Fu Duo, a UIC year-four student majoring in Applied Statistics, and Chen Zhiye, majoring in TESL, received conditional offers from The University of Oxford to postgraduate programmes in Applied Statistics and Applied Linguistics, respectively. Zhou Chao, majoring in International Journalism, received a conditional offer from the Graduate School of Boston University. The postgraduate programme for Zhou is International Relations and International Communication.
Fu Duo, Prof. Zhang Jianzhong, Prof. K.T.Fang, and Prof. Peter Lam
The three students attributed their success to the education model of UIC, help from highly competent teachers and their own persistence. Fu Duo, the first UIC student to receive a conditional offer from The University of Oxford, said the English language education at UIC not only helped him to receive a high score in IELTS, but also facilitated him to adapt to an international environment. Chen Zhiye and Zhou Chao said Whole Person Education and the GPA system of assessment gave UIC students confidence and a solid academic foundation.
Chen Zhiye and Dr. Dave Towey and Dr. Henry Guo
"Prof. Fang Kaitai and his colleagues at the Statistics Programme offered me a lot of advice and wrote recommendation letters for my application, which helped me significantly," said Fu Duo. Similarly, Chen Zhiye also expressed his gratitude to Dr. Dave Towey, Prof. Elizabeth Wilkinson and Dr. Henry Guo for their help in writing recommendation letters and his personal statement. "Strong recommendation letters written by distinguished scholars and a good personal statement are the basics for a successful application," said Chen Zhiye. "Dr. Towey read very closely my research papers and pointed out every weakness, which helped me a lot with my research development."
They offered these tips in making an application: 1) Start the preparation work early. 2) Participate in different summer programmes and social activities which will enrich your CV. 3) Be perfectly honest in your application. 4) Ask teachers who know you well to write recommendation letters for you.
Reporter: Vincent Gan, Yu Lijuan
Editor: Richard Xu
MPRO
