Over the course of four weekends, NYU Shanghai welcomed 500 of China’s most adventurous high school seniors to participate in a rigorous selection process — it is labelled a process rather than a competition — to narrow that number down to one hundred and fifty. They are encouraged to think of it as a “mutual selection” process and that the best way to get in is to “be yourself”. Although 24 hours is a small period of time to obtain a full image of the right student, the NYU Shanghai Student Admissions team has designed an intense program which lets students present a more-developed image of themselves as an NYU Shanghai student. For the half of my classmates at NYU Shanghai who are like me -- international students — the “Candidate Weekend” held by NYUSH for prospective Chinese freshmen is a hard scene to imagine. As a ‘Peer Ambassador’, I was able to watch the exciting and nerve-wracking event that is the Chinese Candidate Weekend. Within hours of their arrival to Shanghai, Candidates are asked to bring a personal item from home to a banquet held on the 15th floor of the school. There, they hear a speech from Vice-Chancellors Jeffrey Lehman and Yu Lizhong on what qualities NYU Shanghai has that one should look for in finding the “perfect school”. During the banquet, some students stuff themselves full of catered food, while others nervously rearrange the food on their plates while waiting for their turn to present. This is their first chance in the spotlight of NYU Shanghai. Some graciously thank their peers for listening — “… and best of luck to all of you!” — while others shout into the microphone like a talk-show host on “Deal or No Deal”: selling themselves. The morning after the comparatively candid dinner, prospective Chinese freshmen were hurried around from one location to the next within the school. Sample classes, question forums, a free group lunch, a tour of the campus building, a personal interview, and a team-building activity are all components of the Candidate Weekend during which students are being analyzed and annotated. Student Admissions staff then circled on the periphery with pages full of the pictures and names of the students, making small notes on their observations. They note down a student’s individual qualities, as well as her interactions within a group while she cooperates with her teammates. As a Peer Ambassador, I was to act as a resource and a friend to the students as I escorted them to their next assessments. I would wait for them to finish their interviews on the ninth floor — “Oscar, is it bad that I got done first?” — and pretend it wasn’t heartbreaking to look at my group of ten new friends with the knowledge that, on average, only three of them would receive “conditional admission” to the school. Out of curiosity, I asked my group what kind of questions they were asked in the interviews. Fedias, one of the more stand out students, was asked what kind of roommate she would like, to which she replied “someone different than me, maybe from somewhere vast, like Africa. I want to be challenged.” Despite the need to outshine their peers in a highly selective process, teamwork is essential for the group activity. They were given 45 minutes to design and build a kite, and at the end they were all proud of each other. I asked several of them what the best part of the building process was. Each of them looked around their group at the end of this final assessment activity, smiling — “Everyone had a part. We wouldn’t have been able to make this without each other.” Only one hour after they had finally made crucial bonds as a team, it was time to go. In less than 24 hours, complete strangers turned into close friends, and — outside of the final submission of Gaokao scores — the school had collected all the information they would need in order to choose which 150 out of 500 students were the “right fit” for NYU Shanghai. This article was written by Oscar Fossum. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit:Kylee Borger