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17 Jul 2019

A Basic Guide to ISE Admission

Hello! My name is Romtam, and I got admitted to ISE at Chulalongkorn University in the Early Admission Round, placing in the top 25. In this blog post, I aim to share my experience with the admission process along with some tips here and there.

An overview of ISE

ISE stands for International School of Engineering, and is basically the English program of the Engineering faculty at Chulalongkorn University. As of writing, there are 5 majors to choose from. Contrary to the regular (Thai) program, students choose their preferred major during the admission process, rather than choosing after the first year. In alphabetical order, the majors are:

  • ADME (Automotive Design and Manufacturing Engineering)
  • AERO (Aerospace Engineering)
  • ICE (Information and Communication Engineering)
  • NANO (Nano Engineering)
  • ROBOTICS AI (Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Engineering)

Each major has a different number of seats. For the Early Admission round, there are a total of 165 seats available across all majors, with the distribution as follows:

  • NANO: 40, AERO: 20, ICE: 45, ADME: 30, AI: 30

Admission criteria

As of the 2019 academic year, the admission criteria are as follows - passing criteria in (brackets), what I took is italicized:

  1. [5%] GPAX - Grade Point Average
  2. [20%] English
    • IELTS (6.0+), or
    • TOEFL (80+), or
    • CU-TEP (80+)
  3. [30%] Maths
    • SAT: Math (620+) & Math Level 2 (600+), or
    • CU-AAT: Math (480+), or
    • A Level: Math (B), or
    • IB: Math (6)
  4. [40%] Science
    • SAT Subject Test: Physics & Chemistry (600 each), or
    • A Level: Physics & Chemistry (B each), or
    • IB: Physics & Chemistry (6 each)
  5. [5%] Interview

Not included above are absolute minimum scores (lower than passing scores). In only one category, you are allowed to have scores lower than passing criteria but higher than minimum requirement.

I will write about my experience with standarized tests in a separate post.

Admission Rounds

For the 2018-2019 academic year, there has been two admission rounds, as is the norm for most international programs at Chula. The Early Admission round runs from early December to late January, while the Regular Admission round happened from early March to late April.

Scholarships for 1st year students

It looks like 100% and 50% scholarships are being automatically granted to first year students who are ranked highly in each admission round, details as follows:

  • Early Admission (more competitive): 100% scholarships to top 15 admitted students (not counting students who did not enroll)
  • Regular Admission: 50% scholarships to top 10 admitted students

However, they come with conditions, also listed below:

  1. Yearly cumulative grade point requirement
    • 3.60+ for 100% scholarships
    • 3.25+ for 50% scholarships
  2. Must work at least 8 hours per week for ISE Office

The most important point is the GPA requirement, which means that you can easily lose the scholarship after the first year if your grade point average does not meet the requirements.

Applying to ISE

The application process is done (mostly) online. Firstly, you will need to register on the admission website, which then lets you fill in required information for your application. Note that you do not have to fill in everything in one sitting since you can save your progress. Subsequently, when you finish, submit the application via a “Submit” button on the website (you can’t edit your application afterwards), and print a PDF of your application from the website for physical submission at the ISE office, along with a 1,000 baht fee.

The Interview

From my experience, the interview list includes everyone who submitted the application and passed the admission criteria (419 students for the Early Admission round). All interviews are conducted over the period of a single day (morning and afternoon), from 9am afterwards. The time of your interview is determined by your applicant number. If your scheduled time is in the morning, you have to register before 9am. If it is in the afternoon, you have to register before 1pm.

(Tip: Be the first people to create an account on the admission website on the first day for an earlier interview time!)

Each interview is approximately 10 minutes long, conducted by two members of ISE staff in the auditorium. Many interviews (14 for my round) run simultaneously, therefore you are almost guaranteed to be interviewed by different people than say, your friend would.

Most if not all electronic devices (mobile phones, laptops, smart watches, etc.) are not allowed in the interview room. There is a designated place to deposit them during registration.

My experience: Thanks to my early registration, my interview time was scheduled for 9:10am so I didn’t have to wait long in the auditorium. I was the second group of students who were interviewed, the first group being at 9:00am. By 9:25am I was finished and out of the auditorium.

The first question that I got (or maybe anyone, really), was “Please introduce yourself.” Also note that the interview is conducted in English, not Thai.

Also, it’s worth noting that you are not required to bring your portfolio to the interview, however you can show it to your interviewers if you made one. For me, the interviewing staff took a quick glance at my portfolio and asked a question or two about what I did.

Example interview questions

  • Introduce yourself.
  • Which major do you want to learn?
  • [Looking at application papers] Have you studied abroad?
  • Have you read the curriculum of [desired major]?

You should be able to answer the first question before your interview. Think of your own story that makes you unique. Why are you applying for ISE? What do you aspire to be in the future?

Program selection

Now that you’ve taken your interview, the next step is to wait until the program selection list is released on the ISE website. It is this document which tells you whether you made it or not, and what your ranking is. If your name is in the document, then congratulations, you have secured a place for yourself in ISE!

After the list is released, you will have to login to the admission website again during a specified time period (next day after list release for me) to select your preferred major from first choice to fifth choice. [For myself: AERO > ICE > AI > NANO > ADME]

You will need to print two copies from the website and bring them on the program selection day.

On program selection day

Document about program selection day on ISE website

The program selection day is another important day, as it is the day when you get to know which major you end up getting. This takes place at the university. All eligible students have to register at 8:30-9:00. After 9:00, the highest ranked student gets called into the program selection room, where they are informed of their selection results. Obviously, higher ranked students are called earlier than lower ranked students. In addition, in waiting rooms there are live broadcasts of remaining seats for each major, shown on a webpage, where you can see the number of available seats in each major go down as each person is called and has their major confirmed.

How the selection process works is that at your turn, your pre-selected choices will be looked at. If your top major of choice is full, your second choice will be considered. If your second choice is also full, then move to the third choice, and vice versa, until there is a seat.

Once your name is called and you get informed of your major, you are done with the process! The next step is just paying the program fee (currently 84,000 baht/term).

Waitlist

On the evening of the program selection day, ISE will release the only waitlist of remaining students who are eligible for program selection. If you are not on either of the main list or the waitlist, you are not admitted and will have to apply again if there exists another round.

Forfeiting your seat

There exists a good justification for forfeiting your seat and applying again: getting a major that you don’t like. For example, if your desired major is ICE but the only available major to choose from is NANO, then you need to start thinking. Hypothetically, would you be happy studying Nano engineering rather than Information and Communication engineering? It is a question that only you could answer.

One question that gets asked a lot around is whether one should “risk” their seat in the Early Admission round for a second chance in the next round. If you ask me this question, I think it can be worth it. The number of accepted applicants for the second round is not very different than the first, and you should also consider the fact that many high-score applicants have confirmed their first round seat.

Comparing the scores between the Early Admission round and the Regular Admission round, the Regular Admission round turned out to be less competitive than the first round. You can see the scores for yourself - I have included links at the end of this post.

Whatever you decide, you should definitely take this comparison into account. And if you forfeit your seat, money aside, why not go take another round of IELTS if you are willing to put in the study? Improving your English score, even by just 0.5, can make a huge difference (moving up tens in ranking) as it did in my round.

Transferring majors

Even though on paper, you can transfer your major between the 1st and 2nd year subject to a few conditions, personally I do not recommend it for several reasons. There exists a high possibility that you will be stuck with students from your major that you dislike, from learning to activities, rather than getting to know students from your preferred major.

Moreover, there is no certainty that you will be able to transfer to your preferred major. This is exacarbated even more if your grades are not as good as others who also wish to transfer.

Note: The above section is only my opinion. You should not take this as a fact.

Taking tests, admission schedule

  • My testtaking schedule (all taken once except Physics)
    • May 2018: SAT
    • May 2018: IELTS
    • June 2018: SAT Subject Physics (#1)
    • November 2018: SAT Subject Physics (#2), Chemistry, Math Level 2
  • Admissions (early admission)
    • 14 December 2018: Hand in printed application to ISE office
    • 27 December 2018: Interview list released
    • 4 January 2019: Interview at ISE
    • 14 January: Program selection list (ranking) released
    • 15 January: Major selection on website
    • 17 January: Program selection at Centennial Engineering Buiding, ISE

Useful resources

A very useful page on Facebook is Learning Café, which is a page about international program admissions for Thai universities, especially at Chulalongkorn or Thammasat. There also exists a Facebook group ran by the aforementioned page which you can find posts such as secondhand books for sale, or relevant discussions about various international programs.

Here are some resources related to ISE admissions that would be useful for reference:

Any questions?

Thank you for reading up to this point. I really hope I put everything forward clearly and you can learn something from my experience. If you have any questions about anything related to admissions, or if you think I should add something to this post, please do not hesitate to contact me (both Thai or English is fine).

Until next time,

Romtam at 23:59

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