Sociology

Valerie Chu
She is an 11th grade student from YK Pao School, Shanghai, China. She is interested in Human Rights Studies and Politics.

Valerie became interested in Sociology, specifically in Human Rights Studies and Politics after participating in a Columbia Human Rights Course. Besides completing a high-quality research paper, Valerie’s other goal is to deep-dive into political theories because her school does not provide Global Politics in the IB curriculum.

University admission result

★ Barnard College of Columbia University

Learning objectives

• Identifying and narrowing the project’s scope
• Providing background research material
• Prepare and write a high-quality research paper

What challenges did she face?

• Valerie had a substantial workload at school. In order to finish this project during the mentorship program period, she needed to spend more hours than expectations.

How did our program help her?

• Valerie learnt to write a high-quality research paper based on her topic of choice. Particularly, she learnt about literature review, which is a component of research writing that is difficult for beginners.
• Through her hard work and strong work ethics, Dr. Taylor initiated to write a recommendation letter for her.

Matched Professor

The mentor is a Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a Professor of Law at University of Washington. She has experience both as an in-house legal and health policy adviser and as a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO).

“I have enjoyed working with Valerie. I am so impressed with Valerie’s performance I have offered to serve as a reference for college admissions. She is also a delight to work with. I wish Valerie the best of luck with her very bright future.“

Mentor from JHU & UW