作者:欧亚部总监 郭蕾
录取院校:芬兰坦培雷大学
录取阶段及专业:计算机科学专业博士学位课程(全奖)
学生JING
北京第二外国语大学国际贸易专业硕士毕业
华北电力大学计算机科学专业本科毕业
申请时就职于北京某大型企业网络工程师
留学目的:由于先生去芬兰工作,故希望在3个月内帮她联系一所芬兰知名大学的博士学位课程,专业不限。
申请劣势:无任何语言成绩;对申请专业存在不确定性;研究生阶段专业与本专业不相关;时间短,任务重,查询工作量大。
当学生第一次来新东方找我们时,我和她只谈了不到20分钟。原因是该生和很多申请博士学位课程的同学不太一样,她对于自己想去学习的专业或是目标并未明确,出国的目的完全是因为自己的先生过去工作所以才想去芬兰。鉴于她的学历背景和工作经历,我建议她选择本专业为研究方向,因为这类专业申请的成功率很高,如果以她研究生的专业为背景申请,十有八九是要被拒绝的。
她第一次给我的答复是:不想学这个专业,但是如果我们能帮她查到相关的专业可以帮忙推荐。对于这类学生,我给她的建议是:芬兰的所有公立大学我们新东方都可以帮忙联系申请,但是需要她有一个大致的研究方向,我们才可以根据这个方向帮她规划,检索到适合的大学和专业。她同意了我的建议,回去考虑了一段时间。再次来找我们时,我们非常欣喜的看到了JING的变化。她同意我们辅助她申请COMPUTER SCINCE专业,全力配合提供我们在申请环节中所需的相关材料。
初步意向达成后,我们开始了大面积的院校和专业搜索中,由于时间紧迫,我们也发动她的先生和欧洲部高端申请团队的各位老师一起帮忙快速查询各高校博士招生空缺状况,第一时间给我们反馈和汇总,在大家的齐心协力下,我们在短短两周时间内,就筛选出了最适合JING的三所知名大学和专业,同时也和国际招生部及相关老师确认目前可以递交申请。
接下来的这个工作难度比较大。按照常规的申请材料:个人简历、动机信、推荐信等都能够在短时间内准备完毕,但是博士申请与本科和研究生不同的一点是,需要学生本人对该专业有一个更深层次的了解和认识,同时一定会有教授来给她面试,有些奖学金的项目,甚至还要经过2-3轮的面试才能通过。这对于JING来说无疑是一个非常大的障碍。
在接下来的日子里,团队开始给她准备最多的,就是这个最最重要的面试文件准备。如我们所料,第一批申请材料递交给大学后,我们接到导师的面试邮件,希望可以见她一面。JING当时刚参加完雅思考试,1月4日就可以出成绩,所以她计划1月中旬去芬兰参加面试,这意味着我们有半个月的面试准备阶段。JING 的优势是她口语很好,目前缺少的是对于研究方向的系统把握。
团队老师帮她设计了一套面试问题集,基本上里面囊括了所有我们认为导师面试中所有可能问到的问题,并针对每一个问题拟订了2-3种的回答方法,这样她在面试中才能应对自如。同时告诉JING,你这次去芬兰见教授是改变命运的面试,一定要下功夫准备好,不但要把所有材料都背下来,还要说得自然,流畅。
面试问题摘要这里简单做一个分享,希望能够对大家今后的面试思路有所帮助:
第一部分:寒暄(相对简单,这里不做分享了)
第二部分:学过什么+做过什么
第三部分:对未来研究领域的理解
第四部分:对于没回答上来或是没听太懂的问题如何解释(这里不做分享)
第二部分:学过什么+做过什么
1、 硕士论文内容+研究生课程+学到了什么
2、 本科论文内容+本科课程+学到了什么
3、 给出充分的理由说出希望不断提高自己的愿望以及工作学习互相促进给自己带来的好处)
4、 我从项目中学到了什么(或我做了哪些工作)
In the third project, I was a team member and responsible for system administration. My take away from that project could be summarized in the following three points.
1. Timely reporting the project process will help the project leader make more precise work plan and key performance indicators
2. When project changes happen, the review of changing manual and stick to the revised procedure is absolutely essential to prevent scope creep
3. Effective communication with both project leader and other members is the key for the success of every project.
第三部分:对未来研究领域的理解
I remember an anti-spam project that I have done around 2 years ago. The client demanded a system with the function of preventing only inbound spam. However, the industry practice for anti-spam project is a two way spam preventing system that rejects both inbound and outbound spam. When we designed a system with the standard industry practice, the two way system took more system resource than one way system and makes the whole system slower than that of one way system. When we discovered that the client didn’t need the outbound function. The project was almost finished and a lot of time efforts were wasted. Reflecting what we have done wrong, I realized that for every customer’s demands, it’s usually not possible to discover their full need to the greatest detail at learly meetings, it’s going to take time to discover the full needs and with professional systems and tools. If I could better manage the requirement and following up matrix, I could have done that project a lot better.
你感兴趣的研究领域是什么?
For those projects I have done in the past years, the majority of which are application projects, and not much of programming. Drawing from my previous experience, the project procedure is composed of the following steps:
:Informal requirementsàrequirements analysisà
Informal specificationàcodingàconcrete source program(figure 1.3)
However, this procedure also has significant drawbacks:
:1、existing software comes too late and at higher costs than expected, and does not fulfill the promises made for it; 2、existing software is messy, lacks transparency, prevents improvement or building on; 3、existing software is unreliable and needs permanent “maintenance”, the word maintenance being misused to denote fallacies which are expected from the very beginning by the producer.(figure 1.6)Develop a formal specification and transforming the specification into a concrete system is something I feel inadequate in my work. Hence I am eager to take further education in this area. My strength is that I have extensive project experience which might contribute in your research project.