Hopkins-Nanjing Center Blog

HNC MAIS student Emily Shea reports on some of the recent career-related activities that have taken place at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center: Hello again! If there’s one thing that’s always being talked about among Center students, it’s post-graduation plans. Recently at the Center we had two career-related presentations, the first was a visit from the US Consul General of Shanghai, and the other was our introduction to the Career Services Center on campus.  The Consul General and other consulate staff that came to the Center began by telling us about the consulate’s purpose and mission and ways that the consulate can help us with while we’re living abroad, such as passport services and travel safety information. After the presentations, there was a Q&A session. The questions centered on careers in the Foreign Service and reflected just how many students at the HNC are interested in this field. Many students, including myself, have at one time or are currently looking into...

HNC Admissions is traveling the country to visit your universities and Chinese classes!  Today Tuesday, October 21 and tomorrow Wednesday, October 22 the HNC Office of International Admissions will not be open to office visits because our admissions representatives will all be on the road recruiting.  However, you can always reach an admissions representative by email.  Alternatively, if you would like to schedule a visit to our DC-based admissions office at another time, or to visit the Hopkins-Nanjing Center itself, please email nanjing@jhu.edu to set up an appointment.  We look forward to meeting you in DC, Nanjing, or at your university!

With the changing of the seasons, HNC's four person student committee is likely already hard at work planning this year's Halloween festivities.  For today's Throwback Thursday post, we look back at Halloween at HNC from 1986 to today.   Halloween 1986 : Since the HNC's earliest days, Chinese and international students have come together to celebrate Halloween.   Halloween 2004: HNC faculty and staff often join in on the fun.  Here former Co-Director Robert Daly and his family celebrate Halloween at the HNC.   Halloween 2013: The tradition continues.

We've already introduced readers to our new student bloggers Tyler and Emily .  Last but not least is HNC MAIS student Thomas Holt.  Read on to learn more about his background studying Chinese and why he decided to attend the Hopkins-Nanjing Center: 大家好！ Hey everyone, my name is Thomas Holt, and I’m a first year MAIS student with a concentration in International Politics. 我的中文名字是侯天慕 .  I graduated this year from Penn State with a BA in Chinese and a minor in History. I’m thrilled to be working with the HNC Washington Support Office, and I look forward to communicating with anyone who has an interest in the HNC through online chats, along with documenting my first year at the HNC through the blog here. I also invite anyone who has questions about the HNC to email me at tholt5@jhu.edu! My interest in China began shortly after I began my freshmen year of undergrad. I had a vague desire to be fluent in a foreign language by the time I graduated from under...

With the application deadline a few months away, it's a good idea to start considering who you will ask to write recommendation letters on your behalf.    Letters of recommendation are an important component of the HNC application so don't   underestimate the potential of a recommendation letter to positively (or negatively) affect your application.  Below are some recommendation letter tips: Two recommendations are required but a maximum of three may be submitted.   No more than one recommendation should be written by a Chinese language instructor.  Applicants often mistakenly believe that the admissions committee prefers recommendations from Chinese language teachers, but the STAMP Chinese Proficiency Test already provides an indicator of your Chinese language level.  Instead, the admissions committee would prefer to read a letter that addresses another aspect of your academic or professional career.   Recommenders that are well-...

Meet Emily Shea, our new student worker based in Nanjing!  Emily is a first year MAIS student.  Read on to learn more about Emily and her first few weeks at HNC: Hello blog readers! Emily and HNC classmates Nice to meet you, my name is Emily Shea. I’m originally from beautiful Gig Harbor, Washington. I graduated from the University of Washington, majoring in Chinese language, this June 2014. I enjoy running and reading and am an accomplished doodler. I have studied Chinese for about six years, beginning in high school. This is my fourth trip to China and will be by far my longest. I am a first year in the Masters of Advanced International Studies program here at HNC, only about three weeks in to this two-year adventure! It’s been a whirlwind first month getting started here. We are currently halfway through our Chinese National Week break, and I finally have a spare moment to blog. Classes will start up again this Wednesday, so most students that aren’t on a day tr...

HNC students are currently on a one-week break for China's National Day.  Many are spending this time traveling or exploring their new home of Nanjing.  HNC Certificate/SAIS MA student Tyler Makepeace reflects on the camping trip he and several of his Chinese and international classmates took during the National Day holiday in 2013: This week last year, China celebrated its National Day (specifically on Oct 1), and so the HNC students had the week off. I had planned to travel to Hangzhou, one of the prettiest cities in China, for guoqing jie , but Constantine, a student from Chongqing, noted that if we were actually able to find train tickets and a hostel in Hangzhou within three days of guoqing jie it would be akin to winning the lottery. So we settled on camping in Laoshan National Park, on the far western side of Nanjing. As for camping supplies, Constantine had found a man online who could give us tents, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads to rent for the trip. Tues...

It's October 1 which means HNC students are on break for China's National Day, but that also means it's a good time for prospective students to start their applications!  The first step in the application process is   Chinese proficiency testing .  All applicants to the Hopkins-Nanjing Center are required to take Avant Assessment's STAMP Chinese Proficiency Test.  The STAMP is the most convenient way to ensure that you will be prepared to study at the HNC. To help you do your best on the STAMP, we’ve answered a few commonly asked questions about the exam below: The STAMP is entirely multiple choice, and focuses mainly on listening and reading comprehension. There is no oral component. There are no formal study guides for the exam, but when you request the STAMP from our office, we’ll send you a link to a practice test to give you a better idea of the structure of the test. You can take the STAMP online with a proctor.  There's no need to go to a testing cent...