Stage One: Consolidate hard power, enhance soft power (During first year to third year in college)

         Hard power

GPA is an intuitive standard for measuring applicants' learning ability and a main way to examine their professional background. It is recommended that each student shall maintain a good grade especially in the semester making application. Some institutions or programmes will also pay attention to the changes in your major courses and GPA. In this case, you need to let them see that your grades are continuously improving.

Regarding standardized test, good grades make you stand out from thousands of applicants. It not only shows the basic abilities such as language or learning, but also reflects the applicant's abilities in logical thinking, mathematical analysis, comprehensive reasoning, and writing. So in a sense, it can be the most prominent requirement. Some institutions require an official standardized transcript, which is sent from the test center. It may take 6 to 8 weeks for the results to be delivered.

Soft power

Soft power includes: research projects, internships and extracurricular activities. Admissions officers hope to investigate your learning ability, research interest and direction, as well as quality and potential beyond career path and learning ability. Your need to sort out value information and excavate highlights from these three items, which reflected in your documents.

Stage Two: Institution selection and Document production (April-September)

Intuition selection

Choosing institution is a two-way selection process, which is: your expectations of the institution and the requirements of the programme on the applicant. It takes a lot of time to study all aspects of an institution. Therefore, knowing the programme information and successful case study in advance will help you accurately grasp the position and admission probability. Firstly, you must clarify the factors that you expect from the institution, such as comprehensive ranking, professional ranking, location, programme duration, tuition fees, research resources, faculty power, etc. Secondly, it is important to understand the requirements of the programme on applicants such as GPA, standardized test results, work experience, professional development potential, etc.

Documents

Documents include: resume, reference letter, personal statement. Depending on university and programme requirements, Essay and Writing Sample may also be required. Under normal circumstances, you need to prepare two academic reference letters and one internship reference letter if applying for U.S.A institutions, while two academic reference letters are required for the Commonwealth countries. In the selection of the referee, it also takes certain time and energy, and it is necessary to plan in advance. In addition to the teacher's recognition of your l study, you also need to confirm with the teacher in advance whether he/she can cooperate with your application.

Stage Three: online application, mailing supporting documents, mailing results, email with admission (September-December)

Students usually apply for 5-12 programmes. In addition to filling out online applications, some institutions also require paper materials and standardized test transcripts. If you are unclear, you also need to send an email to the programme admissions team to seek official help for solving the problem.

Stage Four: Waiting for application results (January-April of the following year)

At this time, you should check for missing items and the status of the application frequently. If any materials have gone missing, you must fill in immediately.

 Stage Five: Receive the offer (February-April of the following year)

 Stage Six: Apply for a visa (May-August of the following year)