Getting Accepting into a Master's Program in Computational Linguistics OR Computer Science, which is best?

[Noah1]

Hello everyone, I am a US citizen interested in studying for a master's degree in China starting Fall 2025. I am most interested in either Computational Linguistics or Computer Science. 

 

As for my background, I graduated from a U.S. university with a bachelor's degree in Business Management and a minor in China Studies. I am a huge language nerd and have been studying Mandarin and Korean for the past couple of years, and recently I have added Japanese and Arabic into the study mix. I am very interested in pursuing a career in computer science and I thought why not try to specialize in the language aspect of computers. So I think computational linguistics might be the best for me. In addition with the rise of AI, I think following this career path might be lucrative in the coming years. 

 

Mandarin is my strongest foreign language and I am currently preparing for the HSK 6 exam. I love being in China and I would love to study there with a scholarship. I am worried however of the potential of being rejected due to my lack of experience in CS. I have taken some beginner courses during my undergraduate years in Java, Python, and some Javascript. I will also be taking more undergrad CS courses during this upcoming Spring semester (also in part to pause my student debt lol) as a second bachelor's computer science student. If I want I can stay and finish the 2nd bachelors however I really want to go to China to study. So my plan is to apply for the Fall 2025 programs now and perhaps say in my statement of purpose that I am taking undergrad CS courses in the Spring to prepare myself for the masters.

 

Does anyone here have experience getting accepted into a CS or CL master's program in China without a formal background in it? I am interested in applying to Tsinghua, Peking, Zhejiang, and Nanjing University. Also what is your opinion on getting a CS degree vs a CL degree? Which would be more of a challenge to complete? And which degree do you think is more worthwhile to obtain?