I want to study in America. Are there any good institutions in Beijing?

The following is shared by Zhang Zhongbao, a tutor who has been studying in the United States for two years:

As a member of the field of studying abroad, I received four years' domestic higher education in Peking University and two years' master's degree in the United States, and felt the western education. On the way to apply, I found an intermediary and accumulated various application experiences. After returning to China, he transferred to Palm and worked in the education industry for studying abroad for 7 years, with hundreds of students. From the applicant, to the international students, and then to the tutor, I have experienced various roles in the study abroad circle. So for this topic, I feel obligated to share my experience and experience:

I am also a student of this institution.

I started to apply in the United States in 2009 (I'm sorry to disclose my age). 1 1, started to work as a study abroad tutor to help students apply. 15 years, start a business with friends studying abroad. 16 years, joined a high-end study abroad company full-time. /kloc-joined Palm Avenue in 0/7, and was a master tutor for graduate students. Still experienced various modes of study abroad consultation.

Now many students still habitually call us "intermediaries", and I will take pains to correct them every time. We are a consulting model, we have no cooperation with the school and will not accept any entrustment. On the contrary, we will provide you with more information and accompany you to complete this application.

Let me talk about my own situation first. I graduated from Peking University with a minor, which is a new major. I almost decided to go abroad when I was in college, and then I consulted three senior sisters. I prepared for the GT exam very early and began to do undergraduate research in my sophomore year. When I applied for my senior year, I counted my graduation project in *** 3 paragraphs. Without papers, overseas research was not popular at that time. When I was a junior, I learned about studying in the most popular English training institution, studying in a BBS when I took the GT exam, and a training mode in which I gave several lectures in our school. Finally, I chose a training mode, thinking about changing my introverted unwillingness to communicate, forcing myself to do things, and improving my ability in the process of applying for studying abroad.

At that time, the cost was about 10 thousand. During the summer vacation of my junior year, I attended six training seminars with more than 20 friends. The trainer told us how to write documents and how to set magnets. Even once, I was running in Zizhuyuan Park and told us to stick to it when encountering difficulties and setbacks. The advantage of this model is that, as I said just now, I fully understand all the processes of studying abroad and actively participate in everything.

But the disadvantages are obvious: first of all, the trainer doesn't know your major at all, and he can't provide any guidance on choosing a school. He just asked me to "look it up by myself" and "communicate with teachers and classmates more". I just mentioned my new major and minor major. I am the only one of the five people who went abroad, and there are only a handful of senior sisters who went abroad in previous sessions (although most of them went abroad later, I kept in touch with them). So "self-study" can only show me which schools are running in my direction and which teachers are doing it. I don't know which projects I can apply for, and the sample size is too small.

Therefore, according to the guidance of the trainer, basically all the teachers responded and encouraged the application. I randomly selected nine famous schools of my own major. Needless to say, the final result, except for a doctor teacher with a comprehensive ranking of about 50 and a doctor teacher with a comprehensive ranking of about 30, told me that all the students applying for doctoral degrees have papers and MSc degrees, and suggested that I study MSc first, and other "Quanjude". There are only two proposals left. There is no doubt that my family is very supportive of me to go to the higher ranked MSc, and I also actively contacted my boss and gave me half of the bonus.

Successful application is only the beginning of the challenge.

In the first semester of American imperialists, I felt strongly unwell. We went out in the wild in China, and the boss took us, brothers and sisters and male students to sample together. Everybody laugh and laugh. But in America, my class is in a forest, and I'm lost because of my poor sense of direction (I can still go in the opposite direction by looking at the map). Finally, although I was found back by my teachers and classmates, I still have a lingering fear. The video of that forest shows bears appearing at night. In addition, the boss asked me to drive to the wild for sampling in the summer vacation, but promised to give me a full prize. I hesitated for a while, but I really couldn't adapt. Considering that it is really not suitable for girls as a long-term development, I gave up. I'm really sorry about the boss here.

I changed my direction and got a new academic consultant. Now I contact teachers in this direction, but each teacher has enough basic students. Finally, my senior helped me to find a laboratory to do research, but I lost the opportunity to send papers and continue my doctoral studies.

Why are you telling us this here? If I can have an overseas senior when I apply, tell me what way to go, what direction I can apply for, and think clearly about what I can do, these detours will be less, and maybe I can become a scholar in another direction, alas.

Because I have been in the pit, when an email from a startup company studying abroad came, I did not hesitate to register as an overseas tutor, hoping to provide some insights to help future generations avoid detours. Soon, I passed the interview and written test and had my own students. In this process, I also learned a lot and gained a lot. The first is school study. At first, only students with their own related majors were brought. I asked the students around me, asked the professor about the whole admission process and told the students how to choose the one that suits them best. Later, I began to try to take students from different majors, understand the characteristics of each major, listen to lectures from senior sisters of each major extensively, understand the development trend and employment situation of each major abroad, and then began to tutor my classmates. At the same time, in terms of documents, I read many sops written by Americans to understand what documents are good and tell students that I have accumulated knowledge.

I used to be an "experienced person" and decided to be a tutor.

Gradually, my students applied for prestigious schools in the United States, and I gained trust and a sense of accomplishment in the process. A few years after graduation, I still hope to develop my major, but I will bring some classmates to help me study abroad during the amateur application season.

On the occasion of 20 15, several friends found me and made a platform for studying abroad together, and absorbed hundreds of overseas professional tutors like me to do study abroad counseling. I am responsible for managing this overseas tutor team and selecting excellent teachers to give lectures. In the process of planning and organizing lectures and communicating with students, I learned more about what famous overseas schools are like and what kind of development students can have. At the most, I personally organized more than 500 online lectures, and the full dry goods won the praise of a large number of students, which made me feel that this career is more meaningful.

By the way, it was also at that time that I began to understand Palm Avenue and learn their lecture mode. But after doing it for one year, the platform gradually ran aground because everyone was part-time and busy with their studies and their own work. Palm Avenue has a large number of full-time friends, and everyone does their best, so it grows stronger and stronger. At that time, I had the idea of joining Palm Avenue.

But there was no full-time job at that time, and the person in charge asked me to be a professional tutor first. That year, I helped a classmate apply for computer science major in CMU and several other famous schools. I stumbled across other opportunities, and a high-end study abroad consultation near my home attracted me. Because of my rich experience, I am responsible for the planning and application of a large number of undergraduate and graduate students.

Although I got a lot of exercise, this mode of splitting the application into planning, process and paperwork makes me feel that it is not good for the development of my classmates. As a student, you have to coordinate and communicate with many different teachers. The operation mode of assembly line in different links feels inefficient and communication is not smooth. Moreover, due to the frequent resignation of a large number of teachers for various reasons (I won't elaborate here, in short, relying on my own sense of responsibility to support the strong overtime rhythm under low income), frequent recruitment of new teachers requires various handovers to appease students' emotions. So in the end, I chose to leave and found the opportunity to join Palm as a tutor for graduate students.

Palm model

▼ Advantages: Master tutor+professional tutor+class teacher+tutor+foreign teacher mode. First of all, it avoids the disadvantages of uneven level of pure professional tutors and no professional training. Palm reading is a professional tutor who can only be employed after training and examination, and is basically the top 20 students/graduates of prestigious schools.

Give full play to the professional tutor's understanding of the professional development trend and the current enrollment situation. Then the main tutor is mainly responsible for school selection and paperwork, most of whom are people who have studied abroad, and then worked as a tutor for several years to accumulate various student situations.

There must also be a supervision mechanism, a very strict customer complaint handling mechanism (well, students are the first), and reliable main tutors+professional tutors can be selected from the mechanism and employment, and unreliable people can be eliminated and blacked out. Before the application season, professional training and evaluation will be conducted for the annual changes to ensure that the information given to students is up-to-date and targeted.

In addition, the master tutor is responsible for pre-season planning+school selection+documents, and the communication efficiency is high. There is no poor communication between modules. For example, the clerical teacher doesn't know how the students' school was selected, and the process doesn't know how it was planned before.

▼ Disadvantages: Having said that, I really feel that there are also shortcomings. For example, it is slightly more expensive than DIY and personal overseas senior tutors and single documents (because good tutors, tutors and foreign teachers are all costs). But beyond that, basically no advertising, all by word of mouth publicity. Old students are satisfied and bring new students. Well, I have one myself.

The above are some of my experiences as a student, a part-time overseas tutor, an entrepreneur, and a full-time teacher in charge of taking students to apply. To understand an organization, it is best to look at the vision and values of its founders and leaders. Don't just look at how the previous consultants told you how many successful applications, because some may be fabricated and some may be true. You should also see if you are like others.

And you'd better know what kind of teacher is actually taking you, how much he knows about your major, and whether you two are comfortable with each other in communication.

Tell me about the application results of my classmates after I came to Palm. Last year, as the main tutor, I have tutored more than 20 students, including three offer from Stanford, two from Berkeley, several from Columbia University (some majors in this school are still very competitive), Duke and Cornell, three top 30 doctoral candidates.

These are inseparable from the efforts and cooperation of the students. If you pay and expect to do something else, it's still not for you. Students here need to participate in the whole process, attend classes, communicate repeatedly and revise repeatedly.

Zonglv boulevard Beijing office