u/Xx_DiamondDust

The 3 interviewers I had were so brisk and impatient with me. For context, I applied for a chinese-taught program. They seemed sick of me before we even started.

Question 1: Why do adults give children hongbao on Chinese New Year? What does this signify? Talk about your perspective.

Genuinely, respectfully, what the fuck? I applied for Physics, not for Chinese culture. Please bffr. I said stuff about the significance of the color red as well as money and good luck for the new year, but it was total BS. As for my perspective, I said it was like a crucial vehicle to maintain Chinese culture or something.

Question 2: What are the advantages of clean energy vehicles over traditional ones?

Slightly easier I guess. But I went on a tangent about greenhouse gases and how they trap sunlight through reflection of infrared rays and how this causes global warming, so they cut me off. Though this isn't really a question you can get wrong.

Question 3: What are the personal impacts of losing motivation?

The specific word they used was 执行力. I had no idea what that meant, so I just assumed it was motivation and started yapping about how it causes people to become disillusioned and lose hope for their futures and stuff. Yeah idfk bro...

Question 4: What do you plan to study at Tsinghua?

For context, they'd been pressuring me to hurry up my responses since I yapped a lot and also thought about questions a lot, so they got really really impatient. For this one, they explicitly said to respond in one sentence lmao. I said I hope to study Astrophysics.

Question 5: Math question: smallest positive period of 3sin(2x+pi/4)

Soo... I didn't know what 周期 was. The question also had an english translation, which did say period, but the "positive" part threw me off. What do you mean positive period? Are there negative periods (no, since period does not have direction)? How can you have a smallest period when period is the same for the entire function, always? I think this question was designed to trip up intl.s like me who didn't learn math in chinese. So I answered the smallest x positive x intercept instead: 3pi/8. The period of the function is pi.

Safe to say, I'm not getting into Tsinghua.

Hey y'all! I'm a current high school senior who has recently been admitted to the following schools:

1. UCLA (Physics)
2. UArizona (Astronomy)
3. Duke Kunshan University (Physics)
4. UCSB (Physics)
5. University of Alabama (Physics)

And a handful of schools that gave me zero aid but are worse than UCLA (like UCL), so I'm not considering them.

UCLA:

Pros:

• UCLA alumni network
• T20 and #2 public prestige
• Location is amazing, campus is beautiful
• Near a big city, so lots of opportunities
• Women's Basketball CHAMPIONS!!! GO BRUINS

Cons:

• Academically challenging (nothing new, I go to a super competitive high school, but I'd like more time to do research and labs and internships etc.)
• 84k a year before scholarships (I haven't gotten back scholarship results yet)
• Rent is expensive af and the dorms are ugly
• Public transportation sucks, I'd need a car if I wanted to do anything off campus like interning/renting etc.

UArizona:

Pros:

• W.A. Franke Honors (guaranteed 2 pieces of research through Quest project + Honors Thesis, also potential for research grants)
• UArizona Astronomy is really good for some reason
• Tons of opportunities for space science, partnerships with NASA, tho obv I'd still have to get them
• Giving me 22k/year scholarship
• Rent is a lot more manageable
• GPA inflator (I think?)

Cons:

• Not as prestigious as UCLA, shrug
• It's in Arizona
• Costs 64k/year before scholarships since I'm OOS

Duke Kunshan University:

Pros:

• I'll get a diploma from Duke, and I can say I graduated from Duke
• Duke alumni network... technically... but need to do a lot of networking @ Durham
• It's in China and housing and living expenses are hella cheap
• Location is amazing, close to Shanghai
• Near a big city, so lots of opportunities
• Public transport in China is actually awesome
• Giving me 42,159/year
• Total is 37807/year (housing is only 3k a year... wtf UCLA?)
• I'd be able to learn more Chinese

Cons:

• Can't socialize with people in the United States as much
• It's not technically Duke
• My Chinese isn't great, I'm around HSK6 level which is very livable but for reading menus and stuff it's not sufficient
• I wouldn't be able to rent an apartment since idk how to in China and I'm pretty sure I'd need a hukou

UCSB:

Pros:

• It's also really good for Physics
• Giving me 15k/year merit aid
• In California I guess?

Cons:

• Costs 89k/year before scholarships (this is even worse than UCLA btw)
• Not as prestigious as DKU or UCLA
• Honestly IDK why I'm considering UCSB it seems insanely bad...

Bama:

Pros:

• Full ride (National merit finalist), plus 4k/year extra and 2k one-time research stipend
• I can study at Bama for 5 years and get 2-3 degrees
• GPA inflator, can consider going into med school (Radiation oncology)
• I'm honestly only considering bama since they pay you to choose bama
• FOOTBALL!!! ROLL TIDE

Cons:

• Sweet home alabama iykyk
• It's literally alabama
• Negative prestige

My parents can afford any of these options. They make 280k/year. However, I have two younger siblings and we have $0 saved for college. I really really want to go to UCLA because it has the prestige of a T20, plus the school vibe I think is awesome. But it's 84k a year. I hope I get a good scholarship because wtf America?

So yeah, please send help.