General Principles

1. Stick to DIY.

2.

Academic ability. The reason why professors want to admit you is that what they value most about you is not because you have a high TOEFL score or because of your amazing PS, but because of your academic ability. Academic ability! Do you think the professor will really be interested in your history of fighting leukemia? Do you think the professor will be interested in your singing, dancing, humor and cheerfulness? Versatile talents and wide interests are helpful for college admissions, but graduate students The hospital is also a place where professional capabilities are highlighted. Professors are looking for students who can help them with their work, who can participate in their research and understand their academic achievements, who are on the same path as them, or who at least seem to have some academic potential and who can be cultivated into fellow students. Therefore, the entire application must highlight the theme of these four words. During college, participate in more professional projects, win some professional awards, publish some papers, write some professional articles, and participate in some relevant authoritative organizations and activities. These things are The professor is interested. If you feel that your attainments are not enough, you can read some professional books and academic papers during the application process. As long as you take action, it will never be too late.

3. Applying is actually not difficult, but it is very trivial and you will spend much more time than you budget.

4. Since we are undergraduates, we don’t need to compare with professionals who have been working for several years, or domestic doctoral students with strong research and academic backgrounds. We just need to do better than most undergraduates. .

5.

Register a dedicated and authoritative email (it must also be politically stable, don’t talk about withdrawing from the Chinese market, otherwise it will be useless to cry), and don’t use it for Other registration, otherwise you will receive a lot of spam messages, often empty joy.

6.

If you have any questions about a certain aspect of the school, send an email to the school directly or call the school directly. This is the most authoritative answer. Don't ask others or the forum, it will be useless. If a secretary is particularly enthusiastic and answers in detail, write down his/her contact information. If you have any questions about the school in the future, you can ask him/her, and you will usually get a satisfactory answer. But not every school is so enthusiastic. Sometimes it is common to be ignored or treated coldly or to have a delay of a month in replying.

7.

Call directly is the most effective way to communicate and inquire. Make a draft before calling. Don't appear nervous. The other party will not pity your nervousness. But the secretaries are very nice, and the conversations are generally casual and pleasant.

8.

Don’t rely too much on forums. You can get some information and knowledge from forums, but don't position yourself based on the background and school selection given by others. Because forums often only write down one's GPA and GT, completely ignoring the soft conditions (PS, CV, RL, WS, WHY

ESSAY, etc.), and these are far more decisive for the application results than GPA and GT.

9.

Applicants must communicate with at least one native American during the application. They will help revise the documents and give some suggestions on schools, geographical location and customs. If you don’t know foreigners or are embarrassed to ask for help, go to a foreign teaching agency to hire a one-to-one private tutor. You must have a high degree of education and graduate from a prestigious school. The fees may be a little more expensive, but it will pay off. The documents they polished are also better. Instead of relying on an intermediary, it is more reliable to hire them. And no matter how expensive they are, they are still cheaper than an agency (the one I found cost 1,000 yuan for three hours. He graduated from UCDavis. He came three times and took ten hours. He finished revising one of my PS, three WS, and seven WE. I have a lot of suggestions for school selection. Including the introduction fees from foreign teaching institutions, the total cost is more than 3,000. The essay is still in American language and American logic.

10. Parents’ support is very important, so they must be given. Support you. Otherwise, for most undergraduates who have no financial resources, you can’t do anything without their funding.

11. The overall situation is very important if the US economy is not good and the employment rate is low. Some majors that are convenient for working in the United States may be difficult to apply for, and some gold-plated majors may be very lenient, and the admission rate is surprisingly high.

12.

GT. It's important. If you don't meet the school's requirements, you generally have no hope of applying. But it's not so important that you have to take higher exams over and over again after you meet the school's requirements. If you don't have a special hobby, there's really no need. . There are many more important things than GT (described below), there is no need to spend time on this.

13. Pay attention to the individual score requirements of each school.

14. . Don't believe the GT requirements of each school summarized on the Internet. They are based on the Year of the Monkey and the Horse, and they are often on the low side. You have to check the official website of each school's department in person. The requirements of each department are different.

15. Take photos when taking the GT test, and remember to smile~ You will need to copy the transcript and send it to the school to leave a good impression.

16. Don’t take the TOEFL test more than three times in your life. There are so many opportunities for you to go around in circles, and you must be responsible for yourself. And I believe that even if the TOEFL is bad, there will eventually be a way to solve it (the specific method is described below).

17. If you feel dissatisfied with your GPA, retake it as soon as possible.

18.

Participate in more volunteer activities during your freshman year, and participate in more academic and professional-related competitions, activities and projects during your sophomore and junior years. Try to write two articles. paper. Remember to take photos of every important event, and keep internship certificates, award certificates, manuscript notices, etc. for your internship.

19.

Ask parents to open a bank account and prepare a deposit to put in it for a long time. It is best to open a bank VIP customer. It will cost no money to issue property certificates in the future. You can get as many certificates as you want. Apply for an additional card and use it in the United States in the future, becoming a global VIP.

20. Transcripts are issued by the school in an envelope; those issued by professional ranking colleges are in an envelope from the college. The stamp on the envelope must be consistent with the stamp on the document in the envelope, otherwise it will be invalid.

21.

Accumulate a few teachers with whom you have good relationships so that you can easily issue recommendation letters. If you want to ask Teacher Niu to sign a recommendation letter, you need to prepare at least one semester in advance - first choose their classes, then perform well, and then contact them from time to time to express your academic experience. At the end of the semester, you must take it seriously to get good grades. Finally (usually about half a year) let’s talk about letters of recommendation. Don’t say it too late. Many teachers are too popular and are afraid that writing too many letters of recommendation will devalue their value. Generally, there is a recommendation limit in a year. If you go late, they will not be happy to sign.

22. You should also do your internship well, as the tasks assigned to you are likely to become Writing Samples in the end. Your supervisor during the internship may end up being your recommender.

23. The counselor’s help is very important. During the application process, she/he is often asked to find internship certificates submitted long ago or to issue various ranking certificates, loan transcripts, etc.

24.

The easiest way to choose a school is to pull up a list of the top 100, register an email address, and use a pencil. Each school on the list that meets your approximate requirements must be checked on the official website one by one. Mainly depends on: 1. Whether the applied degree is offered, and the degree major direction is set

2. GT score requirements 3. Deadline for application, whether it is rolling (first come, first reviewed) 4. Whether it needs to be submitted through a professional organization (Such as the LSAC of the School of Law)

5. Is there anything special about it, such as a very small enrollment (15 students worldwide), or a non-U.S. campus for majors? 6. If you are concerned about finances, look at Financial < /p>

The aid piece. Each school came to them in this way, and then recorded them one by one on the ranking list, and immediately crossed out any inappropriate ones. Each school has different characteristics. Some prefer students with work experience, while others prefer fresh graduates. This can be seen in the introduction ("Most of our students come from..."). Of course, there are also those who are interested and those who just meet the conditions. From a hundred, there will always be a dozen or so that match your strength and interest, and their rankings are generally spread out in a gradient. In this way, a preliminary This is how the school selection list was formed.

25. Every school must be a school that you really want to go to. There's no point in applying to schools that don't want to go to purely guaranteed schools.

26.

If there is a school that you really want to go to but the GT does not meet the standards, you can send an email to ask if the GT requirements are flexible. If the secretary answers yes, you can continue to apply to that school. . If the secretary can't answer or doesn't reply at all (you can just call and ask if you still don't want to give up), just cancel it.

27. If there is a Dream School, Dream

Professor, be sure to find their profile. Generally, there will be several of their articles in the CV that can be downloaded and read, with a contact email attached. After careful study, send an email directly to discuss with the teacher. This kind of magnet set is of high quality and high standard.

28. After confirming the school selection, contact ETS as soon as possible to send GT scores. It usually takes about a month to arrive. Other materials can be made slowly.

29. Buy a better printer and place it next to the computer, buy a thick stack of 120g A4 white paper, and prepare two waste paper bags. See Article 74 for specific operations.

Personal Statement

30.

PS is not as magical as imagined. If you don’t have high grades and don’t have enough TOEFL, you want to get into a prestigious school with a PS? Frankly speaking, it’s impossible. But WS+CV+PS+RL can do it. But just one PS cannot achieve such a big contribution. PS is important, but there are things more important than PS.

31. Every school has its requirements for PS. After finalizing the list of schools to choose, study them carefully. It must be written in accordance with the school's requirements.

32. Before writing, be sure to read a large number of real PS examples from seniors in the same major (usually available online).

33.

Do not write anything that can be written in the CV (such as GPA, GT, awards received, activities and projects participated in, published papers, etc.) . PS is a personal statement that demonstrates these quantified objective elements. Such as your motivation for studying, how your personality fits this major, career planning, etc.

For students with average hardware conditions, it is not recommended to write a fancy PS version with extravagant and imaginative skills. It would be more reliable to write something sincere and real.

34. Many schools that do not require WS will regard PS as WS, so both content and structure must be perfect.

35. You can write the reason for choosing the school in PS, or write WE separately.

36.

If you can integrate your past experiences with the characteristics of the school, you can come to the conclusion: "I have lived for so many years and had so many ups and downs just to study in your school. It is your school that has been tailor-made to meet my life experience and future needs." Such special words are a good PS+Why

essay (...囧).

37. Don’t trust translation companies or translation agencies for the translation of documents and papers. They are all translated using translation software.

38.

First write/translate the PS and documents into English yourself, and then ask foreigners to revise them. Don't find any PS editing agency. Find a foreigner to sit next to you and revise sentence by sentence, because there are often situations where the foreigner can't understand what you mean by your sentence. You can explain it to him by your side, and then he suddenly realizes, Start revising.

39. The PS does not have a title. Just indicate the PS, applicant, school and major applied for in the header (the same applies to CV, WS, and WE).

40. The sentences of PS must be concise, so precise that deleting any sentence or word will affect the original expression. Regarding the choice of words, you can use thesaurus to consider them one by one.

41. All documents should be in Times New

Roman font size 12, double spaced. PS is generally limited to two pages. Do not secretly modify data such as indentation. Professors have many standard documents. You will know if you have made any changes.

Curriculum Vitae

42.

Personally I think the importance of several elements (liberal arts, especially law school): CV>WS>GT>GPA> PS (including WE)>RL. You need to use GPA to prove your general learning ability, use GT to prove your English proficiency and standardized test ability, use CV to include your professional achievements in the three years of university, use WS to show the specific level of professional research, and use PS to show the specific level of professional research. Use angle to show personalized factors, use RL to outline another image of the applicant from other sides, and use WE to express your sincerity and personal needs in applying to the school. These things add up to a whole. And even RL, which is relatively unimportant in terms of ranking, must put a lot of effort into it (see point 21). So in general, none of these indicators are unimportant and must be taken seriously with all our efforts. Only by doing our best to be as impeccable in all aspects can we achieve good results.

43.

CV is very, very important. It can understand the approximate level of the applicant in the shortest time. Therefore, CV is the first thing that professors look at after transcripts and GT. thing. But a good CV requires three years of long-term effort and accumulation (see point 18).

44. When looking for a professional CV, don’t refer to those taught by great people. Those are too great to compare with. You can refer to the CVs of American fresh graduates, with professional wording and formal format.

45.

With the foundation and CV sample of Article 18, it is OK to list these experiences. Pay attention to optimizing your wording as much as possible. Finally, it is best to attach photos of various activities, awards, and paper publications to greatly increase authenticity and intuitiveness (if you are applying to a law school, you should attach them even more, so that the professor will feel that you have a good habit of attaching evidence for everything you advocate) .

46.

The CV should be written in detail and well-documented. For example, for an internship, the workplace, address, phone number, supervisor and contact information, work content, and working hours per week should be written. , and reasons for leaving. When writing about the awards received, you should write down the organizing unit, the number of participants and their positions, the instructor and his contact information, the title of the competition content, and attach a photo of the award on the last page, etc.

47. What can be faked is unimportant.

48.

Pay attention to the consistency of application materials. For example, it is written in the CV that a paper was published, and then it can be said to refer to the WS, and the English version of the paper is attached to the WS; or it is written in the CV that I participated in a certain professional activity, and in the PS it is written that since participating in this activity, my major What kind of leaps/changes have occurred in your career interests? This will make your application look more holistic and authentic.

49. If the CV has a lot of pictures, pay attention to the capacity compression, otherwise the online application will not be uploaded.

50. The choice of paper and print shop to apply for is also important. It is recommended to use 120G paper and find the best printing shop. The photos and certificates in the color-printed resume should be printed clearly and look high-quality.

Recommendation Letter

51. Generally, schools require three letters of recommendation, two from academic professors and one from the internship unit.

Things to prove: 1. Academic ability

2. Learning ability in an English environment. If you have Professor Niu who offers bilingual professional courses, or an intern supervisor who handles foreign-related affairs, that is a God-given opportunity, so show up now~!

52. Don’t be vague in your recommendation letter, but be specific and specific. Real examples. Rather than fabricating an example, it is better to create one yourself so that others can have evidence to write about.

53. Ask the internship company to issue a recommendation letter. If there is no way, it is best not to ask the employer to issue it publicly. It will be very troublesome and generally not allowed to be opened. Just find a good colleague in the internship unit to help open it.

54. Foreigners generally do not want to write letters of recommendation casually.

55. Letters of recommendation are often rejected, especially those from people in the community. Expressing frustration is training the ability to withstand beatings. .

56.

In addition to the recommender’s signature, the envelope of the recommendation letter should also include which school it is addressed to, the applicant’s name and signature, the major applied for, and the online application number (transcript) This should also be written on the envelope). Otherwise, if the envelope falls, you won’t know whose it belongs to when you pick it up.

Writing Sample

57. WS is very, very important. And the reason why it is important is because it is the best embodiment of academic ability.

58.

Any professional-related articles can be used as WS. I submitted three WS papers at that time, a short review of a school mid-term assignment with full marks, an outline of agency opinions written during my internship at a law firm, and an original paper. I can’t say how good I am at writing, but I guarantee that these solid academic things are much more useful than the ten rhetorical PSs you wrote.

59.

Be sure to find an American to revise. Because many Chinese-style logical expressions simply don’t work in their eyes. Even many interesting and thoughtful articles written in Chinese are in the hands of Americans. Due to different cultural concepts and ideologies, they feel that there is no discussion at all. necessary (especially political and legal articles).

60. If you want to publish a paper, you must indicate that it is the original document rather than the published version, and that it has not been edited or modified by others.

61. The paper writing format refers to the fifth edition of APA.

62. WS should be as concise as PS, revise and read it repeatedly to understand the logical rigor.

63.

If the WS is very long, you can send emails to the secretaries one by one to ask if the font size and line spacing can be modified and printed on both sides. At that time, you will also hear the attitudes of different secretaries towards WS. Some would say yes, some would say they would not accept the paper, some would say it was better to pick one (of course, in the end I sent three papers together), and the best one said they would only read the documents they stipulated, and discard the others. . . Finally, as expected, I was put on this Waiting

List. .

　Why Essay

64. This is optional, but very useful. Why Essay is the reason for choosing a school. For example, why

yale is the reason for choosing Yale. PS After all, the number of words is limited, and there is only a short paragraph to write about the reasons for choosing a school. If you are afraid that it is not thorough, you can open another WE. This also ensures that PS is a purely personal statement and each school is uniform, while WE has distinct characteristics that vary from school to school.

65.

To write a good WE, first dig through the web pages of each school. Brochure usually has professional departments. This is definitely a good thing. You must study it carefully to find the characteristics that the school is proud of, and then cater to it. For example, a certain school says that its collection of books is the third in the United States and it often holds international academic seminars. In the WE, you can write, "I am very interested in Chinese legal culture from an American perspective, because the United States itself has mature legal accumulation and completely different laws." One of the reasons why I chose your school is because it has a large collection of books. I will definitely be able to find the views of various major scholars on Chinese legal culture, and at the international student conference, I can hear the thoughts of students from various countries. This will be very helpful for me to handle foreign clients and foreign-related cases when I return to China in the future." .

66. Schools usually also announce courses for majors. Be sure to study them and find out the courses you are interested in and mention them (such as the Chinese law course in the example above).

67.

Don’t write that you were chosen because of the low GT requirements. Even if you say “I chose you because you are one of the few schools that does not only value scores”, it will not work. If your GT is low, don’t mention it in the entire application except for it being reflected on your GT score sheet. There is no need to apologize or feel inferior, just try to show other aspects.

Application process

68.

Buy N good plastic portfolios and folders, one folder for each school, and apply to each school Checklist should be sent out in a portfolio. Paste your name, school, major applied for, and online application number on the portfolio, and send it together with the portfolio.

69. Don’t use a stapler to bind more than one page of materials. The secretary will have to take them apart again, which is very troublesome. Just use paper clips.

70. The secretariat will first sort the applicant’s materials into categories based on GT and GPA scores for *** professors to review.

71. To pay, you usually go to Bank of China to apply for an international money order. If your choice of school changes, the money order can be refunded, so please bring the application form filled out at that time. The staff there are generally very nice.

72.

Some application fees can be waived, depending on the school's regulations. Students with excellent grades can give it a try. When writing a waiver application, you should indicate your financial difficulties and indicate your GPA and GT scores so that the school believes that you are an outstanding talent and does not want to miss out and allows you to apply for free.

73. If your GT is not high, you can actively ask for an interview. During the interview, I emphasized that the signal was not good, which paved the way for the countless Pardons that followed.

74.

Prepare two paper bags next to the computer, one for single-sided waste paper and one for double-sided waste paper. NNN amount of paper will be wasted during the application. I often type it out to see if a word is wrong and then type it again. Once you find a mistake, immediately stuff it into a waste paper bag, otherwise there will be so many similar papers in the end that you won't be able to figure out which one is the main text.

75. Open a property certificate and send it with the materials, especially for gold-plated professional applications in the United States during the economic depression.

76. Write a Cover List.

77.

Don’t send the first one to the school you most want to go to, because you will find that there may be many small errors in your materials during the sending process. And correct them one by one (of course, an expert can make every detail correct without correction). Compared to the last one, the first one was just a white rat riddled with holes.

78. If you hand it to the courier company by hand when sending it, you will have a magical sense of destiny~ Kiss your materials and enjoy this wonderful feeling!

79.

Two or three working days after the express delivery, remember to check online, send the signee and then send an email to the school to ask if the materials have been received. Be wary that sometimes an insignificant person may sign for the receipt, and the materials have been kept in a corner of the door room, and have never been reviewed!

If you send an email and the school does not reply (usually at this time, Busy) You can call directly. Be sure to confirm that you have entered their system before you can wait for the news with peace of mind.

80. Don’t prepare documents in a hurry just to be quick. You must revise them carefully until you are satisfied before sending them out.

81.

It is best to send it before the end of the year, and no later than mid-February (if the deadline is later). The time of sending does not affect admission, but it will affect scholarships. Generally, scholarships are gone once they are distributed.

82. Those schools that only close in May or June are not reliable at all, and it is too late to get a visa.

83. If you apply online, try to pay online. Once you pay, the computer will automatically availbale your registered online information to

the school (what you upload without paying is invisible to the school). If mailing a money order requires manual debugging of the system, it will be slow for several weeks (think about it Look at how many application materials are being reviewed every day. How many people are delayed for several weeks~~

I sent a money order to a certain school that applied online and waited for more than a week but still no success in my online application. Finally, I I was afraid that it would be too late, so I paid it online again, and the online application was successful in a second. It took more than a week for the secretary to find out, and finally the money order was returned).

84. Do not try to evade fees, whether it is the application fee or the ETS score fee. Nowadays, many schools will not rush you if they find you are evading fees, and will wait for you to pass the deadline automatically. For this little money, it's not worth it.

Admission and response stage

85. In most cases, you don’t know how much you weigh before the results come out. After being admitted, you start to inflate yourself.

86. School admissions are generally concentrated in March, mostly in mid-to-late March, and some in April. Some who send the first batch early may get results by the end of the year or in January.

87. If you send it by express delivery, the rejection letter or Waiting List will generally consist of only a thin piece of paper, while Offer and AD will be accompanied by many forms and school materials, which are relatively heavy. So you don't even need to open the envelope to know what the result is, just weigh it.

88. Most schools will be very attentive after sending out admissions. If you ask a question, they will ask "May I take it you are accepting our offer

of admission?"

89. Most rejected schools will ask you where you plan to go or why you didn’t choose their school, so that they can improve.

90. Don’t ask the secretary of a rejected school to advise you on which school to go to.

91. Before 415, the dust must be settled and the school decided.

92. Reject the schools you don’t plan to go to early and accumulate RP to make room for the students behind you.

93. If proof of property is provided, the school will directly send the I20 visa form, and schools that reject it will have to send it back.

94. Don’t say, “A school like so-and-so only gives half a scholarship, so it’s not worth going to.” The review professors at each school have reviewed countless people. Are you worth the money? How much money to give, they will know at a glance.

95. Don’t say that such-and-such school is very poor this year, and you will definitely get in if you apply. You know how much you have paid, and you should also take care of the emotions of the students who have not yet been admitted.

96. If you are admitted, you should also keep in touch as appropriate. You may be given a scholarship later (for schools where scholarship selection and admission are separate).

97. Even if you are on the waiting list, you should always write to express your continued concern, and you may escape death.

98. When there are many admissions, you can use these admissions to force awards from individual schools.

99. Remember to thank the people who have helped you, pay a return visit to your teachers, treat your colleagues and friends, and notify them as soon as you get the first admission. Without their help, you would not have the opportunity. today.

100.

Studying abroad is a very lucky thing. What does it feel like when the plane lands and you see a brand new country and a strange city in the corner of your eyes? Passion and excitement.

Good luck to all students who are preparing!