IUP Chinese Entrance Interview

[arete88]

Hello,

I've just found out I have been lucky enough to be invited to take the Chinese interview for the IUP language program. I'm just trying to find out a little more about it, as it's been a while since I've formally studied Chinese and I'm pretty rusty.

I saw the two posts on here talking about the experience back in 2007, and was just wondering if the interview has changed at all, or if anyone has more up-to-date information?

Thank you very much.

[xDragonx]

Hi,

Sorry I can't answer your direct question but I was thinking of applying for the same course (starting September 2012 for one year). Do you know if it's only open to current students of UC Berkley or whether it's possible to apply directly?

Thanks.

[OneEye]

Of course it's open for anyone to apply. Whether you'll get accepted or not, who knows. It will depend on your current level of Chinese (they don't take beginners, you have to have had two years of Chinese at least), your goals, etc.

You may also want to look into the ICLP program in Taiwan. The programs are very similar. IUP actually used to be in Taiwan, but they moved it several years ago to Beijing. The teachers stayed in Taiwan and continued the program as ICLP, using the same materials (the core textbooks are still largely the same) and methods. ICLP is cheaper, by a pretty fair margin (I assume this is due to being owned by National Taiwan University rather than being run by a US university), and Taiwan is a great place to live and study Chinese. That said, I'm sure the programs are pretty similar in quality and it really will boil down to where you'd rather live. Just know you have a second option.

[xDragonx]

Thanks a lot for your quick reply OneEye. The reason I asked is because I couldn't see anything on Tsinghua's website about the IUP. The only information that I could find was for their more generic sounding "Chinese Language Program" and I'm not sure of what the differences are between that and the IUP. Do you happen to know? The only IUP link I could find was on the UC Berkley site (

http://ieas.berkeley.edu/iup/) and I emailed the IUP coordinator Dr Li. mentioned in the 'Contacts' section asking for more information but he hasn't replied yet.

One other question I had related to this was do you know if the course fee for going straight through to the program is different to going through a US university?

Many thanks.

[OneEye]

Not sure about that, but I will say communication at Berkeley's Institute of East Asian Studies seems to really be lacking. I ordered a book from them a while back (pretty specialized title you can only order from them directly), sent my credit card info and everything. No book, no anything. I emailed them several times and got nothing back. Apparently you can now order online using Paypal, but who knows if it's any more reliable.

Anyway, I digress. IUP is a completely different program than Tsinghua's CLP. Now, the CLP is probably quite good, I'm sure, but nothing like IUP. The only information I've ever found was through Berkeley's site, and since (I believe) they run the program, I assume that's your only option. I'll reply to your other thread too with some other info.

[xDragonx]

Thanks a lot!

[togi86]

Arete88, just wondering which semester the interview was for? I applied as well, but haven't received any word from them..

[dizhitian]

I am not sure if you have taken the interview yet but I just did mine and thought I would pass along some info. It starts with the teacher saying a word and asking you to use it in a sentence. There are about 4-5 of these and the vocab gets a little trickier as you go forward. The first word was 变化 and the last one was 权衡。In the next section the teacher asks you to recite a sentence she has just read. By the end the sentences are quite long and have multiple clauses. The last part is just some basic conversational stuff: Have you been to China before? What kind of hobbies to you have?

I had thought it was going to be a bit more free flowing in terms of conversation. On the whole nothing that difficult but in the context of being nervous I thought the first part--thinking of a good sentence with the random word--was a bit tricky.