Category: University

Originally posted on April 17, 2016 @ 9:00 am

On a rainy Friday morning in Barcelona a group of University Guidance Counsel(l)ors are shepherded onto a executive style bus. We are heading out of Barcelona to Esade’s campus in Santa Cugat, 25km outside of Barcelona. Our hosts are welcoming and warm in juxtaposition to the uncharacteristically cold weather.

Esade are a private but not-for-profit foundation business school in Barcelona that is consistently ranked as one of the best in Europe. For me, as a new guidance couselor, this is the first campus visit/fly-in that I have been invited to and particpated in and it is a very welcome chance for me to chew more ears about my particular predicament that I face at work, as well as network and get under the skin of a non-british university.

As a Brit, educated in British public schools and university I recognise that my appreciation for other Higher Education systems and establishments is somewhat limited. I began this work mindful of my internal Brit-prejudice, and so coming to Esade is a welcome tonic to this.

Esade operate two campuses – their law degree is taught at the Barcelona campus and is taught in Spanish. Their English taught BBA is based in Sant Cugat but they have plans to make all their programs taught in English over the years.

The drive takes about 40 minutes but we are caught up in traffic. I am assured that students can travel into Barcelona by train in under 30 minutes, so students can live in Barcelona and commute into class, but many opt to stay on campus at the purpose built residences.

The campus is charming and understated. The architecture is modern and functional but quite pleasing to look at none the less, and there is a feeling of togetherness on the campus.

The BBA looks like a very interesting option, that appears to be academically rigorous. We are stressed the need for Maths. IB students need to have studied SL Maths at least and A Level students need to have study A2 Math as a minimum for entry. There is an mandatory internship and international exchange program that students have to undertake in the 4th year of their study, that Esade helps its students to access. Teaching is carried out by experienced professionals who still work in business themselves. 270 faculty members are professionals as well.

The students that we speak to and hear from our convincing and impressive. Clearly they have been hand picked from the marketing department but they respond to difficult and testy questions from counselor with calm and laughter. I am particualrly impressed by one student who, when describing his experience in China for his exchange program and internship, is able to deftly demonstrate one of the benefits of this kind of education. His understanding of intercultural subtleties and a tangible demonstration of international-mindedness through his description of life in China as a French national studying in English at a Spanish University, all of which the people he meets have never heard of is applaudable. It is the type of student I hope to create.

The advantages of having an internship as part of your degree aside, Esade has an impressive rate of recruitment from Business. Some business, it seems only recruit from Esade and one other University in Spain. Students are recruited directly into Business and from the marketing it appears that Esade students are respected and sought after.

https://youtu.be/JAJm0gvwCFs

Esade has a global scope with a large number of nationalities making up the student body, plus roughly 150 exchange students at anyone time. This academic exchange in compulsory, as well as the academic internship; students have to go out and make a real connection with the business world. There is also an optional Summer University Development Service where students can undertake voluntary service in Latin America for a summer.

Esade BBA Course Structure

One of the additional strings to the Esade bow is the focus on language learning. Students are required to study Spanish even though the course is taught in English, as well as a second language from French or German. They receive official recognition of their proficiency in these languages as part of their certificate. Thus students become equipped with language skills that open the door to working in businesses in the Francophone and German speaking world and either french or german. As an institution they aim  to guarantee the language abilities to the graduate market.

During the course there is a specific focus on developing practical business skills. Team work is explicitly taught for example.

A final aspect that I thought was really cool and that I had overlooked initially was Esade’s Associations. These are sort of like clubs and societies but with a business twist. Students have to apply to join them, and they have entrance interviews. Each association has a marketing and HR department! and they are often linked to entrepreneurial ideas. One student stated that her DP CAS program taught her all the skills she needed to succeed in the wider life of the school.

Admissions requirements for BBA

Mathematics is essential. Students need to have taken maths during every year of high school and then Maths A level or SL and up for DP students.

There is no need for IELTS test if final two years of school are 100% classes in English. IELTS from 7.

Selection committee meets in January. Decision based on predicted grades. 1 out of 3 applications are rejected. Conditional admissions on passing the school leaving exams.

Deposit only refundable if they are not admitted.

Scholarships and Financial Aid

Average scholarship 9,500 – 58% of Esade students receive it. Not a loan, this is a grant. last year 1.7m euros in the budget.

Awards for academic excellence – 100% and awards for academic merit  – 2,500 euro – first year only.

Talent scholarships – need based 50-70 or 90 of tuition. Good academic record. all 4 years.

Housing scholarships covers 50% of the cost of the residence.

Originally posted on July 20, 2016 @ 9:00 am

I was originally planning to write up my experiences in a single blog post but it got too long and so I have broken it up into four separate posts: this one which will focus on my efforts to organise the counseling space and resources. The second two posts focuses on a) building relationships with other institutions and b) the agencies you need to be registered with, while the final post deals with the internal dynamics of advising students and communicating with parents.

This last year has been incredible in so many ways but also very, very hard. This post is partly a record and reflection of my experiences but I also write with a few other counselors in mind whom I met this year who were in a similar position to me: working in small or new schools and carrying the responsibility of setting up the university and careers provision.

In August 2014 I moved schools. The aim of my new job was to begin developing a boarding program for my new school. Unfortunately for me, in early September of that year the company that owned the school took the decision to place the boarding program on permanent hold.

The resulting two years have been a period in which I have learned an awful lot, met and worked with some truly inspiring colleagues, and had the opportunity to really reflect on and experiment in my teaching practice.

Losing the boarding project opened the door to another really exciting opportunity: the chance to found, set up and run my own College Counseling Department or Higher Education and Careers Department or University and Careers Counseling Department (Yep those are the three titles we have run through this year and we are sticking with the last one!).

To say that this last academic year has been challenging and stressful would be an understatement but it has also been a real honour to build something from the ground up, make decisions and have the opportunity to advocate on behalf of an interesting mixed cohort of kids, from a variety of very diverse backgrounds. I have learned a lot about myself, my own perceptions, my own prejudice, my limitations and my strengths. I want to use this post to reflect on my experience in the first year of setting up a careers and university advisory service in a school.

I officially started the role in August 2015 but I began preparations for it back in April of the same year. This was a start up school environment that at the time had just, in March of that year, received authorisation to begin teaching the DP and were also prepping for our MYP authorization visit that would come in October of that year. Thus everyone was busy, not just with the normal rounds of lesson planning, delivery and reflection; not just on the unit planning, horizontal and vertical articulation that comes with the MYP but also with the additional paperwork that comes with trying to get a school authorized to deliver a curriculum.

So I was effectively on my own. Where would you start to plan a university guidance (at the time I thought it was just university guidance) program? You have an office space and thats it. You have no real background in the area save working in secondary teaching for six years, some of which you have been a sixth form tutor in the UK and a Boarding House parent for 16-18 year olds.

Organising the Counseling Space & Resources

I started by buying maps. Maps of the continental US, UK, and the World. Large ones around 1.2m x 1.0m to put on the walls. While waiting for these to go through our schools insanely long procurement process, I then downloaded the UK University League tables and registered online with every university as a students and ordered a copy of their prospectus. Those that wouldn’t post a copy to Europe, I downloaded a digital copy and saved. Later these were uploaded to the University Guidance Group that I created on ManageBac as a place to share resources with our G9-G12 students. Along the same vein, I wanted to make sure that our space set aside for guidance counseling was warm and welcoming, a place where parents and students felt that they could just drop into. Always at the fore-front of my mind was that we were a very new school, in a very competitive area (26 or thereabouts international schools in the area) and I believe that the university and careers provision that any secondary school offers has to aim to build confidence amongst the community of student, parents and teachers that it is competent. Parents will seek out the “best” schools for the their children and while you there are thousands of different views of what may make a school best, I feel that after a solid academics program (parents want to know there children are learning), a guidance program that helps students identify their strengths and interests and guides them to the next natural step after secondary school successfully is a major want for secondary parents. A school that doesn’t offer that, especially one that you are paying for, will surely send red flags. Hence, ordering maps and materials for the guidance office, to help build the environment for students and parents seemed like a natural place to start. At this time I also ordered books and guides and I continued to do this over the course of the next year. The books I now have in the office aside from the prospectuses are:

• Loren Pope’s Colleges that change lives and Looking beyond the Ivy league.
• The HEAP Guide 2016
• The Fiske Guide to Colleges
• The CollegeBoard College Handbook
• Tina Quick’s Global Nomads Guide to University Transition (Donated by a parent)
• Julie Lythcott-Haims “How to Raise an Adult” (yet to be purchased for the department)

An additional resources that I came across last year that I make parents of students aware of is the gettingin podcast by panoply.

One of the essential tasks that went on alongside relationship building (see below) throughout the year was the creation of a variety of different resources to use both externally and internally of our school community. Early in the year I created the G11 counseling timeline and drafted the G12 counseling timeline which I will be finishing this summer. I scaffolded this process for myself by comparing the timelines produced by a variety of other schools that I had contact or a connection with.

At the same time I began to synthesise and summarise the key steps and information that lay at the heart of applications to the countries that my job description asked me to be responsible for – UK, US, Canada and Switzerland. For each of these countries I produced and essential information document, only two sides in total for each one that gave an overview for parents and students of the application process for each country.

Once all of these documents were created I decided to group them together into the first iteration of the University Guidance handbook, the development of which has carried on throughout the year as I have written new documents which have also been added to the handbook. I am hoping to be able to complete version 4 of the handbook over this summer break.

Early on in the year, and with input from a variety of the my colleagues, in  preparation for the CIS forum I created a school profile document. This document summarised our school, giving key information to admissions representatives. It was so liked by our marketing department that they subsequently hijacked it for use with prospective parents!

Throughout the year I also created a variety of forms to help with managing my meetings with students. These included permissions for students to miss class to attend university presentations, or open days, interview forms, teacher recommendation request forms and a university research form to help students build their shortlist of universities. I am not sure how useful some of these will be now that I am using BridgeU which provides a natural scaffold for structuring the timings of meetings with students which I will develop further for next year.

Towards the end of the year I worked with the DP and MYP coordinators to begin drafting policies for use in our community. These were the language course selection and university guidance policy, the predicted grades, teacher comments and recommendations policy as well as the attending university open days and guidance office events policy.

Finally in terms of resources, I was successful in April of this year in convincing the management at school that our community would benefit from the use of a guidance platform to primarily help students in their course and university research. I have blogged about the rollout of BridgeU here and here, so I won’t write too much here. In the final section of this blog on guiding students I will expand a little more as to why this was really important for me and my students.

Originally posted on November 14, 2019 @ 1:05 pm

A few weeks back, I ran across a US university admissions policy that required a TOEFL score for any international student applying to the college. This in and of itself isn’t necessarily unusual but I was surprised that this policy mentioned that only TOEFL and IELTS were acceptable as part of admissions to the campus.

When I followed up with my colleague on the other side of the desk, explaining that my students had IGCSE 1st language English and was studying English A as part of their IBDP program, I was told that they would still have to submit an IELTS or a TOEFL score.

I was really curious as to the reasoning behind this policy.

Now, I want to be clear, I get that putting together an admissions policy around language is not easy and presents a significant challenge. I also get that universities want to be fair and transparent to all of their applicants. I also understand that admissions colleagues are under pressure and accountable for the levels of English that the students have that are admitted onto their programs.

I also understand that in some cases there may be visa and immigration requirements that require an institution to make students take the IELTS or TOEFL.

But, when these factors don’t apply, it seems like madness to my mind to be asking students to undertake another test even it is one that they can “bag” easily.

Firstly it adds another (unnecessary) cost to families during a process that is already expensive. Secondly it adds another level of uncertainty and stress to students who don’t always understand the reasons for it. Often they see it as another test that they need to take multiple times to get the best possible score even though the university is only looking for a score above a certain number. Thirdly, IB students are busy! They have coursework in 6 subjects, plus their Extended Essay (4000 words) plus their CAS projects plus their TOK essay (1600 words) and presentation (10 minutes).

By asking these students to take an extra test just because that’s what your policy states and for no other reason than, this is what other institutions we compare ourselves to are doing then that shows that:

1. You don’t understand the IB Diploma Programme
2. You don’t know what students are actually studying in Group 1 subjects of the IB Diploma Programme
3. That you really don’t care.

Aside from the very good detailed subject briefs that show the sheer volume of literature group 1 subjects require students to engage with the IBO has even gone so far as to produce a signed letter by the director general explaining the equivalence of language A subjects and what these subjects actually assess.

If you are a university and requiring IBDP students who are studying English in group 1 to take an additional test for the sole reason that they reside in a country where English isn’t the national language then I will be counseling my students to not apply to you. At the very best it shows that you don’t value international students enough to actually find out what they are studying and at worst shows that you don’t really care.

What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts…

Originally posted on April 6, 2019 @ 10:13 am

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

On the morning of Thursday 28^th March 2019, I visited the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This university, opened on its current site in 1965 in its original carnation as the Hong Kong Technical College. It became a university in 1994 and is situated in the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. Boasting an impressively housed Design school, as well as its own 5 star hotel, PolyU is an impressive university. Students benefit from two years guaranteed accommodation 10 minutes walk from campus. In these halls generally two or three students share one room. There is a Swimming pool and Sports Centre on site.

During my tour of the Hong Kong Universities it was the only one that organized time for me to visit three different departments in the space of the morning. Like the other universities I visited this is a campus university with students housed in halls of residence within walking distance of the main academic buildings. I was first taken to see the Department of Humanities, The Design School and The School of Hotel Management. Like other universities in Hong Kong, students apply to specific programs and admission decisions are made at the program level by professors teaching the courses that students apply to.

During my tour of the Humanities Department I was shown the work of their linguistics laboratory where research is focused on understanding the processing and development of language in the Human Brain. Personally it was really interesting to see how the study of language and biology interact and gave me some new insights to bring back to my classroom. The faculty delivering the courses in communication were keen to stress the relevance of their degrees. Many of their graduates go on to work as interpreters and communications specialists. Two thirds of court interpreters in Hong Kong, for example, graduate from their programs. Students get exposure to hands on visual and verbal translation and they aim to produce students who are trilingual in Cantonese, English and Mandarin. The Design school covers a whole suit of programs from photography and digital media, through to interior and environmental design. A tour round the school which also houses an exhibition space, give a good insight into all main areas of Design and is truly a world class facility. Finally the Hotel School is attached to Hong Kong’s 5* Hotel Icon which is owned in full by HK PolyU and offers the leading Hotel Management courses in Asia.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

My final visit of the week was to HKUST. This is another campus university but unlike the others it is located in Clear Water Bay in the east of the city. It does not have an MTR line and is connected to the nearest station Hang Hau by a 10 minute taxi or bus ride. It’s lack of connectivity to the city can be definitely seen as a plus. Surrounded by beautiful green hills and with commanding views over the bay, the campus feels very much like you are out of the city. Living here students can be cloistered away in their own community but are able to dive into the city relatively easily for the day if they wish. HKUST has four schools: Science, Engineering, Business; and Social Sciences. The Interdisciplinary Programs office allows students to study courses from different schools should they wish. Once again students apply directly to programs for admission, although HKUST allows students to apply to a school if they are undecided on exactly what program they wish to take. In this way HKUST, offers a combination of specialization or flexibility of study, different routes that will appeal to different students. All students take a Common Core of 36 credits that allow them to  develop their Professional and general knowledge in other areas. HKUST also operates a undergraduate research opportunities program, UROP, which gives students access to international networking and conferences. HKUST stressed that they are results orientated in their applications and IBDP students should be looking to score 38+ points.