<p>I'm curious how asian universities compare to America's top universities considering how serious the gaokao is.</p>
<p>I only know about Chinese universities, and generally their top schools generally compare well with top 50 American, academically at least. Socially… there’s not much of a sports scene, if any, and no greek presence, etc. Dunno about party culture. And Chinese dorms are pretty bad, and you get 3-7 roommates usually.</p>
<p>u can’t really tell asian university as a whole since it’s quite different in different parts of Asia! but as far as I know, the academic sides are STRONG…mostly no parties, few games…that sorta thing. But then again, it’s REALLY hard to make a generalization on asian universities.</p>
<p>all i know is that for the most part, none of them compare to the top 20 schools in the US…for the most part.</p>
<p>Most of the top ones are super hard to get into, but not so difficult to get out of.</p>
<p>I think they’re usually bigger. I’m pretty sure it’s Tokyo University that has 80,000 undergrads. Twice as big as the biggest US universities.</p>
<p>Only a few of the top schools internationally (particularly in Asia) come close to touching the American Top50. They don’t get the funding to stand a chance.</p>
<p>According to the Times [THES ranking](<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2006/top_200_universities/”>http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2006/top_200_universities/</a>) of world universities, 11 of the top 20 universities in the world are in the United States. </p>
<p>The 3 Asian universities among the top 20 are Beijing University, NU Singapore, and the University of Tokyo. On the other hand, 4 of the 5 European universities ranked top 20 by THES are British (Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College, and the London School of Economics).</p>
<p>Tokyo is much less than 80k. Actually,the total number of students is less than 30,000. Waseda is a much larger japanese university, with almost 55,000 students.</p>
<p>Asian universities are the first to suffer from the primacy of English in global academia, so that doesn’t help their rankings.</p>
<p>Other Asian universities (and by “Asian” I mean “Chinese”) are hobbled by living under a dictatorship that stifles free inquiry</p>
<p>The rest suffer from funding that pales in comparison to the best American systems. Private enterprise has created a system of what shall henceforth be called “pwnage” in which the American universities are fabulously wealthy thanks to larger financial contributions from alumni, students, and private firms. The rest of the world is basically state schools…</p>
<p>Of course, the most widespread (and controversial) problem plaguing Asian universities is the different culture that produces a very different academic environment.</p>
<p>(please direct all personal attacks of ‘racism’ etc to Ambassador [and Asian] Kishore Mahbubani of Singapore who wrote the book “Can Asians Think?” There was also an excellent op-ed on western education in the WSJ a few days ago)</p>
<p>The acceptance rates of Asian schools may be frightfully low, but this is proof that low acceptance rates alone do not a world-class university make.</p>
<p>I visited Beijing University, and I was actually quite surprised at the difference between US colleges and Chinese universities (even Taiwanese ones are very different from the ones in China).</p>
<p>The students there study very hard in their classes, eat their meals in drab cafeterias, and return to their dorms, which are often overcrowded (no such thing as a double room exists, all rooms contain 4+ students) and have very unhygenic bathrooms. I guess the same situation would be appalling in the western world, but I heard from many students that conditions there are better than the conditions in their hometowns.</p>
<p>To many people in China, getting into Beijing University is an incredible dream that people don’t dare to dream about. Harvard’s admission rate would look like a joke compared to the difficulty of getting into Beijing University. People who get there have already proven themselves a notch above the competition, and that same spirit continues when they get to University. There is almost no such thing as a social life or EC activities, as everything is centered around the assimilation of knowledge. Living conditions, “fun,” extracurriculars…etc. can all be sacrificed. There’s no time for that anyways - the competition in the University is cutthroat - there’s just simply too many people in China.</p>
<p>When you’ve got 10.1 million students applying to get into college, when compared to the ~2 million students in America, the college scene would be drastically different (and this is not even taking into account the wide availability of higher education in the US and the large amount of money allocated for research at the top private universities in the US). I don’t think it’s fair to compare Chinese v. American colleges because they are inherently different on socioeconomic, cultural, and academical levels.</p>
<p>university of hong kong has a very nice setting…very similar to universities in american but yet…chinese. my dad worked at Hong Kong university of Techonology and i still rememeber how americanized it was…they even had a vending machine.</p>
<p><a href=“http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2007/ARWU2007TOP500list.htm[/url]”>http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2007/ARWU2007TOP500list.htm</a></p>
<p>BIGTWIX,</p>
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<p>I am sorry, getting out of top-20 American colleges is very easy–all you need is a 2.0 in the midst of grade inflation. By the way, if their curriculum is so watered down, then I don’t know how the Koreans/Chinese…students are doing so well as graduate students here (mostly in sciences and engineering).</p>
<p>Im only getting my info from people i have met personally and on the internet, and their experiences with the diffuclty of coursework when studying abroad. Many of the people i have spoken with were fluent in the language of study used, and took normal classes at the universities.</p>
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It’s not very easy… That is a myth.</p>
<p>The hard part is getting into the top Asian universities (Tokyo University, Seoul National U, etc.). </p>
<p>After gaining admittance, it’s not uncommon to find the slacker mentality.</p>
<p>Agreed with k&s.</p>
<p>Often, the Asian educational system is just the opposite of its American counterpart: their high schools are very serious and their universities aren’t as serious, whereas in America, high school is party time and only in college do most people get serious about academics (although some believe that both high school AND college are for partying). Like k&s said, it’s getting in to the elite universities that counts… after that, you’re pretty much set for life. (This is probably the most true in Japanese universities, as that’s the system I’m most familiar with.)</p>
<p>I’ve known of people who are into their 3rd year at elite Japanese universities (Waseda, Keio, Tokyo, and Kyoto) who have no idea what they’re going to major in. And it really doesn’t matter, because businesses will hire them no matter what their grades were and what classes they took, just because they’re from $elite_university.</p>
<p>I have heard of slacker mentality in Japan also; but like you said, the basis of it is that they are guaranteed a job probably with one of the top firms regardless of their grades. Elitism and connection seem to be very important there. It doesn’t necessarily mean the curriculum is easy though. Regardless, that may be how hiring works in Japan but that’s not really the case in Hong Kong and I am not sure if that’s the case in China either. I don’t know anything about Korea. One of my former neighbors majored in architecture at Hong Kong University and he frequently pull all-nighters together with his peers for his individual or group projects. Granted, architecture is probably one of the more demanding majors there but American colleges have easy majors too. I don’t think most American students at top-20 schools need to stay up all night on regular basis. I have not met any graduate student from Japan. But the ones I’d seen from China/Korea/Taiwan had great techical skills.</p>
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Depends on your major. I know quite a few econ/math/science majors who do pull all-nighters quite frequently.</p>
<p>While not quite the same thing, the whole “slacker” mentality is similar to what you’ll find at Yale or Stanford Law.</p>
<p>Supposedly, there have been attempts at reforming the curriculum, attitude, etc. - but the whole school “connections” thing still pretty much holds true.</p>