is anyone applying to the IBCE track China?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of South Carolina
1

I haven’t heard an answer from the university yet (submitted honors app on 11/15) but the China IBCE track is what really drew me to USC. I’ve been studying Chinese for four years in high school (AP now) and I earned a merit scholarship from the US Dept of State/National Security Language Initiative for Youth to study in China for six weeks this past summer.

The website says that the application will come out in mid-December, so has anyone heard anything? I’m also kind of surprised I haven’t gotten a decision yet, but I guess it’s just the mail.

2

Applications are online now

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This goes for anyone considering IBCE or the International Business Chinese Enterprise program.
Here is a miniature flow chart.
Do you have a rich family and connections which will help you land a position at a huge investment bank?
If the answer to that question is yes, do this program, otherwise, DON’T DO IT.
The program provides you no additional benefits to further your career or improve your chances at landing a job. If you think this program will help you get a backdoor into the USC IB program, you are right, it does, but you need to value the costs. Think about this:
Your first year, you are allowed to do what you want at USC, get involved in clubs, join a fraternity or sorority, make friends, and maybe meet the love of your young life. None of any of these things will matter or do anything if you stay in IBCE. After the first year, you get one month off to pack and they ship you to Hong Kong to start taking Chinese classes. You do nothing but Chinese for two months. I wish I could say this strongly improved my Chinese skills, but it didn’t. (I will get back to this.) You get one more month off, if you are lucky, and then you begin classes. You have to take 2 Chinese classes per semester, which allows you significantly less time than your peers to take the necessary course work to graduate. Oh, and those Chinese classes you take don’t actually count towards anything, other than satisfaction for your power hungry advisors. Ok, so you get done with the year and you get six weeks off, and then have to take a mandatory program in Taiwan, which is nothing special and is a thousand dollars, and a month of your time. If you weren’t in this program, you could take this time for an internship.
Now you are back at USC for your third year… Remember that stuff you did Freshman year? Good, because you are the only one. No one else cares. Many of your friends are highly unlikely to remember you because you are coming back after not seeing them for a year and now have very little in common. Many of the clubs you were in barely have a spot for you because they expect continuity. You have nothing. During this time, you will apply to internships, only to realize you have no experience to speak of because you spent both the summers you would have gained experience “learning Chinese”. Do you think anyone cares about that? Nope. You are a dime in a dozen, they have so many applicants who have also taken Chinese. You want to speak highly of your time in Hong Kong? Well, all you have really done is go to and come back from class and maybe get a tutoring job so you have alcohol money. You don’t got nothing. Now you will go to a second rate internship (UNLESS YOU USE YOUR FAMILY CONNECTIONS TO GET SOMETHING AT A FANCY PLACE.) which won’t offer you a full time position.
Now it’s time for your senior year. All of the places which recruit will be back at USC, but you are in Hong Kong, where you have to the 12-hour time difference, which along with the distance makes it borderline impossible to land any position at all. You are trying to get a job post college so you don’t need to move back in with your parents or mooch off of them to go to graduate school. But you can’t. No one who has looked at your resume is excited to hire you. Yay.
Oh and you know those Chinese skills which would give you distinction? It sucks, because Hong Kong doesn’t speak Putonghua (mandarin). They speak Cantonese, and if you try Mandarin, they ask for English. So you get zero exposure, and nothing to benefit you there. If you were in mainland China for a longer stretch of your education, I would say that would be good, because you are actually immersed in Chinese Language and the people around you are more likely to pick up more of the language.
Ok, so now let’s talk about the advisors. They make you sign a contract to keep your GPA above a certain number, and that you understand you will attend the first summer of language classes. After this, they will say you are required to pass the HSK IV or the second “optional summer” is now mandatory. So you know that your future prospects are in danger and you ask them to do something. What do they offer? Drop the program or do as they say. That’s it, that is all. If you don’t drop the program, your future is screwed. If you don’t do this program, you won’t get in to IB which could well be the reason that you came to South Carolina, and you just wasted your opportunity to go to a better opportunity. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Carolina, but with my GPA and SAT scores coming out of high school, I could have gone to better schools with better opportunities with less stress, if I had known.) Congrats. You are screwed. So many people end up dropping anyway in hope they can salvage something out of nothing. That is why the retention rate is close to 20%.
Now you have no job, no great opportunity to land a job, and you are forced to go back and pay more money to USC because they are the only place that will accept you to graduate school. You look back and realize that your huge mistake was doing IBCE. Don’t be that guy, don’t do IBCE.
I wish I could speak to someone who has gotten through this program and didn’t fit criteria one (Family money/connections) and ended up being as successful as the advisors make it sound. Then again, those people would be successful regardless of whether or not they did this program.

4

My response is to the above is too long so here’s 1/3

Just to offer an alternative view to this kid who clearly did not take advantage of his time in Hong Kong or back at South Carolina and expected everything to just fall into his lap because he did the program…
And hi, I’m one of those people who thinks I’ve found success through the program without connections which I think uniquely positioned me for where I am now and I can think of many many other people who fit that criteria as well.

The IBCE program is the best thing I could have done for my career. My parents are social workers, I did not start learning Chinese until I started my freshman year, and I wasn’t the most stellar performer in my class. The rules of the program are laid out for you when you start. You have an entire IBCE alumni network to talk to and get honest opinions before you sign up to fully understand what these rules mean for you. Yes, they’re wildly inconvenient at times and yes, it’s easy to complain that you don’t get to tailor your experience to your liking - but this is what you signed up for. It’s all on the table from day 1 and if you decide to sign up anyway, you get to start figuring out before day 1 how you’re going to navigate the challenges with a wide range of people to give you advice on how they handled things.

If you want to get the most possible out of the program, you have to be a self-starter. Sorry for the novel below but I’ve broken it down into parts.

Freshman Year
I started freshman year not even sure I was definitely going to like learning Mandarin or if I would be comfortable being so far from home (USC was a big jump for me already after all my friends went to state schools much further up the east coast). Your first year at South Carolina, meet with your advisor as much as possible, join clubs, have a normal freshman year, make friends. And then when you head to Hong Kong, STAY in those clubs and stay in touch with those friends as much as you can. Some people in IBCE skyped into club meetings to give presentations on something they learned in classes in Hong Kong, volunteered to handle responsibilities from afar, caught up with their advisors throughout their time abroad - keep yourself relevant and those responsibilities will be waiting for you upon your return. Most university students study abroad junior year, so when you return your junior year to USC, a lot of gaps are going to need to be filled by people who have left for a semester or a year. Jump on those opportunities, because they are abundant. The same goes with friends. If you took the time to make good friendships freshman year, take the time to keep in touch. It can be tough at times to try to be in two places when you’re in a new city, trying to learn as much as possible, and focus on making some extra money to backpack around Thailand- AND THEN actually get the opportunity to have the incredible experience to backpack around Thailand. But it’s worth it. And on top of all of this, you’re going to be forming a bond with a small group of people going through the same experience you are. You may hate or love these people but they do become your family and you will appreciate them for it. On top of that even more- you have the opportunity to make SO many friends from all parts of the world. Since I first went to Hong Kong I’ve continued to see and visit dozens of these people all over the world and this is something you won’t get in the same way through a simple study abroad experience.

5

2/3

Summers in Hong Kong
It is definitely frustrating at times that your friends back in the US are all doing summer internships while you’re stuck in a classroom. And you really have to want to be in that classroom to make it work, which is where a lot of people struggle. My first summer I learned more than I ever could have imagined because I was focused and I really wanted it. The second summer I was bitter about not having an internship, so I ended up paying a bunch of money for a program I didn’t excel that much in because I didn’t put in the effort. I cannot stress enough- joining this program is NOT a free pass. You don’t magically learn Mandarin and you aren’t handed jobs left and right. You need to take the opportunities you’re given through this program and do something with it.

Throughout the years of the program, I’ve seen quite a few people find unpaid internships while they’re in Hong Kong studying at CUHK or make connections in Hong Kong to have internships there for junior year summer. A couple people have gotten internships IN mainland China after junior year because of the connections they made in Hong Kong that they wouldn’t have been able to make in the US. And for our class at least, we were helped quite a bit with internships after junior year by the USC staff. There were specific resume books of just us given to companies, we got exclusive access to different resources, but at the end of the day- you had to figure out finding an internship on your own if you weren’t successful with their help.

And for the record- I can name a long list of people off the top of my head who got an internship after junior year AND were given offers for after they graduated, including myself at a top bank without the help of family connections. And the list extends way beyond myself.

But People in Hong Kong Speak Cantonese…
Hong Kong is 100% not the ideal place to learn Mandarin. You may be able to use it at some shops, restaurants, and in cabs, but otherwise it’s like learning a language anywhere. If your top goal in college is to learn Mandarin, this program is probably not for you (although the mainland Chinese border is about 30min north of campus to go practice on weekends if you really want it). But like I said above, that first summer I truly did get a strong foundation in Mandarin because I worked for it. No, it won’t be a piece of cake because it isn’t full immersion, but you get to be in Hong Kong which is arguably one of the best cities in the world to go blow off some steam when the study becomes overwhelming. This program offers a unique international experience and really allows you to immerse yourself in a completely new culture. You actually begin to feel like CUHK is your school- even moreso than USC in my case because of how much more I got out of being in Hong Kong.

Advisors at USC
The advisors are pretty pushy about what you can and can’t do, but when they have a couple dozen kids half way across the world trying to make this specifically planned out program (which is emulated in other programs from USC to locations around the world), they have to be pretty strict. It’s a pain in the ass and they really aren’t helpful at all sometimes. But I got the same thing when I was at USC so I don’t know why anyone expects much of a difference. And I don’t think I need to say it again but just in case- you were told from day 1 what signing up for the program entailed. You were provided all you had to know. Frustrating as it was at times, it’s a price of the opportunities you are given in the program.

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3/3

Retention Rate
Pretty sure 20% is fake news because ours was 75%. Not stellar, but you’re asking a bunch of 17-18 year olds to make the huge decision to choose their career path then and there and uproot to Hong Kong before a lot of them have ever been away from home or had enough experience to adequately make that decision. In my class, two people went home the first summer literally because of homesickness, a couple more decided not to continue after sophomore year because they wanted to focus on finding a job in the US and had already gotten their fill of the international experience- another because she just didn’t like Asia as much as she thought she would. People change majors all the time and in a normal university experience, you have two full years to figure out who you are and decide what you want to do. Unfortunately for some people, this program doesn’t give you that grace period. Also, I’ve seen that people who become unhappy with the program are people who want to go back to a girlfriend/boyfriend in the US or know they want to start their careers back in the US after graduation. People who tend to do well in the structure of the program seem to be more open to a global career.

Okay I think I’ve covered most of the points made in the post above…now onto exit opportunities from the program:

In the classes I know of that have graduated, we have had a bunch of not-well-connected, not-fluent-in-Mandarin people have some pretty damn amazing opportunities. Let’s see here…where are some of these people without family connections now…living in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Nepal, Norway, Sydney, Dubai, Sweden, London, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, LA. Working for a wide range of companies including a bunch of startups I’m not going to name and a bunch of well known companies that I will- Google, McKinsey, Credit Suisse, PwC, Deloitte, Accenture, Bank of America, KPMG, Kraft Heinz, HSBC, UOB, Maersk, P&G, IBM, Colliers, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Greenpeace, Morgan Stanley. Getting graduate degrees from Cornell, Cambridge, Oxford, Tsinghua, Johns Hopkins, University of SoCal (the other USC haha), and even our beloved USC.

I can tell you that the large majority of those people did not have family connections, and they used the opportunity that IBCE provided, or Hong Kong provided, or USC provided, or even just opportunities they provided to themselves.

IBCE isn’t for everyone, but it was for me and dozens of other people I know. Some people drop out and people end up hating it, but I just wanted to share that myself and some others are not among those people and that there is not one overarching review of IBCE to rely on.

I couldn’t be more confident that going to Hong Kong changed my life for the better way more than 4 years at an US university with a semester or two studying abroad would have. I became a completely different person for the better, grew up quite fast, made connections and friendships all over the globe, and now I’m positioning myself for a career in Asia for the foreseeable future. Four years of the normal college experience is dime a dozen on a resume and although I’m several years out of college now, I still get amazed, and often impressed, looks when I get to explain my college experience to people and I couldn’t be more proud - but that did not come without more than a few bumps that you will need to be prepared to take on.

7

@IBCEAlum I, for one, really appreciate the time you took for creating those 3 posts. My Dd has been accepted into the CIFA cohort and is ready to go full speed ahead. Me, as mom and wanting more feedback on a program that is still in newborn stage, I was a little hestitant to be so all in. However, we spoke with amazing young people and listened to a presentation by a sr in the Chile cohort (don’t remember that one’s name) and now reading your posts, I am starting to be reassured that the original posts in this thread that caused me so much alarm are more based on the individual than the actual program and the opportunities available.

Thank you.

8

My daughter is in the IBCE program and I 1000% agree with everything ibceparent posted above. I would not deter a student that is interested in IBCE but had little experience in the Chinese language as my daughter took only one year of Chinese in high school before joining this program. That being said, you must be a motivated person to learn at the pace which will be required but it is possible to be successful in IBCE without an extensive background in the Chinese language if you are willing to put in the work. 6-7 hours a day, 5 days a week of intensive Mandarin training is enough to drain even the smartest kid. And even after 2 summers of this intensive language study as well as continued Mandarin courses each semester my daughter still wonders if she will ever be fluent. But she can hold conversations in Mandarin and navigate herself in foreign countries entirely on her own which is nothing to be taken lightly for an 18-20 year old “kid” forced to learn about the world. She wouldn’t trade it for anything and what an experience she has had. She has already traveled to 7 or more countries, taking side trips that she has funded on her own by working as an English tutor all while continuing to make the grades required to stay in this program. I will reiterate what was said above and that ANYONE considering this program MUST be independent and responsible - it is NOT for someone that is skittish about being out on their own, needs constant reminders to make smart decisions and can’t learn on their own. Western education is different than what will be experienced at CUHK. There is no hand holding and despite the advisors trying to prepare you - often you have to figure things out on your own. Remember though, there are 20+ other students going through it with you so you are not completely alone.

True, there have been growing pains but this program is paving the way for other universities that are trying to model this experience and they are consistently making improvements and as of now there is nothing of its kind offered elsewhere not to mention that the Darla School of Business has ranked as the #1 International Business School for several years running. It is a very competitive program but once accepted these students become close friends and learn how to work together, all coming from varying backgrounds, ethnicities and social classes. The one thing they all have in common though is the motivation and drive they all inherently have and I am thrilled my child is surrounded by people of this caliper. A recent visit for parents weekend revealed the Wall Street Journal as well as other various business journals laying around her apartment and listening to them all speak together about what was on their agenda for the coming week blew me away. I thought geez - when I was their age, I was definately thinking about things of a more trivial nature. They have had such broad experiences already that their eyes and mind have been enlightened and I can tell you we have been nothing but satisfied with the growth we have seen in our daughter (despite sleepless nights and worry from a mothers heart) because she has learned to survive in the world on her own. She knew when looking for colleges that she wanted more than just a semester abroad and that is the main reason this program appealed to her. She wanted to major in International Business and see the world and she has already experienced more than I could have imagined. It hasn’t been easy - she has had to be strong, we have had to be strong, she has missed her friends from home and her siblings but she knows that she is learning outside of the classroom at a pace that others can only dream of. Of course as her parent, I hope this makes her marketable so I have a nice return on my investment - so to speak. I am fairly confident she will be seen as a valuable, competitive addition to any company lucky enough to have her talents. However, I can tell you even if she doesn’t land her dream job at graduation she is farther ahead in life simply by experiencing the world and she is a better person for it.