If getting an offer from CMU Carnegie Mellon University requires absolute talent and a full amount of effort, then getting two professional offers from CMU at the same time, and one of them still carries a prize, needs more talent or more effort? Today, the protagonist of our sharing case, Jialu, is such a student who has received an award offer from CMU of Carnegie Mellon University and a letter of student with a prize of 9000 dollars.

The bad memories of the intermediary application at the undergraduate stage made her hesitant when choosing an art study abroad institution. The failure of her DIY application made her feel discouraged and unsure, but just as all questions will be answered best, Jialu Encountered natural light, her efforts and enthusiasm for dreams, and her support for high energy professionalism also made her obtain the most satisfactory application reply.

　　 Admitted institutions:

　　Carnegie Mellon University/CMU Carnegie Mellon University

　　Masters of Educational Technology and Applied Learning Science/METALS

$9000 scholarship per year

Carnegie Mellon University/CMU Carnegie Mellon University

　　Master of Entertainment Technology

New York University/NYU

　　Interactive Telecommunications/ITP（MPS）

Parsons The New School for Design/Parsons

　　MFA Design and Technology

University of Maryland College Park

　　Master of Human-Computer Interaction

　　 Chapter 1: My unhappy application experience as an undergraduate cannot stop me from pursuing the future

As a relatively new discipline, interaction design is divided into innovation and design colleges in most schools. In terms of curriculum and application requirements, the requirements of interaction design will also be particularly different. This is even more difficult for Jialu, who majored in oil painting in MICA for his undergraduate degree and changed his major from postgraduate to major.

But when we reviewed the whole application process and the creation of her portfolio with Jialu's professional teacher, the keywords given by the teacher were "enthusiastic and interesting", "persistent and serious", "sometimes delicate and sometimes careless", "trust us very much, like trust our best friends". In fact, Jialu has experienced many interesting moments when she became so good with her teachers.

Collected Works of Jialu's CMU at Carnegie Mellon University

When Jialu first came here, he told his teacher that he and his parents did not know much about art study abroad when applying for undergraduate education, so the intermediary experience he chose at that time was not very good, and there were some regrets. And the application of Jialu is also very special. He tried to apply once, but because he didn't know enough about the interaction design specialty, he didn't apply to the ideal college, so he found the natural light with the idea of trying.

In this conversation, the teacher also found that Jialu was not very "confident" about herself, because she was very clear that it was impossible to apply for interaction design without discipline foundation.

This is the same as the communication feedback from the teacher, "I can feel that she was very tangled and under great pressure." Because Jialu has almost no foundation for interaction design, it is doomed to encounter a big problem at the beginning - the professional knowledge and courses that need to be supplemented are very, very many. And because of the unpleasant application experience of the undergraduate course, Jialu needs to add professional knowledge. First of all, she needs to trust the teacher, so that the teacher can better understand her, help her to develop a learning plan, and complete it happily and efficiently together.

Jialu Carnegie Mellon University CMU Collection

Although both the teacher and Jialu have foreseen the "high difficulty" in the future, the teacher also found the unique highlight of Jialu in this communication. "Although her undergraduate application experience is not a good memory for her, she has found us now, which shows that she still refuses to give up for her future and still wants to achieve it. As a teacher, we must help her to achieve it!"

　　MICA Maryland College of the Arts As one of the most high-quality art colleges in the United States with pure art majors, pure art is so famous not only because of MICA's own teaching ability, but also because of its teaching philosophy, which emphasizes students' divergent thinking and interdisciplinary and cross-border abilities. While in MICA, Jialu has already unconsciously understood the necessity of this ability, but he did not realize it because he did not have a systematic review.

In the subsequent communication on specialty selection and professional cognition, the teacher also further confirmed the advantages and learning plan of Jialu: Jialu has some unique ideas on interaction design. Therefore, from the initial basic courses, it is a very targeted interaction design major. "We must help her find herself and realize her dream!" Before the formal start of the course, professional teachers also set their own goals secretly.

　　 Chapter 2: Everything can start from 0, but enthusiasm and persistence must always be there

Soon, after consultation with professional teachers, the course began to revolve around the way of explanation in class+practice after class. Because it has almost zero basic background, and interaction itself is a profession covering a wide range of fields. Therefore, starting from scratch, the curriculum burden can be imagined as "heavy".

The teacher also had a "preventive injection" with Jialu in the early stage, but Jialu immediately let the teacher see her firmness and enthusiasm - complete all basic courses within two months, guarantee at least one class per week, in addition to the learning content explained and interacted by the teacher in class, the teacher will also complete the corresponding homework after class, and carry out independent learning.

After seeing the determination and belief of Jialu, professional teachers and educational administration teachers also started "intensive training" for her. From understanding UX, UI design, product design to understanding, copying and practicing website logical architecture, design research process, competitive product analysis, user interviews, to making persona, using Adobe software to make icons, logos, mobile app interface design, 3D modeling, etc.

Nearly 20 basic courses quickly occupied Jialu's brain and learning time. But Jialu also, as she initially discussed with the teacher, can give the teacher a "super value surprise" from the end of each class to the next class.

The basic course focuses on understanding the basis of the discipline and practicing the software, so as to build a more comprehensive and three-dimensional cognitive framework of the discipline. Therefore, in the final stage of the basic course, in order to consolidate the knowledge learned and smoothly connect with the follow-up courses, the professional teachers and the teaching and research center decided to draw up a simple project with Jialu to complete.

This is actually a big challenge for Jialu. Although she has done a lot of exercises and creation in the early courses, this small project is really carried out by her independently. During this period, Jialu also encountered some small problems, but soon solved them with the teacher and successfully completed the project. The course has also entered the next stage - the preparation of the portfolio.

During the whole basic course, the teacher not only guided the teaching and imparted learning experience to Jialu, but also discussed things and ideas about some events with Jialu as friends. Gradually, Jialu also began to let go of his bad feelings and the burden of distrust. He began to communicate more confidently with the teacher and told the teacher as much as possible about his ideas about his profession and works.

　　 Chapter 3: Growing independently in personal projects and finding more surprises in team cooperation

Before the official start of the portfolio course, the teacher once again had a thorough communication with Jialu, reviewed the content of the previous basic courses, and further started a customized portfolio course more specific to Jialu's own situation.

After this exchange, considering the particularity of interaction design specialty and the situation of Jialu itself, the teacher listed the following key teaching directions:

1. It conforms to Jialu's own projects and has outstanding advantages;

2. Be able to display the positioning and exploration process of the problems solved by the design in the works;

3. Guide Jialu to have independent control and project leading ability;

4. Students will demonstrate their design and research ability in their works;

5. Be able to use scientific methods to analyze and process data in design research;

6. Display the comprehensive ability of interaction design in the works;

7. Graphic design ability, prototype development ability, etc;

8. Be able to independently create personal websites and display pages with unique personal style;

9. Have innovative consciousness, strong logical reasoning ability, and the ability to create something different

Jialu Carnegie Mellon University CMU Collection

Based on these points, the teacher and Jialu jointly determined the preliminary curriculum plan - at the initial stage, there was still one class per week. Later, when Jialu could fully adapt to it, and could independently lead the creation of the work collection, and was basically independent, the curriculum was increased to twice a week.

The earliest course is the basic course in the early stage. The teacher mainly teaches what is interaction design, user experience design, design process and the way of thinking of interaction designers. In this way, we can help Jialu to further study and gain professional understanding. Not only should we give guidance in class, but after class, the teacher also took Jialu to read a lot of relevant materials to consolidate and make up for the knowledge and details that could not be captured in class.

While building a perfect professional cognitive system, the teacher also tries to take Jialu to explore and discuss some fields and topics that she is interested in, find out Jialu's interests, and record these "piecemeal" ideas in the form of sketchbooks or collages to form preliminary sketchbooks.

By the end of the current preparatory course, Jialu and his teacher had accumulated a lot of "usable" inspiration and "extensible" ideas. At this time, the teacher will formally guide Jialu to start thinking about the project.

In the process of project production, because Jialu has always been in a good state, he is very enthusiastic about the courses and responds to the teachers very carefully. In order to ensure the progress of the project and the rapid and efficient progress of the project, the teacher realized that it was time to increase the number of courses to 2 per week.

Jialu Carnegie Mellon University CMU Collection

Project 1 and 2 are Jialu's personal projects. From investigating problems to writing down the steps of the whole design, defining problems, conducting user research, collecting second-hand data, proposing value propositions, designing schemes, screening design schemes, to model making, user testing, and collecting feedback. Behind every tedious step is the idea that Jialu spent the night with his teacher and racked his brains to put forward.

In the early and middle stages, the teacher reviews the progress of the project with Jialu at any time according to her needs, and checks the previous steps. In the middle of the project, the heads of six major departments and the teaching and research center also carried out a more rigorous review of Jialu, helping Jialu to check the small details and optimize the overall plan.

While the portfolio course went smoothly, the teacher also suggested that Jialu could try to cooperate with other students and try to look at the problem from the perspective of other majors. This helps Jialu to look at the problem more comprehensively and realize creativity in a more divergent way. Therefore, taking the opportunity of natural light summer class, Jialu started the third and fourth projects.

It is a new experience for Jialu to cooperate with students with different professional backgrounds. At this time, Jialu also felt the charm of "matching" between different majors. For example, the following project completed by the team -<THE SUN PAINTING>.

Jialu Carnegie Mellon University CMU Collection

In design, we often give more consideration to the relationship between products and services. Few people take into account the "willing idea" of the product itself. Sun Painting (toy) is trying to visualize and visualize the idea of the sun from the perspective of products. Through a series of data collection and analysis, Jialu and his classmates designed a sun centered system and minimized "interaction".

The inspiration for this project comes from the Arts and Crafts and Concept Arts Movement. After studying and investigating various types of artists and art works, Jialu and his group of students have positioned the theme: how to bring more fun to human beings through emerging technologies?

During the survey, we found that there are two key factors that can stimulate people's interest and make people feel "happy", one is contingency, the other is to participate as little as possible. Therefore, based on this conclusion, Jialu and his partners have built a painting toy that can not be copied/repeated. The final result and picture presentation of each work are different, and the user will hardly have too much participation in this process.

During the summer class, Jialu and his classmates completed the project together, and also completed the last personal project under the guidance of the tutor. After all the projects were completed, Jialu and his teacher reviewed and sorted them out as a whole, used one month to proofread and improve them, and finally completed the production of the whole set of works before December.

During this period, Jialu has gone through many internal audits and written evaluations of natural light, from professional tutors, to the heads of six major departments, to the responsible tutors of the teaching and research center. Each of the audit tutors has put forward valuable suggestions to Jialu. And Jialu also fully responded to the teacher's ideas and improved the collection of works for many times. In the end, we received multiple offers from five universities, among which CMU of Carnegie Mellon University won two majors in a row, one with a prize.

In the case of Jialu, it took ups and downs to achieve such results, and the perfect cooperation with teachers did not exist from the beginning. Before Jialu came to the natural light, the poor intermediary experience in her undergraduate stage left her with "bad feelings". However, the process of trying to apply herself before and not getting an offer also made her feel insecure about herself.

But just as Jialu has always insisted on and pursued his dream, the professional team tutor of Natural Light has also accompanied Jialu through the difficulties in the whole process. From professional courses to later applications, every bit of it has helped Jialu with an absolute sense of responsibility. It was this kind of company that made Jialu drop his guard, establish trust with his teacher, and complete the first step of his dream. If you want to know more about CMU of Carnegie Mellon University, please come to Natural Light for free consultation.

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