In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one. If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#1
The Best Advice I Ever Got For Writing in English: “Treat the Professors Like Idiots”
By Sunny Peng

Our top post for 2012 was also one of best revelations we’ve ever had on the blog. It was Sunny’s recounting of a piece of advice she got during her freshman year: “… to treat the professors like idiots …”

Read it: “The Best Advice I Ever Got For Writing in English: ‘Treat the Professors Like Idiots’“

Creative Commons Photo: Stephanie Graves

“In my first semester,” Sunny explained, “I would always receive comments on my papers like, ‘Try to be more clear (explicit),’ no matter how clear and explicit I thought my papers were.”

A savvy teaching assistant eventually helped her figure out the problem:

My high school Chinese teacher always reminded us to not tell readers everything, but rather to leave space for their “reconstruction” of our words. This does not work in the U.S., where you are expected to be very explicit in making your arguments and not make assumptions without fully explaining them.

Or, as her TA put it, in what Sunny described as a “very blunt and funny way,” she needed “to treat the professors like idiots, and explain everything very clearly to them in my essays.”

This idea generated a lot of discussion among our readers. Some commenters suggested that Americans may be trying to avoid critical thinking, but Sunny countered that “critical thinking is one of the most important things I have been learning from Americans.”

Commenter Dana eventually explained, “It is precisely because they *do* apply critical thinking skills to what they read that most Americans tend to prefer that writing be more direct.”

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In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one. If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#2
Why a Weak SAT Score Didn’t Kill My College Dreams
by Phillip Dube

It’s not that standardized test scores, like the SAT or GRE, aren’t important, it’s just that they don’t have to make or break your college dreams. That’s what Phillip concluded in his post about what happened when his SAT scores didn’t meet his expectations.

Read it: “Why a Weak SAT Score Didn’t Kill My College Dreams“

“I thought it was unfair for my college preparedness to be judged on the four hours of mental torture that is the SAT, and on a test result that belied my actual abilities,” he wrote.

My high school transcript was stellar, my essays were well-written (so said my EducationUSA advisor), and I had dedicated a lot of effort and energy to making my community a better place.

I don’t know for sure that my SAT score is what hurt my Amherst application, but I felt that surely all those achievements were worth something. Did they not reflect my potential to succeed at an American college better than the SAT exam?

Phillip eventually applied and was admitted to a test-optional school that didn’t require him to submit an SAT or ACT score at all.  ”Without the option of leaving that score off my application …, I’m not sure I would have had the opportunity to study here,” he said.

It’s good news for anyone whose test day didn’t go exactly as they had planned. Anyone like Shree, who chronicled his disappointing SAT experience in one of our most unique posts of 2012.

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In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one. If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#3
The ‘Wrong’ Way to Answer ‘How Are You?’
by Zita MF 

Do you know how to answer when an American asks, “How are you?” Zita discussed the slightly confusing protocol in another post that garnered quite a bit of attention in 2012.

Photo by Nick Hoang

It’s not a real question, she explained. “I’m expected to respond, ‘Good’ or ‘Fine,’ and ask the other person how they are, to which they will also respond, ‘Good.’”

Read it: “The Wrong Way to Answer ‘How Are You?’“

“To this day, this style of greeting strikes me as an abuse of a question with which people show care and concern to one another in my culture,” Zita wrote, but it says something important about American culture:

In general, people from the U.S. do not like to express their emotions to strangers or acquaintances. They prefer to put on a permanent smile and mask their other feelings. The U.S. culture is based on individualism – the idea that one should only rely on one’s self and family – and this often leads them to avoid getting too close to others, including by using meaningful expressions in ways that might seem superficial to foreigners.

Zita decided, “[O]ne of the challenges and the beauties of living abroad is embracing the peculiarities of the host country. To me this means learning how to speak not only the language but also the culture.”

Learning to speak both the language and the culture takes practice, and a willingness to make mistakes, a fact Anil was kind enough to share in one of our most brutally honest and funny posts of the year.

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In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one. If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#4
Why do International Students Crave Food From Home?
Contributions from Mohammed al-Suraih, Sebastian Sanchez, Javaria Khan

A common complaint among international students is how much they miss their native cuisine, so it’s no surprise that one of our most popular posts of 2012 was one examining just what it is about food that makes it so important to international students.

We learned that food interacts with your brain in some unique ways. Not only do you start forming your food preferences before you’re even born, so that by the time you study abroad some of your tastes for native food are pretty deeply engrained, but food is also deeply tied to memory, so nostalgia and food cravings become intertwined.

Read it: “3 Things You Don’t Know About Food and Why International Students Crave Cuisine From Home“

But one of the most interesting things we learned about food is that what you eat is part of who you are; food and identity are linked together.

In fact, one reason why international students miss native food so much is because they’re also missing the stable sense of identity they had back home.  Studying abroad redefines your sense of who you are, what you want, and what you believe, and it can be a difficult process.

We saw just how difficult in Senzeni’s examination of how her self image changed during a year in the States, one of our most moving posts of 2012. ”The certainty I once had about what I wanted to see and achieve is gone, the answers replaced by more and more questions about myself and my path,” she wrote.

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In the few days before 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we’ll be looking back at some of our top posts from the past year, starting with number five and counting down to number one.  If you missed these articles the first time around, now’s your time to see why we’ve found these particular pieces so compelling.

#5
On Being an African in the US: Navigating an Endless Web of Stereotypes
by Simba Runyowa

One of our most read, and most thought-provoking, pieces from 2012 was Simba’s moving look at how Africans are perceived in the U.S., and his plea for a more balanced perspective.

Harare, Zimbabwe. Would an American know that this is Africa? (Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Martin Addison)

“Do you live in a ‘real’ house back in Zimbabwe?” Simba said he’s been asked. “Do people have cars in Africa?” “How come you speak such good English?”

Read it: “On Being an African in the US: Navigating an Endless Web of Stereotypes“

But, he added:

While these comments all made me cringe inwardly in disbelief, none of them topped a remark I received while eating in the college dining hall early this semester, when somebody (Let’s call him Boy Z) remarked, ‘It must hurt you to see people throwing away food when so many people in Africa are starving.’

“It’s high time the world moves beyond these parochial, dated frames and seriously reorients the way it engages with African people,” Simba concluded, adding that while Africa certainly has its problems, so does America.

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“I just got an invitation from one of my anthropology professors for a Christmas Eve dinner at his house. Would you like to go with me?” I asked my Chinese roommate while she was struggling with some high-level econometric problems. She immediately lifted her head up, “Nice! I’d love to!”

Why did my host ask us to bring him gifts? Read on to find out!

“Wait a second. This is funny,” said I, as she was about to go back to numbers and equations, “The professor asked me to bring a dish and a gift to the dinner. I can understand about bringing a dish. But how could someone invite you to his house while asking you explicitly to bring a gift?”

I found out eventually what the gift was for, but first I spent a lot of time getting excited about this Christmas Eve dinner, even when I was studying for my finals. I had traveled home to China during last winter break, so this year’s Christmas would be another of my “first times” in the U.S. Besides, as an anthropology major interested in America, being able to celebrate Christmas in the U.S. with Americans fascinated me.

My roommate and I got up very early on December 24th, Christmas Eve, to start worrying about the food we would bring to the dinner. We had no idea how to cook American food, and almost everything in our fridge was from an Asian market in town. “You know what? We can just make Chinese food. It would not look that weird. He is an anthropology professor, so he would probably be very interested in what we cook.” I said to my roommate.

My professor knocked on our door to pick us up at 5:50 pm. We said “Merry Christmas” to each other as my roommate and I came to his car, carrying a high-pressured cooker with Chinese pork rib soup inside. Of course we had our wrapped gifts in tow as well. “I am curious how Americans will react to a Chinese soup at a Christmas Eve dinner, and how they are going to eat the ribs in the soup,” my roommate whispered to me in the car.

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My family on Christmas

My American Thanksgiving was a truly wonderful experience and gave me a glimpse into what the holiday means for Americans and those living in America. I was privileged to have two Thanksgiving feasts with all the traditional foods, turkey, apple pie, green bean casserole, and the works! The first was at my church the week of Thanksgiving where the whole church sat down for a meal cooked by the ladies’ group. The second was a more intimate affair with my pastor and his family in their home.

What I loved about the Thanksgiving holiday:

• Turkey and apple pie are wonderful foods; either I ate food made by really good cooks or I just love food, but I am thinking it’s the cooks. The overindulgence of Thanksgiving is quite enjoyable and the truth is you can’t help but be overstuffed after digging into a lavish Thanksgiving feast!

• The significance of sharing with those without, including people far from homes or their families, is the best part of the holiday. Communities, churches and individuals don’t just make a huge meal and eat on their own, in a way they seek out those with whom they may share with so that the true meaning of the holiday is celebrated. I remember seeing multiple signs at churches for free thanksgiving dinners to all.

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One year ago: December 2011. A girl’s bags are packed and she is literally “ready to go,” just like John Denver was. She is leaving her home, her family to go miles away, halfway across the world, to the land of dreams, the U.S.A. Yes, she is scared. Yes, she is nervous. However, there is this small part of her which is jumping with excitement. And the reason for its excitement is not a normal one: after 19 years of Christmas in Pakistan, she is excited to finally witness the holiday in her dream land. Today, I, that girl, have come full circle, back to Washington, D.C. for that same holiday.

When my plane landed at the Washington Dulles airport on December 27 last year, I won’t lie, I felt a bit lost. It was a new country, with new people and it was just so cold. But as I rode away from the airport, every house that was decorated with Christmas lights and reindeers and Santas would just make me so happy.

Decorations on a house in Queens, NY (Photo: Reuters)

A house in Alabama all decorated for Christmas (Photo: AP)

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Running at night (Photo: Reuters)

One of the first things I noticed when I got to school in Virginia was how many people ran outside.  They seemed to be everywhere, at all times of day or night – people jogging through the main quad, students walking around in exercise gear, traffic jams as runners tried to navigate through slower-moving students on their way to class.

I was not a sporty person before I came here.  My high school life was pretty hectic, and when I had time away from schoolwork I was too tired to work out.  Even when I went to college in China and had a bit more spare time, working out was not part of my regular routine.

Coming to university here totally challenged my belief that working out is something you only do when you have lots of free time.  I hear my friends say, “I have so much work to do,” and then a minute later, “I’m going for a run.”

One of my housemates is incredibly busy during the day, so she started getting up very early to make time for running.  She is not obligated or forced to, but she wants to.

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This guest post comes from Yun Ye, who is not only interning at VOA this semester, but also applying to graduate school. She recently attended an information session for her top choice school, and came back with a new perspective on the role of the GRE in admissions.

More and more Chinese students are attending graduate school in the U.S. – 88,429 at last count, an increase of 15% from the previous year – and how to get into the dream school is something weighing on the minds of many Chinese students.

Among my friends in China who, like me, wanted to pursue higher education in the U.S., the conversation was often about what schools we were planning to apply to and how we planned to get in – and when we thought about how we planned to get in, we often thought about our test scores.

In Chinese education, grades are the most important thing to a student. When I was at school, I remember striving for an excellent grade had been almost everyone’s goal. With that mentality, when my friends and former classmates started applying to U.S. grad schools, they put a lot of pressure on themselves to get a high score on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). The GRE is a standardized test required for admission at most graduate schools.

People who got a good score on the GRE would share their study experiences on online forums, which others would read in the hopes of emulating their performance.  Chinese students preparing to study abroad get very familiar with forums such as “Xiaomaguohe.com,” “Taisha” or “Jituo.”

I also know people who spent a lot of money on classes to prepare for the GRE test, and people who dedicated a couple of months to studying; some people even took half a year to study.

I’m sure all that studying will eventually pay off in their scores, but I learned something valuable when I visited graduate schools recently in preparation for my own applications: the GRE score isn’t as important as my Chinese classmates made it out to be.

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Recently Sunny shared her story of arriving in the U.S. for the first time, and suddenly feeling she had forgotten all the English she ever learned – asking for the phone seemed an impossible task.  Anil wrote in to share a similar experience.  When he arrived at J.F.K. airport this fall, coming from Turkey to attend a graduate program, he was overwhelmed.

For a while Anil says he avoided communicating with people and joining in with activities because of how he struggled with his English, but then something happened that got him over his fears:

I can clearly remember that day. I felt like I had to do something, as usual, and I jumped from my couch.  I gave myself a simple purpose for hitting the road: buying some raisins for my oatmeal (if you are an oatmeal fan, you already know that oatmeal and dried fruit are perfect matches. If you are not, I suggest you give it a shot. After that experiment you will understand me more clearly).

After I started my journey to the shop, I was just happy to be outside.  I said “good afternoon” to some folks and I received some smiles.  I was thinking that a day could not be more awesome.  I entered the store and I started searching for raisins in an aisle of dried fruit. But they weren’t there. I was so disappointed, but because my task was finding raisins for my next day’s oatmeal, I decided to ask a staff person.

I found a staff member and walked up to her.  “Hi, how are you? I have a problem.” After a second she asked me, “Yes sir, how may I help you?”

I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t remember the word: raisin.  I felt my face was burning, but I also knew I had to cope with the problem.  Suddenly, I found an exit door for my situation.  I decided to try and describe raisins.

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A woman puts a photo of a child on a makeshift memorial in the Sandy Hook Village of Newtown, Conn., as the town mourns victims killed in a school shooting

“Shootings in high schools and colleges are unfortunately very ‘American’ things in my mind,” Nareg once wrote on this site. “Maybe it’s because of the media coverage, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of such tragic incidents with such regularity in other parts of the world.”

Nareg was reacting to a 2010 incident in which a student at the University of Louisville was arrested after pulling a gun at a meeting with faculty. Luckily no one was hurt in that incident, but it certainly wasn’t the first gun-related incident at an educational institution – universities are still reeling from the 2007 shooting at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, when student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people – and, as we found out last week, it’s far from the last.

On Friday, December 14, the U.S. and the world were shocked by news that 20-year-old Adam Lanza had opened fire at a Connecticut elementary school, killing 20 young children and six women.

“I heard the news of this unfortunate event on Friday afternoon as I was coming from my final exam for my first semester in an American college,” said Phillip, a Zimbabwean freshman at Bates College. “I wanted to cry for the loss of the young lives. I wanted to cry for the loss of the creativity, intelligence, talent and enthusiasm for life in those young boys and girls.”

He also said he began to think about the gun culture in America, as did many other international students.

“I arrived in August, just a few weeks after the shock of the Colorado massacre [in which 12 were killed and dozens wounded at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises"], and yet this ugly and tragic issue has come around again so soon,” reflected Tom, who comes from England and is studying at the University of Maryland.

“I have to admit, one of my earliest concerns when coming to America was my vulnerability to gun crime.”

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Once again, we’ve scoured the internet to find upcoming free webinars and other events of interest to anyone who wants to study in the U.S.  This week: lots for prospective MBA and law students.

As always, if you attend any of these events, report back and let us know what you learned! (Use the comments, the Facebook page or just email me – jstahl@voanews.com). And please share any online events you’ve found that we haven’t.

Coming up:

December 18

MBA Watch: Live Q+A with JHU Carey Adcom
More details: http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/events 

mbaMission: Long-term Planning
8pm US eastern time
More details: http://www.manhattangmat.com/EventShow.cfm?EID=3&eventID=11190 
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What is behind all this school spirit?

When I first arrived at the University of Maryland, and for many weeks after, I was bemused by the number of students who walked around dressed from head to toe in clothing with our university’s name on it, and by the volume of merchandise in the university bookstore that features our mascot, Testudo the terrapin.

The weeks went by, and every day you could guarantee that at least 50% of the students on campus would be wearing at least one garment of University of Maryland attire. It wasn’t just the students – I saw their parents sporting large ‘M’ bumper stickers on their cars, and even younger siblings wearing Maryland red.

The university that you choose to attend in England is something to be proud of – most of us worked hard to get there and try to make the most of the experience – but at the end of the day it is just a university: a place to earn a degree, to meet friends, and to introduce you to another way of life.

Here in College Park, going to the University of Maryland is not merely an academic or a social choice – it is a way of life.

I remember one of the first orientation seminars I had when I arrived in Maryland, during which they played us a video showing a sea of red-clad students singing along to the Maryland victory song. They didn’t seem at all reserved or self-conscious to be professing so publicly their love for their educational institution.

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