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The 2024 college entrance examination admission results have been announced one after another. In recent years, non-985/211 colleges and universities have been mentioned more and more, and the society generally has a higher recognition of 985/211 universities. However, this does not mean that non-985/211 colleges and universities have no value or future.

Ten years after the reform of the new college entrance examination, there are new policies and new trends in volunteer application every year. Is it worth studying in non-key universities? How to choose a Sino-foreign joint school? Is the university ranking valuable for reference? Tencent News Education Channel specially invitedAI volunteer question-answering designer, Chen Kunyu, PhD candidate at Tsinghua UniversityshareUnique insights and valuable experience on how to balance professional, providing reference for prospective college entrance examination candidates and college students.

Question: Although some schools are not well-known, they actually have many competitive top majors. Are there any majors in non-key universities that can rival those of famous schools?

A: Regarding this, I need to first popularize the history of the construction and reform of domestic universities. In the early 1950s, when the People's Republic of China was founded, a large-scale reform of colleges and departments was carried out in China, many comprehensive universities were split into single-discipline schools, and a number of single-discipline schools were newly established. For example, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics was actually formed by splitting out aviation-related colleges and departments from Tsinghua University, Peking University, Nankai University, Tianjin University and other schools. There are many such schools, which were directly under the jurisdiction of the corresponding ministries and commissions at that time. The Ministry of Metallurgical Industry governed the Iron and Steel Institute, such as today's Beijing University of Science and Technology; the Ministry of Electric Power Industry governed the Electric Power Institute, such as today's North China Electric Power University.

These schools retain a strong influence in their respective industries. Although many non-985 or non-211 schools are not included in the 985 or non-211 list, they are still competitive because they are directly affiliated with ministries and have significant influence in the industry. Moreover, these schools usually change their names, making it difficult to directly link their names with their original industries.

For example, the University of Science and Technology Beijing, it is difficult to know from the name of the school that it once focused on the steel industry. Similarly, Beijing Institute of Technology was once under the Ministry of Ordnance Industry, and schools such as Nanjing Institute of Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, and Shenyang Institute of Technology also have direct links with the Ministry of Ordnance Industry. However, Donghua Institute of Technology in Jiangxi Province is different from other universities of science and technology. It was once under the jurisdiction of China National Nuclear Corporation and was engaged in nuclear engineering.

Another example is Shenyang Electric Power College, which was originally under the Ministry of Electric Power, and later changed its name to Shenyang Engineering College, which sounds very fake. But in fact, people in Liaoning Province know that this school has strong electrical-related majors, and the provincial score line is 570-80 points, which is close to many 211 universities. However, many provinces in the south don't know this and think it is a second-tier university, and even more than 400 points can be admitted.

In general, if you want to find some good majors in unknown schools, I can only sayTry to find schools with historical backgrounds, especially those that were once under the jurisdiction of various ministries, and choose majors that correspond to the original industry., generally they are very strong. And because there are information gaps in different regions, you canLook for schools in other provincesFor example, people in the north look at schools in the south, and people in the south look for schools in the north, just like the Shenyang Institute of Engineering. If they can find one, they will get a bargain.

Q: USNews, QS and China's Shanghai Ranking have recently released the latest world university rankings. Should candidates refer to these rankings when choosing a school?

A: My suggestion isDon't take these rankings too seriously, because they are usually just comprehensive assessments, and schools with fewer majors are at a disadvantage.This is exactly the opposite of the logic of choosing a school with strong specialty that I just mentioned. Such schools usually have only a few top majors, but because the level of other majors may be low, the comprehensive ranking is not high, because the comprehensive ranking mainly considers the overall level of the whole school.

so,This is more applicable to comprehensive universities.Because they have almost all the majors, through the ranking, we can basically see the overall level of a school. For those schools with more serious subject bias, the ranking is more likely to depend on whether it has an extra major, rather than how strong the strongest major of the school is. So for those students who pursue cost-effectiveness, we should pay more attention to whether we have chosen the school's strong majors, rather than paying too much attention to the school's comprehensive ranking, or even the performance of its weak majors.

The Ministry of Education has actually previously released a subject assessment, which is divided by school and major, and has more substantive reference value than simply looking at the comprehensive ranking.

Q: How do you choose between a comprehensive university and a single-subject college? What are the differences in the resources they can provide?

answer:The main difference between comprehensive universities and single-discipline colleges is actually the rate of guaranteed admission to graduate school.Most single-subject colleges emphasize direct employment after undergraduate graduation, and have few places for guaranteed admission to graduate school. For example, the Central University of Finance and Economics has a high admission score and is one of the top universities in the financial field in China, but its admission rate to graduate school is basically less than 20%. Schools such as Beihang University and Beijing Normal University, which have the same admission score as Central University of Finance and Economics, have much higher admission rates. Therefore, choosing a single-subject school is more likely to be more inclined to employment rather than further study.

Secondly, choosing a school that specializes in a single subject basically limits your career prospects, because the resources that the entire school can provide are concentrated in this industry. If you want to change your major, for example, after studying law for two years, you want to switch to history, if you are in Peking University, you can continue your studies by switching to the history department; but if you want to switch to history at the School of Political Science and Law, I'm sorry, it seems that there are basically few teachers in the history department.

So in the end it depends on whether you are sure of your personal interests. If you are very sure that you will do law-related work in the future and you really want to be a lawyer, then you can choose a school that focuses on politics and law.If you are not sure about your interests, for example, I want to study law just because it seems to have good employment prospects, but I don’t necessarily want to take this path in the future, then it may be better to choose a comprehensive university.

Question: Sino-foreign joint education has been very popular in recent years. How do we choose these schools and training programs?

A: I personally feel that Sino-foreign joint education has not yet been fully standardized. Currently, there are 2+2 (2 years in China, 2 years abroad), 3+1 (3 years in China, 1 year abroad), and even many 4+0 programs. What does 4+0 mean? Four years in China, and then you have to pay about 70,000 to 80,000 yuan in tuition every year. I don’t quite understand why this kind of thing came about. So you can see that there is no clear standard for Sino-foreign joint education, so how well Sino-foreign joint education is done depends entirely on the conscience of the school, which is quite troublesome.

So if you really want to apply for a Sino-foreign joint venture school or major, how do you choose? I think it still depends on some clear indicators. First of all, you have to see what level the foreign school that the Sino-foreign joint venture is looking for is.I think only schools that are at least in the top 100 international rankings such as QS or US News are worth applying to.It should be noted here that we cannot directly compare the international rankings of foreign schools with those of domestic schools. Because domestic schools participate in international rankings, the top 100 are basically schools of the level of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, and University of Science and Technology of China, so some people may think that it is very impressive for foreign schools to be ranked in the top 100? In fact, it is not. The internationalization level and some historical accumulation points of domestic schools are very low, so it is difficult to rank up. And many European and American schools that can rank in the top 100 or top 200 are completely incomparable to domestic 985 or even 211. At least what you can learn in the past is completely incomparable. So don't have too strong aura about foreign schools.If it is a joint venture between China and foreign countries but the foreign school is not particularly good, then I do not recommend considering it.

Of course, there are also some Sino-foreign cooperative schools, and the foreign schools are very good. For example, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Michigan University and Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University have cooperated with well-known foreign schools. Or like New York University Shanghai and Duke Kunshan University, they are simply schools ranked in the top dozens of universities in the world. These schools are recognized.

However, you can't take advantage of everything. If a school has a low admission score and is well recognized, then you can imagine that the tuition will be very expensive.In addition to the four years of tuition, after attending a Sino-foreign joint venture school, there is a high probability that you will have to study abroad for a master's degree or even a doctorate, so you will have to at least prepare additional tuition for studying abroad. For most ordinary families, this expense is very expensive.For example, a two-year master's degree in the UK may cost more than 1 million US dollars. A two-year or three-year master's degree in the United States is slightly cheaper, but it still costs 800,000 US dollars. For most families, this amount of money is a considerable expense.

Therefore, I think one should be cautious about studying in a Sino-foreign joint venture school.Some newly built Sino-foreign joint venture schools, although the foreign schools are of very high standards, have not invested that much resources in the construction of the new campus as a whole, and are not yet considered a comprehensive university. Most students will eventually go abroad to study, rather than working directly after graduating from undergraduate studies or taking the domestic postgraduate entrance examination. At this time, even if you want to quit midway, saying that the money doesn't seem to be enough or it's too expensive, it's too late.

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