References take significant weight for applying top schools, especially the recommendations are from the alumni of those schools.
Since I happened to have chances talking to members of a top program's admission committee, they do have prejudices against the recommendations from China. Not only the recommendations, they even double about the validity of G/T scores. The people I talked to mentioned that he can't understand why a Chinese student with a perfect GMAT score was not even able to speak one complete English sentence to him.
Even I think he was exaggerating. But at least he points out the fact that Chinese students' honesty is really open to question. Also that's the reason why we see most of the top programs prefer not to enroll students from mainland directly. You might ask why we still can find Chinese faces in their student profiles, however prior to getting into those top programs, those people already hold one advanced degree in US or UK. Their applications materials sent by western school systems are more trustworthy.
So here I just want to make a point that, for your best interest and many other Chinese students' please be honest about your application, even though most of people tell you that the admission office is not gonna pay attention to your recommendations.
I seldom speak that much, but as being in the US for a while, I know how important it could be for being honest about yourself. If you still can't get yourself into it, please try harder.
京公网安备11010202008513号 京ICP证101109号 京ICP备12012021号
发表于 2008-11-25 23:56:00
