Admissions

• Introduction
• Pre-admission Language Qualification
• Deadlines
• Application Forms

Pre-admission Language Qualification

IUP accepts only students with an intermediate to high level of Chinese language ability. We are not staffed to teach beginning or remedial Chinese.

IUP has a strict Pre-admission Language Qualification requirement, because all IUP classes are taught in Chinese, and no English is allowed to be spoken in the IUP Center.

By the application deadline, IUP requires that all applicants have already achieved a level of Chinese roughly comparable to successful completion of at least two years of university level Chinese instruction. They should be able to function at the Intermediate High Level as described in the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines.

These are:

• General ability: Able to produce grammatically correct sentences with proper vocabulary for the subjects under discussion.
• Listening: Able to understand face-to-face conversations with sentence-length utterances relating primarily to basic personal background and needs, social conventions and somewhat more complex tasks for daily living, and personal interests and activities, in addition to short routine telephone conversations and some deliberate speech, such as simple announcements and reports over broadcast media.
• Speaking: Able to converse on general topics in relatively clear, connected discourse, with minimal mistakes in grammar, pronunciation, and tones.
• Reading: Able to read consistently with full understanding simple connected texts dealing with basic personal and social needs about which the reader has personal interest and/or knowledge.
• Writing: Able to meet limited practical writing needs. Can write simple sentences and take limited notes.

As the final step in the application process, all applicants initially admitted to any IUP program by IUP's admission committee are required to take a 15-minute phone interview in Mandarin conducted by IUP's Head Instructor or Resident Director after sending in their non-refundable deposits. Academic Year/Semester applicants who are initially admitted will be interviewed in early March 2008. Summer applicants will be interviewed shortly after they've been admitted and have sent in their non-refundable deposits. There are three possible outcomes of the interview: pass, fail, and borderline. Those who pass the interview may attend IUP's programs, and their deposits are non-refundable. Those who fail the interview may not attend the IUP program to which they applied, and their non-refundable deposits will be refunded under these circumstances. If requested, IUP will recommend other effective language programs in Beijing or in Taipei. Those who are considered "borderline" cases may attend the IUP program to which they applied only if they agree to complete a language review program approved by IUP in good standing and have finally passed their Mandarin interview. Please note that applicants with borderline interview results who choose to enroll in a language review program should be prepared to pay for all language review program costs (most review programs approved by IUP are based in Beijing), and borderline applicants should be prepared to review for at least two months prior to the IUP program to which they applied. If an applicant with borderline interview results chooses not to enroll in a language review program, the applicant will be refunded their deposit under these circumstances.