<p>Hello,everyone. I’m quite a new comer for this forum. Honestly, I accidently entered this forum as I was gathering information for my confusing grad school selection.
I’m an international senior student from Tongji University, China. My major is civil engineering with an undergraduate direction in bridge engineering. BTW, our university has an almost equally good reputation for structrual engineering as Tsinghua University. My background information is as follows:
Overall GPA:4.75/5.0 (a little lower in major)
ranked around top 5 in our direction with 84 students
Revised GRE: V:161 (old 620) Q:167(old 800) AW: 4.0
IBT-TOEFL: R:30 L:29 S:23 R:29 total:111
Research activites (quite weak as I guess): research assistant this summer on a project with national funding, the publication may not be soon to be used for any help.
Recommender: my project professor, the dean of our department and the my undergraduate advisor who all have some internationl reputation in their own research areas.</p>
<p>My goal is top 20 structrual MS programs in US, and financial aid is not of the most importance. I’m really eager to know my odds of being admitted. Besides, I also prepare to apply U of Toronto and UWO for Canadian grad schools. Thus I’ve got a large pool of selection with 20+ schools including 3 to 4 safety schools ( US News ranking 30+). I am also wondering if I should apply to so many schools. To some extent I find the answer may be relied upon the odds I’ve just asked.</p>
<p>Filling out applications is a lengthy process… Identify your research interests and narrow down your list to 8-10 schools. You will save yourself and admissions officers valuable time.</p>
<p>Don’t go to Duke for structural engineering is my only suggestion lol (basing this on your screen name) as their structural faculty is still small and not established. Don’t know too much about chinese universities but is Tonji similar to Shanghai Jiao Tong? Met quite a few of the latter students in the top 15 or so structural engineering schools during the conferences I went to as a Ph.D. student. My advice contrary to the above poster is to apply far and wide. Admissions with financial aid is quite arbitrary for international students (much clearer for domestic students). I had classmates who go multiyear funding to Stanford but outright rejected from SUNY Buffalo and UCSD for structural engineering (this scenario downright never happens for domestic students).</p>
<p>Duke is just a favorite English name for me. Tongji is situated at Shanghai, same city as Shanghai Jiao Tong. As our school has almost the most connections with Germany in China, it is less known in America. But our college of civil engineering is definitely stronger and lareger. While SJT has more world-class engineering disciplines like EE or CS.
I understand your meaning. Besides, I’ve searched out quite a lot of profound advice you’ve been made regarding this area as well as your brilliant background from this forum. Anyway, your opinion means a lot to me. But I will still contain my selection within 20 schools due to the reason mentioned at #2. Thanks again!</p>
<p>Does China offer GRE prep courses? I’ve noticed a lot of international students, specifically those from countries in Asia, have pretty high verbal scores.</p>
<p>Yes, we do have some of these courses, one famous provider is New Oriental who has built partnership with ETS. But I think their courses are basically introductory. Acturally the score differs greatly among Chinese test takers. However, after learning English from elementary education and sparing personal effort, a high verbal score is possible and reasonable.</p>