“I want to aim for the best place I can go in Europe to study Hospitality Management,” “Okay…but we should also have a back up plan,” I said, sounding like a typical college counsellor.
This is how my year started back in August 2016. I needn’t have worried, as today that same student is heading for The Hague Hospitality Business School, one of the top ranked specialist schools of its kind in Europe.
Let me tell you what it takes to get into a top school like this…
Each applicant is vetted very, very carefully. If their academics are strong enough, and their English language is near perfect and their overall application looks good enough, they pass onto the second phase of selection. They are then invited to a two day selection process in Europe or Singapore. During these two days, hundreds of applicants are hoping that they will be selected for the handful of places available. As part of the two day process they deliver a short presentation to a selection panel, as well as demonstrate specific leadership qualities during further selection exercises, finishing off with an in depth, nerve racking, personal interview. If they feel that you have what it takes to work in the upper strata of global hospitality management they will offer you a place. It’s the gold standard of hospitality management training and they expect only the best at all times.
But, compared to getting into Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands to study Aerospace Engineering it’s a push over. Well not quite, but Delft is a tough one.
Every year I meet with students who want to pursue the toughest, most competitive, engineering programme on the planet; Aerospace Engineering.
It’s tough to get onto almost any undergraduate programme at any university that offers this course. To get into one of the top ranked engineering universities in the world (on equal footing with Imperial College London and California Institute of Technology) you have to know your stuff…and more.
Firstly, of course, you have to be brilliant at all the sciences, especially Physics and Mathematics. If you are sitting A Levels, IB or AP exams you would be expected to get top scores. If you can do that, and have near perfect English language ability, you then have to complete all of the paper work, write an essay explaining why you want to study Aerospace Engineering and submit all your school reports and transcripts for the past four years.
If you get through this round you are invited to sit an online personality test (I know). If you get through that, you then have to sit three separate admission examinations; Mathematics, Physics and the last and most difficult paper is taken from material covered during the first year of undergraduate study. If you get through all of that, then you still may not be selected as you are competing against top students from around the world who may have even more perfect scores than you.
This year we have sent our second student off to Delft; two students in two years.
This year students from Lanna International School are jetting off to universities in America, UK, Netherlands, China, Korea and Hong Kong, with two students electing to study in Thailand. I am incredibly proud of all of them. They have all worked hard, followed challenging Advanced Level exam courses, overcome anxiety and self doubt and developed the resilience and confidence to become successful young adults. We will all miss them, but look forward to next year’s senior students coming through and forging their own onward journeys.
