（大家不要忘记关注AndyZ 老师哦! 点击关注，欢迎分享文章，同时也可阅读已发布的其他文章。如果留言咨询国际教育和学习、职场发展和员工管理以及招聘方面的任何问题，没准下次推文你就能得到答案！）
很多中国学生和家长都有一种想要迅速成功“一步登天”而不是厚积薄发的心态。这实际上是受中国文化的影响，“好胜心理”在中国人心中根深蒂固。当然，我个人也很欣赏这种特质，因为我自己就是一个很好胜，一定要做的比他人要好。然而，在你选择在美国接受的高等教育时，你是在哪里上大学还是读研究生都不重要，可能只是因为在你首次申请学校时没有进入一个顶尖大学，但这并不意味着你再也没有机会在那些顶尖大学获得学位。这个道理也同样适用于职业选择上，大多数中国学生和家长希望在他们刚毕业时，就可以找到符合他们期望薪水的完美工作，尽管期望值放得过分高，然而他们并没有意识到一点。当然啦，如果你可以一开始就得到你想要的工作或者被顶尖大学录取，那么就尽你所有的努力，因为这是一条更简单的路。但是如果你没有，那么这绝不要灰心，因为这不是世界末日也不意味着“大门已经关闭”。下面我就想和你说说我所说的“两步登天”也就是申请学校和求职的“二次机会”。
美国顶尖学校的申请过程现如今一年比一年残酷，特别是考虑到北美有比所有英语语言国家加到一起还多的世界顶级大学，同时申请者人数也在逐年增加，所以每年录取机会越来越小，因此学生们得到录取的压力越来越大，不通过申请就意味着他们的失败。每年在三月底，学生如果被自己的梦想学校所拒绝，这基本就意味着这所学校变成了一个有点遥远的梦想，即使它还不至于只是一个遥不可及的幻想。然而，美国是个有“二次机会”的国家，人们生活在 “永不言败”的座右铭下。招生这方面也是一样。正如我在以后的文章中提到的关于转学项目，许多在美国的学生可能会选择在转到他们的梦想学校之前先去读一所两年制的大学。这个方法鼓励那些没有进入他们的理想学校的学生，最终凭借他们最后机会来向他们的梦想大学证明，他们比起上一次申请，已经明显进步了。最后，没有人真的看你开始的学位，你最后在哪里完成学业才是最重要的。比尔盖茨被哈佛录取了但是他并没有完成他的学位，从本质上讲，他不能算是哈佛的毕业生。
成为应届生的你，离开学校寻找第一份工作也是同样要甩掉“一步登天”的错觉。近些年，许多毕业生沮丧于他们没有办法在毕业后找到一份合适的工作，因为他们无法获得他们理想职业的offer。然而，他们在脑海中一开始的理想的职业是不切实际的，这些职业对于他们的职业生涯来说也未必是一个好的开始。我站在之前常常培训很多职业规划和留学顾问，甚至亲自辅导职场人士的角度，可以负责任的说，当你阅读许多成功的企业高管的简历时，会有个很有意思的发现。许多人并没有以如“分析师顾问”等很吸引人的头衔，并没有月薪10,000人民币开始工作，相反，在他们真正开始他们的职业之旅前，他们通常以如“记录员”或者“初级秘书”的头衔作为第一份工作。许多学生和家长会认为他们出国留学的经历会让他们在第一份职业和薪资上拥有特权。我认为这种期望是很有缺陷的，事实上作为一个雇主，由于文化冲击的问题，我跟很多不同行业的人士一样可能会犹豫支付与一个本地毕业生同样的薪水，毕竟多年在海外，基本对国内的职场会产生认知断层（你想想看，近四五年中国的发展有多快呢?）。获得国外教育的关键是它为你开辟了不同的道路，一旦你克服了反向文化冲击并且积累了足够的工作经验的话。而且，你至少需要 2-3年的工作经验，你在顶尖外国大学学习的经历对你的益处才能真正发挥出来。虽然很多例子表明学生花了比2-3年更少的工作时间，有了更好的工作机会，但是对那些一开始没有的，真的没有必要来比较，因为很多人力资源调研公司一次又一次证明国际教育的好处更多体现在在中期和长期。更好的指标是在5-7年后，但是即便如此，真的没有将职业发展来作比较，因为每个人都是独特的。即使一个人看起来在一个阶段是处在一个比别人劣势的位置，也许经过3年的转折，前者或许最终变成了后者的经理。这种情况绝不罕见，这也是为什么我一直讲——成功需要耐心。
（大家不要忘记关注AndyZ 老师哦! 点击关注，欢迎分享文章，同时也可阅读已发布的其他文章。如果留言咨询国际教育和学习、职场发展和员工管理以及招聘方面的任何问题，没准下次推文你就能得到答案！）
——————————以下为Andy老师英文原稿————————
Obsession with the immediate success
There is a tendency for many Chinese students and parents to expect instant success rather than throughout a long duration. This is actually a great aspect of Chinese culture, the winning mentality is so deeply ingrained. (好胜) However, in terms of choosing your tertiary education in the US, whether you are pursuing undergraduate or graduate degree there, just because you do not get into a top institution when you first apply does not mean you will never be able to earn your degree over there. The same applies for a career, most Chinese students and parents expect to find that perfect job fresh out of college that matches their often lofty and overambitious salary expectations. What they fail to realize is that.Of course, if you are able to obtain what you want either in job hunting or admissions to a top university on the first go, then all the power to you as it is a much easier route, but if you don't then definitely don't be disheartened because it is not the end of the world nor are the “gates closed”
Every year, the application process to these top desired schools in the US is getting much more fierce than the previous year, especially given the fact that North America has more world-class institutions than all the other English speaking countries put together and an increasing number o applicants. Admission chances are getting slimmer each year so the pressure is on for these students to get that offer or they will be deemed a failure. Getting rejected by the student's dream school at the end of March each year often means that particular school becomes somewhat of a distant dream, if not a fantasy. However, the US is a nation that is built on second chances, people live by the motto of “never say never”. With admissions, this is still the same.As I will mention in a future article about transfer programs, many students in the US even opt to attend a two-year degree institution first before transferring to their dream school. This method encourages students who don't get into their most desired institution and end up with their last resort a chance to prove to their desired institution that they have improved remarkably since the last time they applied. At the end of the day, nobody really looks at where you begin your degree, it is all about where you finish that matters. Bill Gates was a Harvard admit but he never completed his degree, technically there is no way to consider him an actual Harvard graduate.
Hunting for your first job out of school is the same exact concept of not requiring immediate success. Many graduates these days are despondent of not being able to find the right job out of college because they have been rejected by just about every potential employer for their ideal job. However, their idealized first career in their heads is impractical, it fails to consider that these jobs may not ultimately be the right career path for them to start off with. From a career counselor and ex-recruitment professional, you would be surprised to read resumes of various successful corporate executives. Many do not start off with sexy titles such as “Analyst Consultant” with a pay of RMB10,000 per month, instead they usually start with titles such as “Record-keeping clerk” or “Junior secretary” before working their way up. A lot of students and parents seem to think that their education abroad gives them an entitlement to a much better first job platform and higher starting salary. I think that type of expectation is very flawed, in fact as an employer I may even be hesitant to pay them the same salary as a local graduate because of reverse culture shock issues. The point of obtaining your education abroad is that it opens up multiple paths once you overcome reverse culture shock and accumulate sufficient work experience, which in my opinion requires at least 2-3 years of work experience before your international education from a top institution will count for anything. There are ample examples where it has taken much less time or even actually providing a higher starting platform, but for those who don't, there really is no need to compare because evidence by various HR consulting firms have shown time and time again that international education is beneficial in the medium and long term. A much better indicator is 5-7 years later, but even so there really is no point comparing career paths because everyone's unique. Even if one seems to be in a much inferior position than someone else at one stage, perhaps in a twist of 3 years the former may even end up becoming the latter's manager. These cases are by no means rare, which is why I keep preaching the need for patience with success.
Andy的简介：
- Multicultural and multilingual: Grew up and lived in a number of countries, American-born Chinese -（Third Culture Kid）多文化和多语言:在多个国家成长和居住；美籍华人-典型第三文化人士(TCK)
- Leader in empowering corporate training and recruitment professionals with assessment methodologies and project-based learning andragogy为企业培训和招聘人士提供领先评估体系和游戏化的项目式学习的职场教学法的领袖
- Decade of experience in education and training, and expert in China十年以上的学生教育和企业培训的经验:并被很多本土和国外人士称为“中国通”
- Regular community event organizer with expertise in workplace gamification for employees定期社区活动的组织者:游戏化员工体系的主题
- UC Berkeley Alumni Club Ex-Leader and Recruitment Ambassador毕业于世界名校加州伯克利大学并担任校友俱乐部前任负责人和前任招生大使
- Third-party Interviewer for College Admissions美国第三方面试官(很多大学现在需要学生在提交申请书与第三方机构进行面试)
- Helped build a number of college admissions counseling departments负责搭建多个海外升学指导中心
- Unlike most “education experts”, personally attended more than a dozen schools growing up and personally went through the AP, IB, British, Singaporean and Hong Kong education systems相比其他所谓的“教育专家”，从小上过十几所学校，亲自体验过AP、IB、英国、新加坡和香港的教育制度
- Recently, created China’s first bilingual entrepreneurial and innovation educational events organization: Center for Youth Business Facilitation
在这一两年间，建立了中国第一个双语创新创业学习的活动平台: CYBF创习国际交流中心