As we know there are only a limited number of top university in China and other parts of the world, and competition is more than fierce to get into one of them. This means that for over 90% of use, we are destined to pursue our study in a not-too-famous uninveristy/college and undertake graduate course with a so-so supervisor. Under the circumstance, do we have to despair and give up our hope for life?
No, certainly not! There are still plenty of things we can do to improve our capability and career chance. In addition to professional knowledge,we can put more time and effort into building up language and writing skills (be in Chinese or a foreign language). There is a misconception among many science graduates that a sicence major does not require much language ability. That is utterly incorrect. With good language capabililty including writing skills, you are in a much better position than those who have poor grasp of language. For example, if you have excellent language skills, you will be able to write better research reports, which will be more likely to be accepted by professional journals for publication. Writing scientific articles is like writing a piece of general essay. If it is not well-organized, has not interesting introduction, fluent description of materials and methods, accurate summary of results and thought-provoking discussion, it is unlikely that it will be recommended by reviwers and read by science community at large.
Personally, I went through a third-tier university in China for biomedical science undergraduate degree, and completed a PhD in an obscure area of biomedical science in a second tier foreign university. I used my good writing skills to get five publicaitons per year (all in second and third tier journals because of my obscure field). After a number of years, I have established a decent publication record, and in recent years I have put my good writing skills and publication record to a profitable use. That is, I have managed to edit several books for a global scientific publisher, which will pay me 10% of all sales proceeds on the books I have edited for them.
The take-home message is that do not give up if you have not got into a top school; try to acquire professional knowlege and language/writing skills at same time wherever and whenever you can. You'll find a place and niche to use your knowledge and skills somewhere, somehow and some time in future. If you hve outstanding language skills in addition to excellent professional knowledge, you will be successful in whatever profession you turn your eye to, academic, industry, public relations and politics, you name it. On the other hand, if you only have good professional knowledge, but poor language skills, your career choice will be severely limited no matter where you are (inside China or overseas).
