Zou Xinyi, Class of 2021, was accepted into a highly competitive Masters in Education concentrating in digital and social change from the University of Oxford, despite not taking any education classes until her senior year at NYUAD.
During her first year, after exploring a range of classes from SRPP to Political Science, she stumbled upon Philosophy and finally decided on it as her major. Though she had now found her major, she remained unsure about what she wanted from life post-graduation.
Feeling pressure to have a “big name” on her resume, she pursued a finance and hotel management internship after sophomore year, discovering that she did not like working in a corporate environment. “In the end, the hotel management internship wasn’t even on the CVs I used in applying to grad schools despite it being the most “big name” thing I have,” she reflects.