Moving from a bustling city of over nine million to a quiet college town of 65,000, Meglin Wei’s life will never be the same again, and she likes it that way.
Wei moved to Auburn in the fall of 2016 to study global studies at Auburn University.
“I have grown a lot,” Wei, 19, said. “It’s definitely given me confidence. It taught me how to treat people, how to love people.”
For the majority of her teen and young adult life, her focus has been on coming to America, getting into an American college and working in America. It’s not that she doesn’t want to be in China; it’s that she sees so many more opportunities in America.
“I know China is doing really well, and I’m really proud of my country,” Wei said. “I just don’t see my personality clicking with the society back home because everything is so fast paced, and I’m pretty sure with my degree that I could not get a decent job back home.”
Wei wants her family -- her two retired parents and older sister -- to have the same opportunities she has in America. In fact, she hopes they can join her in America some day.
Wei wants to travel the world and see all that it has to offer. That’s why she chose a major in global studies and a minor human sciences.
“I want to work with NGOs with human trafficking issues,” Wei said. “I feel like that is my passion. After that, beyond that, I want to do a counseling job. I just feel like it would be such a wonderful idea to be able to work with women and children.”
She applied to Auburn on a whim, after she heard it was like the small, college town feeling she was looking for. But Auburn was still her last choice.
Once acceptance and scholarship letters all came out, she decided on Auburn because of the scholarships they offered. And now she is so glad she made the choice to attend Auburn.
“When I applied for college I specifically avoided all of the West Coast,” Wei said. “So I applied to Auburnf and I got the offer, and I wasn’t excited at all because I thought I wasn’t going to go there. My dream school was American University, and I got an offer, but the tuition was twice higher [than Auburn].”
She was given the opportunity to apply to so many American schools through her high school in China.
High schools in China differ from American high schools because of the lower number of people that go to high school. Many students get routed to vocational schools because the test scores needed to gain acceptance to Chinese high schools are high.
Chinese high schools are much more like American colleges. Students must apply to high schools and only a select number of students can even go to high school, let alone their dream high school.
“In China, it’s not just like you go to the high school closest to your home,” Wei said. “You actually have to take a province test, like the whole province, whole city takes the test, and you choose the school you want to go to, and you take the test and see if you get in.”
Wei counts herself as one of the lucky ones. While she didn’t get into her dream school in Shanghai, which she referred to as a “long shot,” she was accepted in a unique program at a school much closer to her Chinese home.
She was a member of a special program within a Chinese high school in Zhengzhoun where Wei and her classmates were preparing to apply to and attend American colleges.
“Luckily enough, my mom really supported me on this idea and so did my sister,” Wei said. “So I ended up in that program. Starting high school, I started actually learning English.”
Wei studied hard to improve her English for two years. However, after she took her English placement test and didn’t get the results she wanted, she decided she wanted to improve her English in a different, more immersive way.
For her junior year of high school, she attended Chino Hills High School, a public school in Chino Hills, California, approximately an hour northwest of Los Angeles.
There, she joined a family of two high school teachers and two young boys who served as her host family for a year and took on the English name, Crystal.
“In China, we have morning reading classes before 7 a.m. So we get into school before 7 a.m., and we get off school around 10 at night,” Wei said. “So it was really hard, but in California, our school started around 7:40 a.m., and we got off around 3 p.m. So it was really relaxing, pretty laid back. I got a 4.0 that year, and it was really fun, and I made some really good connections.”
The experience wasn’t exactly what Wei had hoped it would be. Her English was not as good as she hoped it would be and California was nothing like what she thought.
“I don’t like California,” Wei said. “So basically, my English wasn’t that good so all the friends I could get were Chinese. At that time, I couldn’t drive, and I can’t ride with my friends. My host family was really strict on those things so I wouldn’t say I had a lot of fun, but it was a nice experience.”
After a year in California, Wei went back to China but did not go back to her high school. There were complications with her Chinese high school so she decided to study and prepare for the American college entrance exams she needed on her own.
Once she applied to eight American Colleges and made her choice, Auburn, she packed her bags to become one of 1,243 Chinese international students out of 29,750 students at Auburn University.
She came to America for the second time, and she hopes last time. Wei loves living in America, she loves all the opportunities she has had here and wants to continue to find more.
“I just really appreciate people’s hospitality here,” Wei said. “I just think my personality clicked with this place. It’s slow, but it’s not that slow. It’s the right pace.”
During her time at Auburn so far, Wei has joined multiple organizations such as Modeling Board, Campus Kitchens and Tri Sigma and has become heavily involved in her major’s club, Global Studies Club.
She plans to attend graduate school in Auburn and wants to work with women and children in some form or fashion.
Wei’s main goal is to stay in the United States and eventually move her family to America.
“I just feel like my personality suits the society,” Wei said. “I want my parents here, I want my whole family here. They deserve a more free community and society and the whole environment. People here -- they accept more stuff, they accept people from different cultures.”
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