Ms. Chanel Zhang, Counselling Director of HOPE International Education and General Manager of HOPE Hangzhou Office was invited by the 9 th ISCS 2024 School Counsellor’s Summit on 24 th March to share her insight on the entry requirements of leading UK universities in 2024.

Chanel Zhang addressing as a keynote speaker in 9th ISCS workshop

About 200 school counsellors from international schools across China attend this two-day event. Chanel started her training by introducing a diagram of Oxford admissions in 2022. She outlined the core of cultivating talents in elite universities. It was to cultivate talents which will not be replaced by AI. She also carefully analyzed the dimensions by which those universities evaluating students: Ability, Aptitude, Attitude, Personality as well as three thinking patterns : Analytical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Critical Thinking. The three thinking patterns in the end were long-term goals and difficult goals. 

In addition to entry requirements of best universities, she also outlined that academic records in some Chinese international schools were increasingly competitive. This has demonstrated a fact that in addition to high requirements for students, teachers would need more knowledge and skills during teaching, planning and counselling process.

Group discussion session of ISCS workshop

In the end, she also emphasized the fact that AI era was unstoppable. Good universities were also very keen on setting up this kind of major. In the near future, there will be only two kinds of people in the workplace: those who can use AI, and those who create AI tools. We as the most ordinary people, cannot be the latter, but we can become the former. Students also needed to become people who can use AI. Hence, teachers in international schools should emphasize this characteristic during their daily teaching, thereby successfully helping their students apply for their ideal universities overseas.