It seems common sense that to apply for a good post-graduate programme, a high GPA is a must. It also seems that the pursuit of a high GPA has dominated many students' college life. Alex Wang, a Year-four student from TESL, has just received a conditional offer from the University of Hong Kong - a conditional offer from the postgraduate programme for an MSc in Information Technology in Education. How high was Alex's GPA to get this conditional offer ? 4.0? 3.5? No, Alex secured this conditional offer with the comparatively low GPA of 2.48!
Alex and Prof. Nancy Law, Associate Dean, Faculty of Education, HKU
How did he do that? Meeting Alex for the first time, the reporter was handed a name card, and the titles on the card included: Apple Certified Technical Coordinator 10.6, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, ... He got many of these certificates before he had even entered college, making him one of the youngest recipients of these merits in China.
Alex was presenting at the GCCCE Conference
Two weeks ago, Alex presented a research paper based on his Final Year Project (FYP) entitled "Using Social Networking to Enhance the EFL Classroom" at the 15th Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education (GCCCE), held in Zhejiang University, Hangzhou. He was the only undergraduate student presenting at the conference, and he spoke to a hall of over 300 experts coming from around the world. All the papers accepted by this conference were published by IEEE, the world's largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity, and have been incorporated by EI (Engineering Index).
Another paper, also based on Alex's FYP, has been accepted by the 3rd International Conference on English, Discourse and Intercultural Communication, which is going to be held at the Macau Polytechnic Institute from June 21, 2011. Alex won't be alone at this conference: Victor, Alex's classmate from TESL who is going to study at University of Oxford in September, and Sunny, a TESL graduate now completing her MPhil through HKBU-UIC's Joint Institute of Research Studies (JIRS), are also presenting some of their research results.
Alex holding his paper published by IEEE and Dr. Dave Towey
Dr. Dave Towey, Programme Coordinator of TESL, and Alex's FYP supervisor, says he is very happy that Alex has been accepted to HKU, and that Alex is a very good student in a lot of ways. "His extracurricular activities have helped him a lot. He has helped TESL set up and maintain our website, and has been a student TA for a number of years. With the recommendation letters, extracurricular activities and his publications, he was able to impress the HKU admission committee, and finally secured the condition," said Dr. Towey.
On May 17th, Dr. Wendy Chan, UIC Associate Vice President, published an article concerning GPA and Quality Assurance. She wrote that:
"It is important that we should not become an institution with students focusing on (or over obsessed with) grades only. GPA is important but it is definitely not the only indicator of ‘success.' The College's educational philosophy is to educate the whole person, intellectually, professionally, morally, spiritually, culturally, socially and physically. Thus, students' achievements in other areas such as sports, volunteer work and environmental concerns, etc., are equally important to us."
Dr. Dave Towey says Alex is a very good example of this: although he did compete for high grades, this was obviously not the most important thing for him. He applied his energy to a lot of different and interesting areas, which helped him a lot when applying for HKU. UIC has many excellent things to offer to students, such as a very nice environment, interesting activities (curricular and extra-curricular), and a lot of opportunities to expand; it's a great pity if students are only focusing on competing for the As - in that case they will miss out on a lot of what they can really benefit from UIC.
Photos provided by Alex
Reporter: Richard Xu
MPRO
