University of Science and Technology of China(USTC, Hefei, Anhui, China), the place I spent five years for my Bachelor's degree. That year, School of Life Sciences acceptted 78 students(38M+40FM) from all over China. It is a very special class in the whole university.(the sex ratio of Male/Female is really high because it is a university keen on Science and Engineering).

The first two years, we all studied very hard and the competition was very very strong among us. USTC is a university that puts a lot of emphasis on basic sciences. During first three years of the undergraduate, most of courses are Math, Physics, Chemistry and Computer Science. There were so many courses and exams we had to take each semester. Moreover, there were a lot of experiments we had to do in chemistry(inorganic, organic and analytical) and physics(mostly EE). A lot of people stayed up very late everyday. It was really hard work. Also from that time, I saw a lot of good researchers in my life. They devoted their whole life to science. They are really cool.

After two years, some people started to shift their interests to much fun stuff- computer games. Most of universities in China are public schools. We all lived together on campus in those dorms. We have computers linked together and really had a good time there. Most of the boys spent too much time there. I liked the games so much and at the same time, I was lucky to have computer games as one of the transient state from my study. I was almost sucked in the irriducible chain. From the third year, I started to perpare for my GRE and TOEFL exam with a group of classmates. In my fourth year, I attended the Lab of Human Genetics for my undergraduate thesis. From there, I started to touch this great area: Human Genetics(Association Mapping). I also worked a little bit on the P450 system. I finished with a thesis by studying the association between CYP2E1 polymorphisms and effect of drugs against hypertension. It is really a very good experience for me. Started from that, I came to the current area: Population Genetics.

I didn't get very high GPA in my college. Part of the reason, I think, is due to my bad memory for those biological stuff. I like to rewrite the materials I had learned in my own words during the exams. Usually, I had pretty crappy expressions for those. Instructor generally took off a lot of points for those kind of answers. I did pretty good on all the non-major courses. I was lucky to be accept by the Biometrics Department at Cornell University after my undergraduate. My prof in Biostatistics really helped me a lot in deciding my future. I think I had a correct choice for myself. I like my old university. It would be great if I can be a prof there after my Ph.d.

Let me have a list of my classmates in US(the rest of the guys are in China, majority of them are in the graduate school of USTC).