<p>^totally true. they don’t care about learning as much because they have everything set up back at home. most are not even planning to stay here. they only want the paper with a foreign college’s name. it doesnt matter what their gpa is because all the people in china cares about is the name. plus, most who can pay 30-50k a year have connection and money already. most koreans and chinese see this as vacation/shopping spree. but they do contributes a lot to the US economy because when they go back every break/summer, they tend to stock up on LV and other designer things to bring back to china as it is cheaper here.</p>
<p>Gaming of standardized testing has been going on since my days of taking the TOEFL. Heck, I just showed up and scored a respectable 610 without any prep back in the days when Harvard wanted 500 or 550… Had friends from various places with uber-expensive TOEFL prep classes that scored in the 600’s and they could not order a meal at Burger King to save their lives. The same with the GRE verbal. </p>
<p>Likewise, admissions (cough) counseling has been going on for ever. Think of a brightly lit room with every US college catalog known to humanity, a few helpful counselors that could decode Catalogese and translate it to Pashtu or Romanian or what have you, a small fee of a few hundred dollars to save months of research, and that’s it. No guarantees tho, but back then anybody got admitted…</p>
<p>So a low-income but entrepreneurial Ivy League student could start a nice sideline providing “continuing services” to the Chinese students who essentially bought their way in?</p>
<p>What’s the difference between rich Chinese buying their way in and American rich buying their way in?</p>
<p>I’m shocked – shocked – to find gambling in this establishment!</p>
<p>As the “mother” of a chinese exchange student from Hong Kong for the last 10 months, I have learned a lot about chinese culture. In Hong Kong, it is very competitive. You have to achieve certain test scores to get into “college” over there. There is also corruption. N tells me that if you have money, at least in mainland china (not so much Hong Kong) that you can “buy” your diploma.</p>
<p>N’s parents will be paying appx. $50,000 next year for her to attend a private boarding school on the west coast so she can work on her English and receive a hs diploma. (Her reading SAT scores were VERY low and her toefl is not near high enough for the types of schools she wants to go to. They are extremely focused and are prepared to do whatever it takes to get her into the best college. Another thing I have noticed is that they are very name conscious. They definitely go for Ivies and highly rated LAC. I have had many discussions with N about colleges though and I have explained that you don’t need to go to a big name school to get a good education…I think she is starting to understand.</p>
<p>This thread is on the verge of racism, especially @emory’s post. Not ALL chinese students are children of rich and corrupted parents chasing after prestige. Remember, china statistically still has a low GDP per capita, so only a tiny amount of the population can even think of affording such college coaching services.</p>
<p>I agree that writing the essays for them is wrong, though proofreading and helping is morally acceptable. I believe almost all students regarrdless of where they come from get help with their essays from their teachers. I also see nothing wrong in recommending EC’s and internships for the chinese student to attend. After all, the students themselves will be the one attending those activities and thus their application will be genuinely about their own experiences.</p>
<p>I am ethnically chinese and in my expereince, chinese culture is strict about morality and living a honourable life. We have a great deal of ancient influences from philisophers like Confucious and also from lots of other cultural aspects too numerous to mention.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is Mao’s cultural revolution than put a scar in chinese history that lead to overall degredation of china and the poverty of it’s people. </p>
<p>Conpetetion and strive for sucess IS very high in china, but most of the culture teaches rewards through hard work, i.e. you reap what you sow. I cannot think of any quote, saying, or tradation that encourages outright cheating.</p>
<p>zhangvict: What I write is just from personal experience with one 18 year old from Hong Kong. I do not mean to imply negative stereotypes and I am just relaying the information that N. has given me this past year. We also were blessed to get to know another exchange student from Beijing who became best friends with N. I love N. like my own daughter and tell people all the time what an amazing person she is. She is the most motivated, dedicated and hardworking student I have ever personally known and I absolutely attribute that to her culture. I brag all the time about her math skills and how it indicates USA’s inferior ability to teach high level math. </p>
<p>I wish my own kids had N. work ethic!</p>
<p>Some years ago, I received a brochure from an American company that sounded just like this – they wanted $18,000 or something like that with a guarantee that my kid would get into an Ivy. I was stunned at the time because, back then, this was almost half the price of a year at an Ivy. If memory serves, most of their staff had worked at admissions offices in top schools. I tossed the brochure.</p>
<p>@zhangvict
i was talking about international chinese who can pay $30k-50k a year. times that by 6 and thats how many yuan it cost per year. only few few people make 180k-300k yuan a year. gov officials dont make that much but they get perks/“friendship money” that makes it more than that. if they can pay that much a year, and considering how much a regular chinese make, they are rich and have connections. not all of them cheat but majority of them do. a lot gives “friendship money” and “holiday gifts” to teachers. there is a saying in china, it’s not bribing if it’s networking. every person who ever lived in china knows that every gov official is corrupt ranging from the most basic level to higher levels. you cant get to be a gov official without sucking up and “friendship money”. im not being racist. this is a fact that many people who lived in china knows about.
cheating happens everyday because of pressure to succeed. its not even that weird anymore. in china, anything can be bought.
btw, im not saying they are stupid academically because they are smarter academically than the avg american student here and majority have amazing math skills.
also, poor international chinese would never be able to even apply to foreign schools. most poor chinese can’t even pay for high school or elementary schools or at least not a good one. there is no free education in china.</p>
<p>I don’t find it too shocking that some people are paying to get what my kids inherited.</p>
<p>What I mean is knowledge about what US colleges are looking for, how to apply, what kinds of ECs are valued, what American adults would be looking for in an admissions essay, etc. I think it’s quite reasonable for people to pay for this (although they could get a lot of it for free, assuming this website can be accessed in China).</p>
<p>None of that justifies the cheating, of course, but it’s just as bad for a US parent to rewrite his kid’s essay as it is for a consultant to do so.</p>
<p>Emory83: So what? The Ivies admit how many mediocre students who are the children of the very (American) rich? You certainly don’t think that George W Bush or John F Kennedy had the stats, do you? (They didn’t.) The Ivies are full of grads from Exeter, Andover, Choate etc. How much do you think that education cost? And is it any different from what the Chinese are doing?</p>
<p>This is a silly discussion. The Ivies have always done this. The only difference is that they’ve now become more ethnically inclusive. As long as the ethnic has money.</p>
<p>the argument isnt about that they have money. the thing is about that a lot of them buy forged transcripts/recommendations and cheats on exams.</p>
<p>There’s a school right up the road from me to where a lot of families, all Asians have their kids bussed after regular high school to prep them exclusively for college admissions. The school district is one of the best in the country, but these families want even more prep. I know a family who has used them for years. Her sons go to Harvard and Yale. Her nephew was accepted to UCLA and Wesleyan. But these kids who use these services basically have a double shift of school. They pretty much max the SATs, take the most difficult courses, and then their applications are pristine. But paying for this service is terribly expensive and basically these families feel worth more than a private school. So they have their kids go to the best public school around and augment with this service. </p>
<p>The two kids, and I know them well, got nearly perfect SATs, by the way, and took the most advanced courses I’ve seen kids take. Also at the top of their respective classes. </p>
<p>However, I will tell you that when it comes to graduate schools and grants and stipends, several university profs have told me that they hire or accept only Asians internationals that someone in the department personally knows or has visited and gotten to know. Too much fraud happening in the paper work.</p>
<p>Any of us here can buys such services if we so please. I have instead put the same amount of money in buying private school experiences for my kids k-12. Had I put them in public school, I could have paid for such supplementation, but as it is, I could not. But you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and I truly don’t think my kids were conducive for this sort of regimentation. Yes, the following remark is stereotypical, but it is my observation that the Asian kids I have seen are very conducive and willing to do what the family dictates in terms of academics. Not my kids.</p>
<p>@emory83</p>
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<p>It is an interesting sociological question as to WHO the Chinese international students pursuing bachelor’s degrees here are. I asked my dad, who emigrated from China in the 1980s, for his opinion. He offered two possibilities:</p>
<ol>
<li>Corruption</li>
<li>Extreme saving</li>
</ol>
<p>China has the second largest economy by nominal GDP, but its GDP per capita remains low. Furthermore, income inequality in China is rather high as measured by the Gini coefficient. Add that the Chinese Communist Party was corrupted by absolute power, and we certainly cannot discount the possibility that corruption is involved.</p>
<p>But I roomed once with a Chinese international student. If his parents were big wigs in the CCP, he hid it pretty well, as he struck me as a pretty normal guy; I didn’t detect any pretentiousness whatsoever. I don’t know whether he plans to stay here permanently, but I spoke with him after he graduated and he informed me that he has a job lined up in California.</p>
<p>So perhaps the more interesting question would be, “What is the breakdown of Chinese international students by group?” That is, how many are the scions of (reasonably) high-ranking CCP members? And how many are the kids of Zhou Sixpack who’s been saving God knows how much of every paycheck to pay for his only kid’s education?</p>
<p>I’m guessing you went to Emory. I went to Georgia Tech. Tell us about your experience. Do you believe that most of the Chinese internationals you met fit category #1 instead of #2?</p>
<p>im actually going to main campus next year but i did an overnight visit with an international student and i have friends who go there now. from what i hear and see, most are from category 1 which is understandable because emory is $56k not including other expenses like insurance and personal spending which means roughly about $60k for internationals a year. that is more than 360k yuan a year or more than 1.44 million yuan for 4 years. (those are not exact numbers as $1=about 6.5something yuan). no gov official makes that much in 4 years without corruption and very very few family can save that much. also, you dont have to be big wigs to have that much money. local gov officials can easily obtain that amount in 5 years so i guess they can also fall into category 2 that way. most of the international chinese who are more savers tend to go to oxford first</p>
<p>The article does put a bad taste in our mouths, I think, because it’s a blatant example of what money can buy.</p>
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<p>I felt the same way when I saw articles about America’s high-priced “college admissions coaches” paid for by determined parents with ultra-deep pockets.</p>
<p>Re: emory83
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<p>Statements like this shows that you know absolutely nothing about China.</p>
<p>Though China’s per capita GDP is still low, there are still a lot of rich Chinese who can afford private schools in the US. I mean A LOT. According to a recent report from China Economics Weekly, in Shanghai alone, there are 7,800 people with personal wealth over 100 million yuan (>15 million USD) and more than 130,000 people worth over 10 million yuan (>1.5 million USD) and Beijing has even more rich people than Shanghai.</p>
<p>With the recent real estate boom/bubble, even many urban upper middle class Chinese families can sell one of their apartments and easily pay 4 years tuition at Harvard with still a lot of money left. And when it comes to the education for their only child, Chinese parents don’t usually hesitate.</p>
<p>50% of chinese live in poverty. i said poor chinese have problems pay for high schools not rich/middle class chinese. if you ever went to china, on every other 2 streets, you would see child beggars (either forced or by choice). yes there are a lot of rich chinese but how many are gov officials/related to them? thats a whole another question. plus it totally makes sense why beijing have more millionaires than shanghai. middle class chinese is growing but they wouldnt be able to sell their house to pay for college because then they would have no other place to live considering high house prices and inflation. its a fact that if you dont pay, you dont get to go to school in china. also, the quality of living for middle class chinese is much much lower than quality of living for middle class here. in china, usually only the upper middle class/rich chinese can have a car (which explains high sell rate of expensive cars in china). also, mostly only middle class and above can afford mcdonals/kfc. its very hard to be wealthy in china if you are not a gov official or have done something you shouldnt have. its also impossible to have a successful company in china without bribing the gov. its no surprise that shanghai have awful water quality, and china is a country filled with messed up milk, fake eggs(i was surprised too), fake beef(pork with coloring), fake pepper dressing thing(formed using clay), and glow in the dark pork. the gov officials that make all of the decisions dont care enough about those kind of problems because they get their food from a special food source specially made for gov officials.</p>