Katarina W. Received ED Offer from Babson College

In the offer season, in addition to some students being accepted into well-known Big Universities, Katarina W. of Dulwich International High School Suzhou has received an ED offer from a No.1 major in a prestigious business college in the U.S: Entrepreneurship in Babson College. The Entrepreneurship major has been ranked No. 1 in the U.S. News for the 26th consecutive year, surpassing the same major in Harvard, Pennsylvania, Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley. Katarina made extraordinary efforts to enter such a top school to study this major. Let's look at her story:

About Babson College

Babson College, located in Babson Park, Massachusetts, USA, was built in 1919 and is an internationally renowned business school. The school is mainly dedicated to business education and entrepreneurship, so it does not participate in US. News comprehensive university rankings. Its innovative, practical, open and enterprising corporate mind is implemented as the core value of Babson College and is applied to all business and liberal arts courses offered by the school. Babson College is the first business school in the United States to be awarded the Triple Crown (AACSB, AMBA, EQUIS). Babson College graduates are ranked among the highest in the United States for many years, and it has been rated as one of the most valuable universities in the United States by the Forbes, Economist, Money Magazine, Payscale and other well-known financial magazines. ED is the English abbreviation of Early Decision, which is a way to apply for American universities. As the name implies, the school decides to enroll early. Unlike ordinary applications, a student can only choose one school for the ED application. If a student is accepted, they can only accept the offer to enter the school and must withdraw any applications to other schools. Therefore, the school that students choose to apply for ED is often their first choice.

Why choose Babson College?

Katarina said she had already decided that she would choose Babson College as her first choice in the second half of Year 12. Her enthusiasm and interests both fit very well with this school. She has a strong passion for entrepreneurship as well as business and is interested in sustainability. The strongest speciality of Babson College is entrepreneurship and business management. As a business school, Babson is committed to integrating social and economic sustainability concepts into the business practices of the next generation of leaders in order to create resilient, sustainable prosperity. Therefore, Katarina saw it as her dream school and she made herself become the best possible candidate for it.

Summer School Made Her More Determined

In the second half of Year 12, Katarina saw Babson College as her dream school, so she signed up for the school’s summer school in leadership. After joining the summer school, she was even more determined to apply for the school than ever. She found that the students at Babson College were very united, everyone was like-minded and passionate about leadership. They were very clear about the future. Because this is a small class teaching, the teacher-student relationship is relatively close.  There are more opportunities to communicate with professors, and many professors are entrepreneurs themselves and are willing to share experiences with their students. All these strengthened Katarina's determination to choose Babson College.

Business Competition Guru + Sustainability Leader

Katarina participated in many business competitions during her school days, including the Ambix business competition (the AMBIX business competition is a business competition organized by five well-known high schools in Shanghai), the National Economics Challenge (NEC), and the SKT investment challenge ( SKT Education joins hands with the US-China Economic Association and the American Economic Education Association to create the SKT Investment Challenge (SIC). She also founded the Dulwich Business League, which coaches students to participate in business competitions. This helped her to develop leadership skills.

In the Ambix business competition, members are divided into groups of four, each holding different positions in the company, and they compete by selling products to other competition members. Katarina was in charge of purchasing and marketing. She formulated marketing plans: advertising and point-to-point marketing; she was also responsible for developing new products and doing market research. She learned a lot in the process. In the National Economics Challenge (NEC), they first tested the basics of economics, then divided into groups, applied economics knowledge and gave speeches. The group that Katarina was in reached the national finals. In the SKT investment challenge, she invested in virtual stock market, analyzed the virtual stock market, and wrote analysis reports. Katarina won the gold medal!

In addition to the business challenge, sustainable development is also the passion of Katarina. She and her good friend Rose founded the Dulwich Sustainability Society and initiated the donation of clothing for poor children and saving electricity and recycling batteries in school.

It is not difficult to see that her favorite class is economics. Her two economics teachers Mr. El-Edroos and Mr. Clancy both have great enthusiasm for the subject. The two teachers are very meticulous in teaching and impart important knowledge. Handouts are given to students so they can review them after class.

Why Choose Dulwich? Some Suggestion?

Katarina is from Danyang. She originally chose Dulwich because of the high proportion of expatriate teachers (88%) and its rich variety of Co-curricular activities as well as the opportunities it provides to develop skills and hobbies. She also made full use of Dulwich's resources to make her campus life full and meaningful, which helped her to enter her dream school. Her advice to schoolmates is to find a school that suits you as much as possible and spend time participating in school activities and socialize.