Carnegie Mellon University CMU is a comprehensive university in the United States. It is the first university in the world to set foot in interaction design. Interaction design ranks first in the United States all the year round, and industrial design ranks third in the United States all the year round. It is recognized as the interaction/industrial design palace in the industry. Only a single digit of mainland students can apply for graduate programs every year! So how can we squeeze into the top of such a pyramid? What kind of background is needed? What kind of works are needed? Today, we are going to interview Qiao, a natural light student who has received an offer of interaction design from Carnegie Mellon University. Let's answer it with our own experience!

Qiao, an undergraduate majoring in industrial design in Tongji University, applied for a postgraduate majoring in American interactive design after changing his major New York University New York University, Pratt Institute, Parsons The New School for Design, etc.

　　 How did this logically energetic girl get an offer from CMU of Carnegie Mellon University? Let's listen to the secret of her works!

　　 Q: First, let's briefly introduce your personal application background, such as the original major, the school/major you applied for, and the preparation cycle of your portfolio.

Qiao classmate: It took me about half a year to prepare my collection of works. Since I had accumulated some projects when I was in college, I have been working on my collection of works since the beginning of natural light. Because of the tight time, I didn't take any basic courses again, and my main focus was on sorting out ideas and logic, and finishing the composition of the collection.

　　 Q: There are several projects in the collection. What are the contents of these projects?

Qiao classmate: There are four projects in my portfolio. Some of these projects are group work of the school, some are cooperation with companies or public welfare organizations, some are combination of industrial design and interaction design, and some are graphic design.

　　 Project 1:

The first project is about rhinoceros protection. This project is cooperated with a foreign professor and a public welfare organization in South Africa.

What we have done is mainly to promote the protection of rhinoceros in China. The final work is a small interactive bookmark, which can take people to have some interaction, and then can get some online promotional content through scanning. Some of the patterns above are a little combined with graphic design.

The innovation of this work is that when people are doing similar topics, they usually think of online publicity. But we found some Chinese bookstores, and in this form, we found a way to use paper media as a starting point for propaganda.

　　 Project II:

The second project is a school group work. We made a robot, which is a product of industrial design. This work is designed to teach children to learn programming, 3D printing and other technical knowledge of robots.

Because the robot is designed for children, the appearance of this product will combine a sense of loveliness and technology. We smoothed out its structure and installation steps very clearly so that children can quickly install it in 12 steps. The logic of each part is also clearly explained, so they can understand it quickly.

　　 Project 3:

The third project is about a design of the bridge, which is the cooperation between the industrial design specialty and the civil engineering specialty of our school. Industrial design is responsible for modeling and appearance, while civil engineering is responsible for calculation and so on.

The design of this bridge is mainly biased towards the shape. It has a sense of technology and is relatively novel. In this project, I used some parametric modeling methods to simulate the shape of the bridge on the computer, which is useful for something like graphical programming. It is to manually select the most appropriate form after simulation on the computer, and then add some beautification to this form. The final modeling visual effect will be better.

　　 Project 4:

The fourth project is a home design, which has certain human interaction. The theme of this home is no mobile phone space. The purpose of this home is to guide you to think about the relationship between people and mobile phones in the office environment.

The shape of this design is also made into a cartoon and POP image, with a big mouth and many teeth inside. When you put your mobile phone on your teeth, you can light up your home smile, and then you can also light up your own smile. It means that when you put down your mobile phone in the process of communicating with others, you can communicate face to face.

　　 Q: After listening to your portfolio project, I can feel that you have a good foundation and have some good project experience. Maybe many students will choose DIY because of this foundation. Why do you choose to work in art study institutions?

Qiao classmate: I chose to work in natural light because I wanted to sort out the ideas of each project. For example, from the beginning of the research to how the design came out. The collection of works is different from the previous assignments. It can't just present a result, so it needs to spend more time on the whole design logic and typesetting.

　　 Q: Tutors in Portfolio Coaching Did you get any help in the process?

Qiao classmate: Yes, what the teacher of the collection of works gives me most is the communication on logic and typesetting, not what the teacher wants to teach me and what to do. Usually I think of something well, but I don't know whether such logic is appropriate, so I take it to the teacher. The teacher gives me some logical opinions and suggestions, and then I will revise it.

　　 Q: What is the biggest problem encountered in the collection process? How did you solve the problem later?

Qiao classmate: At the beginning, it will be hard and slow. Although I started to do it half a year before the application, I was a little unable to do it at the beginning. I felt that my own things could not be explained logically or in terms of typesetting.

The later solution is to adjust slowly, which is actually a problem of experience accumulation. Later, it will be faster and easier. At the beginning, it is really difficult to advance without knowing the method and experience.

　　 Q: Why did you change your major and choose interaction design?

Qiao classmate: I would like to study this specialty of combining product and interaction. In fact, this specialty of CMU I applied for is the deepening of product, interaction and product later stage, and also includes the combination of some business, business, management and engineering majors, which are interdisciplinary majors.

Then it will be more consistent with the projects I have done before, because my undergraduate school is not just learning product modeling, but more about design thinking, such as open source. So I think I will be more interested in this interdisciplinary and comprehensive way to grasp the specialty of products.

　　 Q: What new knowledge do you have about these two disciplines after finishing your portfolio? Does your undergraduate industrial design major have any influence or help in the collection of interaction design works and the application for master's degree?

Qiao: In my understanding, product design tends to focus more on functions and modeling, but interaction design tends to focus more on learning user centered thinking. Because the product must have some interaction with people, then my collection will show how I think about the relationship between it and people, or how I apply or change the behavior of people, and there will be such a display in the collection.

　　 What are the requirements to apply for Carnegie Mellon University?

The official requirement of Carnegie Mellon University is personal statement+three letters of recommendation+GRE score+TOEFL/IELTS score+transcript+portfolio+video essay.

　　 Video Essay to show oral ability and personal characteristics

The other several items are well understood by everyone. They are conventional art study abroad application materials, but some students may be unfamiliar with this video essay. In recent two years, many colleges and universities, in addition to requiring Essay, have begun to require applicants to record about 60 seconds of video Essay, which generally introduces themselves or selects an answer from the designated questions. The purpose is to examine the performance of applicants in the camera through intuitive videos, so as to determine the matching degree between students and the majors of the university.

Video Essay in some colleges and universities is optional, which means you can not record or submit it, but if you submit it, the probability of successful application will increase a lot. Generally, 80% of the students who receive offers have submitted Video Essay. If the school requires the video recording to be submitted, the students will be relatively relaxed and can be fully prepared. If they are not satisfied with the recording, they can repeat the recording until they are satisfied with themselves, or even complete the video with the help of friends and relatives.

In CMU MIIPS professional network application, Video Essay must be submitted. It is also online recording. First, the applicant will have a chance to take a test. After clicking "Ready" on the page, the screen will show the questions that the students need to answer. The test students will have 10 seconds of thinking time+10 seconds of answering time, and then the official recording will begin!

The formal recording process is the same as the test process, but there can be 30 seconds of preparation time+180 seconds of question answering time. The whole process needs to be completed at one go because it is completely irreversible, and the operational space is very small. Therefore, it is suggested that students of online Video Essay should sort out their experiences in advance, be familiar with the characteristics of school courses and enrollment requirements, watch more videos of past interviewees on Youtube, learn more experience and practice more, try to appear calm and speak at a moderate speed in the videos, so that the admissions officer can see a natural and emergency capable you.

We can see on the CMU enrollment page that MIIPS clearly states that this is an interdisciplinary project and hopes that the students applying for it come from different professional fields. Cai, a former natural light student, also reported that the students in the school project came from various countries and professional fields after entering CMU, and the composition was very diverse. Because they are good at different things, they can complement each other in learning.

　　 Interdisciplinary+social practice

Although it is not stated in the hard conditions, the portfolio with interdisciplinary integration projects and practical projects must be the most advantageous, and the application CMU Interaction Design of Carnegie Mellon University , computer or industrial background must be strong.

Screenshot from CMU official website

We can see from the previous application experience of Qiao that she has some social practice experience and good international project experience, and has an industrial design background.

The background of students is an established fact. Some students may have very good undergraduate colleges, which can provide many good opportunities. Some students are average, but this is not a weakness in the application. Such students can strive to improve their practical experience, ranging from participating in some meaningful activities, workshops, short-term classes, summer schools, to forming their own teams to participate in some design competitions and charity activities. These are also the ways that natural light has been trying to create for students to improve the background. Or, if you have outstanding talent in a certain aspect, you can also show it as far as possible, so that the admissions officer can see more of your possibilities and increase the chances of admission.

Today, I would like to remind students that another key point in preparing their portfolios is time. I have been encouraging and reminding students who are interested in applying to overseas colleges and universities to prepare for their own portfolio creation as soon as possible from the beginning of preparing to apply for art study abroad, and accumulate some projects to avoid temporary cramming in later applications, and also to take into account language, professional courses, and portfolio production.

　　 Looking for an agency or DIY?

Today, Qiao has accumulated enough work projects in his four years of college. He just needs to clear his mind with his teacher and organize them into a collection of works. Many students here may be puzzled. They think that I have enough content. Why do they want to ask the teacher to make a collection of works? In fact, this involves the differences between the collection of works used by the applicant institution and the collection of individual works, school assignments, and cooperation projects. The focus of these personal collections is different from that of the schools applying for them.

Take Qiao as an example. First of all, most of her works in college were completed in the form of group cooperation. Everyone brainstormed and did their own work. The final presentation of her works was also based on the presentation of results. Secondly, these projects are more practical and have a certain degree of practicality.

However, the collection of works applied for is totally different. We can often see such words as research, ideas, creation process, interest, experience, and logical thinking in the collection requirements of any school. Because the school should look at the creative ability of students, not a result, but the whole process of the result, and the quality and potential reflected in the process.

In particular, professionals such as industrial design and interaction design, which rely on strong logic support, need a very clear and detailed process to explain how the works come from. At this time, we can learn more experience on topics and screening projects with the help of tutors. It can also optimize the work project again while sorting out the logic, so that the work collection has a more sense of design and increase the application advantages.

The above is a summary of the experience of applying for studying abroad at Carnegie Mellon University from Qiao. Studying abroad in art is not easy, and it is even more difficult to apply for a strong major in top school, but the gains after hard work are also incalculable. We hope that every student can strive for the best future.

Natural light shares more topics for you:

Where is the best place to study interactive design? Which institution is good for British and American graduate students to apply for interactive design?

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