lease find statistics about the IELTS in the above link. In HK, the university grants committee sponsors IELTS for final year students of the eight universities in HK. See p 21 of the presentation. Therefore we have very accurate data about the English standard of HK students. As you can see from p24, about 5% of the final year students of Hong Kong get 8.0 and 1-2% get 8.5 or above. Remember that the sample is all the final year students of HK, which include students from Lingnan and HK Institute of education. Since we have fifty to sixty thousand high school graduates only, it is really not very difficult to find a place in one of the 8 universities in Hong Kong. Therefore, being in the top 5% of the HK graduates does not mean that much. The top 5% of undergraduates means roughly the top 2% of high school students. Compare like to like, this means the top 400,000 among high school students in China (assuming 20 million high school students.) For Singapore, 15% of the graduates get 8.0, and 10% get 8.5, 5% get 9.0. Singapore graduates are your strongest competitors in this region for finance jobs, since a lot of them speak and write fluent mandarin as well. Remember that there are a lot of HK students who study abroad. Considering all these factors, if you are not even in the top 5% among the graduates of all the universities in HK, you can guess what your chance of finding a reasonable job in HK is. You may think that my English is not that good, why do I emphasize so much on achieving a high English standard? Being an immigrant in Hong Kong, I grew up in an extremely poor neighborhood. Our parents speak a dialect other than Cantonese. The first time I stepped on a plane was when I was 23 years old. As a result, I did not have the chance to learn English properly. My career and academic achievement suffered as a result. I am probably one of the best in terms of analytical skills and quantitative skills, even in the highly competitive environment of investment banks. But my career development was not progressing as fast as it could have been. My boss told me once, " Do not waste time on improving your quantitative skills anymore. The marginal value of that is zero. Your lack of communication skills is limiting your career development." He was perfectly right. Now I suffer due to the lack of language skills in Mandarin. I simply do not want you to repeat the same mistakes I have made. I did not pay enough attention to the development of language skills when I was young. I used to think that software engineering, mathematical and analytical skills are all that are important. After working for a dozen years in various jobs, I realized that even as trader and a quant, these skills are important, but far from sufficient for a good career development. If there is one thing I regret, it will be not learning how to write and speak properly in English and Mandarin. You do not have to make the same mistakes I made. We all have our comfort zone. Science students like to spend their spare time thinking of puzzles. Arts students like to read novels. Break this cycle of habits. Overcome what is limiting your career progression. At my age, I am still trying, even though it is hard. You can do better. Yes, I did not have good language skills and still managed to find a reasonable job and have a reasonable career. However, trust me, developing good language skills is far easier than getting the Rhodes Scholarship, finishing twice the number of required courses in CUHK, and obtaining a PhD.| 欢迎光临 ChaseDream (https://forum.chasedream.com/) | Powered by Discuz! X3.3 |