must-know tips. They suggested that the interview documents must be written or prepared by the interviewees themselves to avoid the embarrassment of being asked about something they cannot answer. Besides, student interviewees should not speak ill of other universities when those schools are mentioned by the interviewers. It is also essential for interviewees to arrive early and stay calm. They may as well prepare several different versions of self-introduction, which usually lasts one to five minutes and sometimes needs to be done in a second foreign language.

Passing on their words of wisdom to the perspective students, Soochow’s senior students and teachers had made these high school students much better informed, and had truly looked forward to seeing them again on SCU campus in the near future.