Mature students who don't have any A Levels or a diploma?

[gwokky]

Hi Everyone.

 

This may be a silly question but i thought i would put it out there. 

I am 42 years old and have worked since I was 16, I didn't really do well at school back home and for the last few years have really enjoyed studying chinese and have gained various Chinese language certificates. Now i really want to do a chinese language BA but it seems that i must have A levels or some sort of diploma to qualify. is this the way it is or are there some universities in Beijing that welcome mature students with out the necessary requirements? 

 

Thank you 

[mackie1402]

I can't speak for Beijing, but in Hangzhou all of the Uni's have a cutoff age of 30 for BA students. 

[gwokky]

HI

 

Yes i heard that, but in Beijing they told me 50 yrs is the cut off age there. just i thought maybe the universities here would welcome mature students who don't have the quals a younger person would have now. 

[DavyJonesLocker]

i am nearly sure the ones in beijing like BLCU don't have such a young cut off age limit as i remember considering them at 41 and have a feeling i asked them that same question. I decided against it in the end as i wanted a smaller class

 

I can't see how not having A levels would affect your Chinese learning . I'd say send them an email to be sure while your waiting for other responses on here. There are other uni's here too 

 

 

[mungouk]

Leaving aside the age question, the principle in most EU and UK unis at least would be that if you don’t meet the entrance requirements for a programme then you would be expected to demonstrate equivalent learning to that level, typically industry experience.

 

what level are your Chinese certificates? 

 

 

 

 

[roddy]

21 hours ago, gwokky said:

Now i really want to do a chinese language BA

Assuming you're looking at the BA's which are Chinese language for foreigners, rather than a 'normal' degree which Chinese people would take...

 

It's possible to enter that BA directly into the third year. See this page from DUFE which happens to be a university I know does this (although that page could be out of date, things change, usual China caveats...) and mentions a 2-4 year BA program and has entry requirements for each stage listed below (alongside "High school graduate"). 

 

This means you could do short-term language courses to get you ready for that advanced entry (and quite possibly do it faster than the two years, so save time and money) AND the requirements for the short-term language courses are often lower, so they might be more receptive to your situation. That still leaves the problem of getting onto the BA though - the high school graduation requirement may well be a Ministry-level thing, rather than school level (which is understandable, even in the UK they'd likely want you to do an access course), and not easily avoided. 

 

I suspect if you want to get onto a BA course, you're going to need to get something that looks like a high-school education. Couple of GCSE's from the local college? Some kind of access to higher education course? It's impossible to say what a university would accept, possibly because they don't know what the education authorities will accept (all BA students get registered). 

 

I guess you either:

 

See if you can get onto a non-degree Chinese language program, with an eye to transitioning to a BA in a year or two. You'd be in China, it'd be easier to go and talk to the admissions office and see what the state of play is. There's a risk its no-go, but you'd be in basically the same situation you are now with a year or two of Chinese under your belt (and frankly, a year or two is often enough of the Chinese education system for anyone).

 

OR you sort out the high-school graduation issue now.

 

What's your priority? Getting a degree, or learning Chinese?

 

The ideal situation, although I'm not sure how likely it is, is that you do a year of non-degree Chinese language courses, get HSK 5, the university accepts THAT year of study as equivalent to high-school graduation AND lets you onto the third year of the BA with the HSK5. Requirement dodged, and you've saved a year on the BA. 

[anonymoose]

Depending on how good your Chinese is, or  how much time and resources you are able to commit to learning Chinese, you could always try and do an A-level in Chinese, and then try and get onto the degree course. (I'm not sure if one A-level would be enough though.)

 

A-level Chinese does not look easy, but it would stand you in good stead to do the degree, and as others have mentioned, you may be able to skip the first year or two.