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CEIMS info
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Wednesday, 11 March 2009 09:01 |
Case 1
School: University of Cambridge
Service provided: Addressing a policy glitch in Cambridge’s admission procedure that neither the student nor Cambridge were able to rectify without expert assistance.
Summary: Student ‘X’ was an elite student from a top Nanjing high school. In 2007, he applied to Cambridge University, and was given an aptitude test and personal interview, both of which he passed with ease. This earned him a conditional offer of admission to one of the world’s top universities.
Unfortunately, one month later, he received word that the processing of his admission had halted, because he had failed to submit a GAOKAO score.
In China, students need not take the GAOKAO exam if they have (as was the case with Student X) received a formal offer of admission from a Chinese University.
Enter the CEIMS team: in short order, we put together an action plan that included: 
- Authentication of his transcripts (done in person at his school by a CEIMS agent)
- Analysis and verification of the admission offer he had received from the Chinese University
- A report about the awards he had received in high school, designed to give Cambridge a clear valuation of their worth
Conclusion: this package allowed Student X to circumvent Cambridge’s requirement for a GAOKAO score, and it also created for Cambridge an efficient procedure, to deal with similar occurrences in the future.
Student X is now in his third year of study at Cambridge. When contacted by CEIMS, he had this to say:
I don’t know how I could have solved my application problem without CEIMS help. They were very helpful in explaining the Chinese policies of education to the Cambridge admissions office. If not for them, I might have missed this amazing opportunity altogether.
Case 2
School: University of Bristol
Service provided: analyses of a Chinese student’s academic awards, which provided Bristol with proper understanding of their true value
Summary: Student ‘Y’, a senior high school student from Xi’an (Shanxi province) applied to the University of Bristol’s Faculty of Science in 2007
Student Y excelled in mathematics, and had won a number of math competitions during his high school years. However, admission officers from Bristol were unable to consider these awards as part of his application, without understanding the true value of each award.
Thus, the Bristol team asked CEIMS to help. Via our vast network of Chinese contacts, we first tracked down the sponsors of every award Student Y had received, and then analyzed each one using the following criteria:
- The number of participants in each competition
- The number of winners in each competition
- The number and type of prizes awarded to winners
- Background information on each competition’s sponsor
Conclusion: based on the CEIMS analyses, Bristol was able to accurately determine the true value of each of the awards the student had received.
In other words, CEIMS ‘culturally translated’ Student Y’s awards, which allowed the Bristol staff to perform their assessment procedures with greater ease and clarity.
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