CSC 2016 Applications

[金妙漪]

 

 

Also, why not try applying to other universities? Since its Chinese language, I highly suggest BLCU, Peking, BFSU, or BNU. These are good language universities as well. There are also good ones outside of Tianjin. You'll easily get a PL given your AL. Point is, don't stick to one Uni over a PL, especially since you are applying for a language program (I think uni levels don't matter that much) 

 

@willamcarey @Sula

I have actually! I have a PL from BLCU and ChuanDa, but I'd rather be in Beijing and I have already studied at BLCU. I guess I'm just looking to see what else I can get to give myself more options. Haven't heard anything back from BNU or BeiDa yet.

 

I got a reply a few hours after completing my Tsinghua app saying that it needs to be amended but not saying WHAT needs to be amended. The email train continues...

 

Thanks, pals ^_^

[Torreno]

The main thing that if you are applying for a bachelor or masters scholarship and need a preparatory chinese courses, you will anyway do them in 5 (or 10, cant remember) top chinese universities and only after that you will move to your desired university. There goes the trick with applying to lower university.

 

Undergraduate scholarship recipients must register for Chinese-taught credit courses. They are required to take one-year preparatory courses in one of the 10 universities listed below and to pass the required test before moving on to their major studies.

Undergraduate scholarship recipients can apply for preparatory course exemption if they completed their secondary education in Chinese or have a valid HSK certificate that meets the requirements of the host university. Official documents from secondary schools or a photocopy of a valid HSK certificate must be submitted for a preparatory course exemption application. Please NOTE that HSK results are valid for only 2 years.

Entrusted by MOE, the following 10 universities offer preparatory courses to undergraduate scholarship recipients. They are Tianjin University, Nanjing Normal University, Shandong University, Central China Normal University, Tongji University, Beijing Language and Culture University, Northeast Normal University, Beijing International Studies University, Capital Normal University, and the University of International Business and Economics.

[yaozilan]

 

The main thing that if you are applying for a bachelor or masters scholarship and need a preparatory chinese courses, you will anyway do them in 5 (or 10, cant remember) top chinese universities and only after that you will move to your desired university. There goes the trick with applying to lower university.

@Torreno ,

I believe that the 10 Top Universities thing only applies for Bachelor Degree.

I have applied for a 2-year Master's with 1-year preparatory Chinese course, all at the same Uni, Nankai, which is not one of the top unis. They told me that it is ok, they sometimes don't take students who need prep courses because they are not certain their chinese level will do after one year, so they would be wasting a place if they don't achieve the required level. But they took me after an interview, knowing that my chinese would do ok after a year.

I am not certain if it works like this everywhere, but I seem to remember that I read somewhere that only for bachelor's you have to choose one of the top unis for the preparatory courses.

 

[Breaknet]

Well, I'm got super nervous and took an appointment to the doc today.

Emergency appointment: total cost for this ?&*?(&%?" medical test (that I will probably have to do once more in China): 875 canadian dollars (about 700 USD)

FML

[Torreno]

LOL its 50 max bucks where I am at

can you photo your form? what did they put in it that it costs so expensive

[Breaknet]

I'm going to pass the exams, but this is the estimate.

First, here, due to the fact that we have a public system, private hospitals are rather scarce and they tend to only deal with people that have medical insurance.

Consequently, they inflate their prices like crazy.

Gosh, I hate developed countries.

[Cantabile]

Holy shit! That is expensive! I got the physical and blood test/ekg for free through my insurance. Even then, a physical at my university health center is free. Something seems off!

 

I thought Canada had free healthcare!

[Breaknet]

Well, my university doesn't have a med center affiliated (we have no medical schools).

Plus, I have no insurances.

Plus, the public system is totally unable to manage all the required tests.

Consequently, I have to go somewhere where they have all the facilities and, because my government f*cked up the deadlines for medical tests, I have to get my results within 48 hours.

[金妙漪]

It can get pretty expensive in the US as well especially if there's nothing about your health that would indicate you actually need some of the tests, so then insurance doesn't cover it (if you have it). If my doctor suspected a heart murmur or something, THEN I would need an EKG and insurance would cover it. But if I'm healthy, nope. It's out of pocket unless your doc says it's a preventative test.

 

But yeah the way Canada's public system works I know you have to wait for a long time for an appointment Sorry, mate.

[Cantabile]

Sad thing is. I've heard they usually make people do blood tests in China anyway, although I'm sure its a lot cheaper there though.

[Prile]

I am having a hard time choosing between peking university vs tsinghua university. For Pku, they admitted me as a visiting student in the School of Chinese as a second language, whereas for Tsinghua, I will go directly into their department of Social Science.

My ultimate goal is to study Psychology taught in Chinese. I am a native Chinese speaker(was born and raised in China until elementary school, and only obtained a Canadian passport after immigration). So taking courses in Chinese would not be a problem.

For PKU, they asked me to do a HSK test, and I am required to pass level 6 in order to take courses in my desired field. Although I am fluent in Chinese, but my grammar is not super great. I found practice questions online, and I was able to do most of them, except for a section where I have to find mistakes in sentence (they seem to be really tricky somehow, and they are similar types of question meant to test students for Gaokao. I am scared if I don't pass the test, I will be stuck in classes for learning a year of chinese (which seems a bit funny because I am technically not a Laowai, and my Chinese is even better than my English, speaking wise)

There is no test to be done with Tsinghua. I do not have to take Chinese classes, and I will have the flexibility to take whatever I like.

Has anyone had the experience of taking the HSK test before? How difficult is it?

My dilemma is I am not sure which university will provides a better experience. I know Tsinghua is the best in the field of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and PKU is more known for their humanity and arts science. Because I want to take courses not just in Psychology, but also in many different areas such Chinese history, language, economics and etc, it seems PKU is a better option.

Does anyone has suggestions?

[BELLSA]

I am having a hard time choosing between peking university vs tsinghua university. For Pku, they admitted me as a visiting student in the School of Chinese as a second language, whereas for Tsinghua, I will go directly into their department of Social Science.

My ultimate goal is to study Psychology taught in Chinese. I am a native Chinese speaker(was born and raised in China until elementary school, and only obtained a Canadian passport after immigration). So taking courses in Chinese would not be a problem.

For PKU, they asked me to do a HSK test, and I am required to pass level 6 in order to take courses in my desired field. Although I am fluent in Chinese, but my grammar is not super great. I found practice questions online, and I was able to do most of them, except for a section where I have to find mistakes in sentence (they seem to be really tricky somehow, and they are similar types of question meant to test students for Gaokao. I am scared if I don't pass the test, I will be stuck in classes for learning a year of chinese (which seems a bit funny because I am technically not a Laowai, and my Chinese is even better than my English, speaking wise)

There is no test to be done with Tsinghua. I do not have to take Chinese classes, and I will have the flexibility to take whatever I like.

Has anyone had the experience of taking the HSK test before? How difficult is it?

My dilemma is I am not sure which university will provides a better experience. I know Tsinghua is the best in the field of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and PKU is more known for their humanity and arts science. Because I want to take courses not just in Psychology, but also in many different areas such Chinese history, language, economics and etc, it seems PKU is a better option.

Does anyone has suggestions?

Maybe history is a bit weak, but you definitely don't need to worry about the Chinese language and especially economic: ) in tsinghua but since you are going to study psychology, pku is so much better than Tsinghua, also bnu, the psychology in bnu is ranked 1 in mainland China. I once accepted by the psychology department at bnu, but decided come to Tsinghua law school. Hope my answer helps

[aymen]

@torreno: I'm actually not so sure about this. If you look on the Sichuan university thread you will see someone got accepted into an undergraduate course and had a year of Chinese classes prior to that... He then decided to go back to his own country.

Let's see, but from the exchange I've had with the international office, I'm pretty sure you can have your preparatory year at SU. Don't know about other universities though...

[majid01]

Hey guys!

 

If you're in Canada, you don't necessarily have to wait a long time before getting  your physical examination done. What I did was that I called the automated system of some clinics at 9pm, and I had an appointment the following day with a doctor. I explained to her my project, and she filled out my document on the spot. She then proceeded to hand me my ECG, X-ray and blood test prescription which I had done today. I was at the hospital at noon, and I got out at 1:30pm with all of my tests done WITHOUT any appointments. My doctor will have my results tomorrow and I will go get them at her office late afternoon. All of that in a period of 48 to 72 hours. The best part is that everything was free.

 

There are some private clinics, yes, but I got everything I needed in a timely manner with our public health system.

[trocadero]

@金妙漪 Sorry to hear that you've lost your voice but it's a good sign that Tsinghua has looked at your application. I find that if they don't reply to your emails, best to just get on the phone (when you've recovered). The administrator of my program hardly ever replies and only gets something done when I call them up (politely

 

@Breaknet For my medical exmamination, I paid $250 NZD. Small potatoes compared to what you're expected to pay but I just think it's money wasted especially like @Cantabile said, we have to do the same thing again upon arrival to China 

[trocadero]

@Prile I'd suggest to try for the HSK 6. Peking's reputation in the social sciences and humanities is unbeatable in China. I'm sure that Tsinghua's programs aren't bad either but if you have a chance to enter into the best program available, I say go for it. I decided to apply to an English taught humanities MA program at Tsinghua because they don't offer a similar one at Peking. I don't think my Chinese is strong enough to write a 20,000 word academic thesis...

 

I haven't had the experience of doing HSK 6 before but it sounds like your level of Chinese is pretty strong already. Maybe consider paying for tuition or get friends and family to help you prepare before the test if you're not feeling too confident. It'd be money well spent if you pass the HSK 6.

 

Good luck with choosing the best course of action! 

[Chris Two Times]

I just emailed Tsinghua for a pre-admission letter and they said (copied exactly from their email reply)

 

"Sorry, there is no CSC place available at Tsinghua. Please contact other university"

 

I got that email as well, lol.

 

I did apply online to BeiDa on April 21st and got an email stating:

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

 

We regret to inform you that the closing date of receiving application materials is April 20th, which passed.

 

Since you hold the award letter, you can submit your application materials to the Foreign Embassy of China in your country if you are still interested in Peking University.

 

Enclosed is the information you need.

 

...which is dumb because I've already submitted my application materials to the Embassy, hence, receiving an award letter.

 

I reckon this is just a stock auto-email that gets sent out, hence, turning to williamcarey's excellent advice of covering further ground by actually calling people, and in my case here in Beijing, actually visiting people face-to-face.

 

I did apply online to Tsinghua through Chinese Language programs and in addition to getting the above email, I got one stating that I applied incorrectly and should have applied through the "Visiting Students" portal instead. I got the following message:

 

Since you are applying for Chinese Government Scholarship, please apply for Visiting Program, NOT this Chinese Language Program (self-supported program), and contact with visiting@tsinghua.edu.cn.

 

...which is also dumb because visiting@tsinghua.edu.cn were the ones who sent me that lame email at the top of this post.

 

My three selected for one year of language study were:

1. Tsinghua University

2. Peking University

3. Capital University of Economics and Business

 

I'm not going to sweat this at the moment. I do have an Award Letter in hand and hope to be on scholarship at a university in Beijing come September. We shall see. I guess I should at least re-do my Tsinghua application through the Visiting Program.

 

Regarding the medical test, I just went to the center where foreigners get their medical tests done here in Beijing in Haidian district, paid a little more than 300 RMB for it, and got a nice official-looking form that I sent copies of to the Embassy for this scholarship application. I may even get to use it for residence permit purposes when I come back in September because I got it done in March and it's valid for six months.

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[Chris Two Times]

Wow! This thread was moving slowly for a while, but with award letters going out and May right around the corner, this thread is a-heatin' up! Good, good!

 

Let's continue to share anecdotes and advice, but remember people, the best approach in getting the most reliable answers is to directly contact university representatives and CSC and Embassy officials who best pertain to your situation.

 

Don't solely rely on this thread. This is a rough guide at best that can give only loose advice. I guess coming here can also give us peace of mind (or not!) and virtual shoulders to lean on. 

 

Continued good luck and fingers crossed for all in our efforts in this 2016-2017 CSC campaign!

 

Warm regards,

Chris Two Times

[Rytis95]

For those worried about your health examination forms, read this:

 

17. More knowledge about Foreigner Physical Examination Form:

It's pretty hard to understand some items on the physical exam form. Our main concern is to prevent foreigners from bringing infectious diseases to China, chest X-ray for tuberculosis, Blood test for AIDs and Syphilis and others epidemic diseases. But as we know, some diseases are rare in Europe for years and unless there is a must, doctors wouldn't sign those tests in case the invasive harm to you.

So we hereby confirm that you may not need these tests if your doctor thinks you are in perfect health. But, Your doctor is required and highly appreciated to fill out the physical exam form properly with "OK" or "Good" etc., together with his signature or the stamps of the hospital.

For items like "nose", "eye", "ears", "extremities", your doctor can simply fill out "normal" or "abnormal", together with his signature or the stamps of the hospital. As long as the form bears a doctor's signature or the stamps of a hospital, it will be accepted.

 

This can be found here: http://www.chinamission.be/eng/zglx/t1340962.htm

 

It's specifically meant for EU applicants and as they say, it is not really important. Those who are coming from developed countries, you should not be worried about your health check. I did not send mine because I am currently in China with a valid student Visa and I left a note saying that I am healthy

[LaszloBalogh]

My top three choices:

UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BEIJING

UNIVERSITY OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

DONGBEI UNIVERSITY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMICS

 

English taught MA in international trade. I've contacted my top choice asking for an AL before sending my application to the embassy. Then the new MOFCOM scholarship was posted online and I've asked the responsible person at the embassy whether I should apply for that one too. I was told that there was no need because my application was recommended online (not sure it equals with an award letter). Went back to the uni asking about the results and they will know it before the end of July and will let me know (I've read it here to contact them regarding the result), plus they said since I was recommended my chances of getting it are really good, whatever that means.