硕士申请
1. 申请专业：传播学；学生背景：北京大学；面试时间：2009年1月22日
推荐人建议我申一下，于是我就申了一下。意外的收到了interview的通知。这是一个MA的program，然而是给钱的，注重 quantitative methodology，对心理学背景也很喜欢。UMD的传媒在全美也是top 10的program，想去米国，然则不想“永久性脑损伤”的ddmm可以考虑申他家。也很好找工作的，地方也不错，离DC近啊。
- [interview]communication.umd@flyinglion.pku
- Area: persuasion & social influence
- Interviewed by: Meina Liu
- Length: 74 min
寒暄若干，切入正题
Prof: It is a phone conversation for us to know more about the other, I will answer your questions first, then I also have some questions for you.
Me: Fine. What the program is like?
Prof: Do you have some specific questions?
Me: Oh yes, .....
Prof: .......
Prof: I’ve read your resume. You seemed to have a lot of experiences. You have stayed in..
Me: Singapore, I stayed there for half a year.
Prof: What did you do there? And why did you choose to go there? Have you received any scholarship for that?
Me: Yes, I was funded by the Chinese Universities Study Awards provided by the National Univ of S’pore. I went there because…… Also, I think the 4-month life there influenced me a lot. I did a project there, about decisional balance and health behavior change….. The first part is mainly quantitative.(cut by the prof)
Prof: Quantitative? So do you have courses on quantitative skills in Peking Univ?
Me: yes! A basic Psychological stats in the freshmen year (Prof: the content?) That’s a basic course, from descriptive analysis to General linear model. In the 2nd year, a course on stats and probability theory by dept of Maths. And in my junior year, I registered for a graduate level course of advanced stats. (Prof: what you’ve learned from that?) Oh, a lot. It started from the general linear model, like regression, path analysis. ANCOVA & MANOVA. Then the course extended to factor analysis, both explorative and confirmative (prof: oh really? That’s the part you need Lisreal.) yes, and at the end, we also received training on the SEM.
Prof: that’s quite a lot of training!
Me: Yes. They helped me a lot! In my independent project…. And in the proj I assisted in…
Prof: that sounds great. I am happy to hear that. Because our program emphasis a lot on quantitative skills. You need to take 7 quantitative courses on grad level. But given that you have already learned a lot on them, some of the courses could be very easy for you. Actually, some grad students here took 8 courses on that so they can get a certificate on that.
Prof: I also feel curious that you actually did a lot of cross-culture projects, but why didn’t you apply to our intercultural communication area?
Me: Oh, that’s because my experience about cross-culture in China brought me some negative feelings towards these researches. Today in China, everyone is talking about cultural difference. But they just stop on that level, or only make over-simple explanations about why such difference occur and in what way it influence our thinking and our behavior. I really feel sad about this fa
ct. I know that Culture could provide us precious info about the inner processing, but I am just turned down by the current researches, especially in China.
Prof: I need to correct you. Actually, now in US, a lot of us focus on culture diff. We not only attempt to describe but also to find out how & why. As a psychology student, you should know Nisbett and Peng?
Me: yes, I know them, especially Peng’s. His researches attracted me at the first sight, but now I am not excited with his findings, as someone has pointed out, I thought he oversimplified the culture diff, attribute everything to individualism and collectivism.
Prof: Our program have some exciting researches on cross culture communications…..
Me: Oh, that’s great. I am eager to learn. Culture could provide us a lot of info, but only if it is dealt with properly.
Prof: I noticed in your PS that you want to make combination between quantitative and qualitative data?
Me: yes….
Prof: that’s a good attempt, but I have to say that due to some reasons, usually you can only use either quant or qualitative as your major methodology in one project……although we focus on quantitative skill mainly, we also encourage students to study on qualitative methods so they can better evaluate whether a study is good or not.
Prof: And another question, or only my curiosity, I read your writing sample and got very surprised by it. It is well organized, clearly written, and even APA-styled! But I noticed that the website of your department said that you are instructed in Chinese?
Me: Thank you for your comments of my paper. Yes, we are instructed in Chinese, but at the same time we did a lot of reading in English. Actually, I read English papers everyday! The writing sample is part of my work for the independent research project. To run this project, I have to do a lot of literature reading, and to track on the newest findings in the area. Also, I’ve joined in the lab and have lab meetings every week, which included a lot of literature presentation and sharing. As for the writing, my stay in S’pore helped a lot, actually, the report I wrote for the course there are APA-styled, and on that paper, I did better than those students whose mother language is English!
Prof: that’s really impressive, seems my knowledge of Chinese High education has been outdated.
Prof: it is really nice talking to you. I’ll give the feedback to **, our grad director. I think she will contact you soon. Do you have more questions?
Me: Can I ask how many people you interviewed?
Prof: We do NOT interview people who we arenot about to admit. That means, we are very interested in your application, and the interview is to help us to know if we can fit well with each other, as a guarantee, you know. So, I also want to ask you a question. You do not need to answer if you don’t want to. That’s fine. If we give you the offer, admission with financial aid, would you come?
Me: Well, it’s hard to answer now. Actually I’ve already get the offer from UMich several days ago. But I was still looking forward to your interview. I want more information so that I can make a better decision.
Prof: Oh, then please tell me the parameters which are important in your decision, I will see if I could provide more info to help. you know because of the financial crisis this year, we have limitation on the number of grad students. Last year we admitted 23 students, but this year we can only admit 15. For the area of persuasion & social influence, international students are not common. But the inter-culture area is consisted of international students mainly…..
Me: questions regarding professors' personality/ job hunting/ asked if can contact student there….
Prof: I hope you can carefully consider us…keep in touch..
寒暄，告别。