I (16F) am looking into going to a 4 year college, but have no idea where to start. I’m currently looking on how to choose a college, but what else should I prepared for? Scholarships, tours, etc.
BTW I’m in the USA
I (16F) am looking into going to a 4 year college, but have no idea where to start. I’m currently looking on how to choose a college, but what else should I prepared for? Scholarships, tours, etc.
BTW I’m in the USA
I am into Electrical engineering, I should have been more specific with that. I spoke with my biology teacher and she suggested that I take a physics class and get that done which would help higher my changes of pursuing the engineering career.
Also, why Mandarin? I’m quite interested
China is the largest economy in the world and will continue to thrive as the West continues to deteriorate. Becoming fluent in Mandarin, combined with your engineering skill set, will open up a world of opportunities; especially, if you want to live in the nation one day.
I actually plan on going to China! I wonder if 16 is a good age to start learning the language, then I could go over there and study once I’m 18 but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to due to financial circumstances. What would be your advice?
I’m not sure about financial advice, unfortunately. I believe Chinese universities, in general, offer scholarships for foreign exchange students, but you will have to look into that on your own.
My advice for you would be to keep studying for your major and to use the HSK program to learn Mandarin. If you dedicate even half an hour to learning the language per day, you can become near fluent in just a few years.
Edit: Terribly sorry, I think I got my wires crossed here. I’ve truncated my comment accordingly. The previous conversation I referred to in my original comment was with someone else entirely, I think. Sorry about that.
If you start learning before you’re 19, there’s a good chance you’ll develop a good accent.
The real benefit of starting to learn a language as early as possible is that it just takes time. So if you start now, even if it’s just a bit, you’ll have a decade’s worth of exposure by the time you’re e.g. 26. If you wait till after college, that becomes ~4–5 years. (Better to measure language learning by the hour rather than year, but the logic holds.)
Chinese BRI infrastructure projects are likely to increase in number in Latin America and Africa. A multilingual engineer might find work on those sorts of projects.
If you did find work on BRI infrastructure projects, knowing some Chinese will be very useful.
If you start to learn the basics and familiarise yourself with the sound system now (while your mind will absorb it well), it could come in handy later when you can study it in a more focused way. And if you visit China after studying the language for a year or two, you’ll pick up so much more than you would if you arrived knowing only the very basics.
Have a look at some Chinese university websites. See what kind of entry requirements they have and what scholarships are available. You might find that finance is not an issue if they’ll pay for everything. But if this is the case, and you like the sound of it, you need to make sure your CV meets the requirements in time and that could take a couple of years if you need to learn Chinese. If that’s the case it’s a good reason to start learning it now.
You’re obviously bright and ambitious. If you started to plan now for a move to China in two years, it might not go to plan. Have a back up where you study in the US (I think that’s where you’re otherwise planning to study EEng) and continue to do things that will improve your chances of a later visit (or move) to China (but keeping your options open in case that still doesn’t work).
(You never know, some lab work may be led by a Chinese PhD student who could know of opportunities in China and be willing to help out an undergrad who is enthusiastic about the language and country.)
It you start learning Chinese now, you’ll make things easier if you later get the chance to study an HSK course. This way, by the time you’re, say, 24, you’re reasonably bilingual with an engineering degree – you’ll be on fire with loads of opportunities.