Letter from a Young Chinese Friend (4)

This is the fourth in a series of correspondence between me and my Chinese friend flypig, a university student at Nankai University, Tianjing. On the left is a postcard that flypig printed at his local post office. It says "Welcome to Flypig's Blog," written in eight different languages. I'm very thankful that he sent one to me.

In the previous post, flypig talked about studying abroad. I became curious about how many Chinese students actually do that because I have seen so many of them in the United States as well as in Europe.

Flypig wrote: "It is rather hard to pinpoint the proportion of university students who actually study abroad. For those who want to study pure science subjects, such as theoretical physics, chemistry and pure maths, they have a pretty good chance of getting into an overseas university because those subjects are not so popular among the locals there. So I would say at least one out of ten has a chance to study abroad. Of course, they all go for ph.D. programs. The most popular country is the U.S. After all, most who decide to study abroad aim at improving their material lives. Besides, the academic standard in the U.S. is higher, and the amount of scholarship is also relatively larger. Tuitions in the U.K., for example, cost 30,000 yuan--something that most Chinese families cannot afford.

My major is finance. My chances of studying abroad are much lower since finance is a popular and high-status subject among local students. To be able to get into a finance program requires an extremely high GPA score. Thus it is almost impossible to get a student visa. So my preparations for the GRE exam is actually mainly for improving my English, so that I will be more equipped when applying for foreign-invested companies in China.

As for my own preference for profession, it would be mass media, such as journalism. Perhaps it would be less boring as finance, ha! Once, an American professor suggested me to study film. I guess it would be a lot of fun! But both subjects are not too practical in my situation. Among the people I know, only those from extremely rich families can afford to study these subjects overseas, because it is very hard to get scholarships in these fields.

Even though I am attempting to study abroad, my success rate is not too high. I have even considered studying German, because I heard that it is easy to get a student visa, and the tuition is free. However, the rumor goes that studying German is a pain in the neck, so I have studied English instead. And that has been ten years already."

Archive of correspondence: 1, 2 , 3