<p>china is not as rosy as main street media makes it to be…</p>
<p>but yea back to colleges thing… i totally think its inappropriate for them to forge documents just to get into top colleges.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, admissions to the elite schools are possible for the non-elites here as well. My DD2’s foreign language tutor (see we are elite too in a way :-)) sent one child to Stanford - single parent - and the second one, “oh, he will study physics in California at a State school” Did not even mention the B-word. (Berkeley for the uninitiated). The parent is not a tiger parent and most definitely not rich by any means. Both kids public schooled, no cram school, National Honor Society, the works, and admissions to Ivies. So, it is possible. Better yet, while everyone in the public school knew some of the other academic geniuses, these kids were completely below the radar. No show-offs, no “I will see your 2.5E6 SAT, no nothing”. </p>
<p>If I may be a bit ethnically stereotypical (it’s OK, we ethnics can be stereotypical, I checked with HR) the family comes from a country in Europe renowned for its food, wine, and lack of work ethic :-)</p>
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<p>Not true. Cars are everywhere in China now. My maternal uncle has a car, and he still lives with his wife in my grandmother’s apartment. Before their son, my cousin, went off to university, he lived with them as well.</p>
<p>Ultimately, it is a sociological question as to WHO the Chinese F-1s pursuing bachelor’s degrees are. I don’t deny that corruption plays a role, but I question TO WHAT EXTENT it (plays a role).</p>
<p>@fabrizio
from the region i visited it tend to be true. its funny how you see more Mercedes than hondas. are you talking about corruption to get the money or to get into college? i think it plays a factor more as the colleges get more expensive/more prestigious.</p>
<p>^Primary school and junior high school education (grades 1-9) is free and compulsory in China. Enrollment is close to 100%. In 2009, rate of enrollment for high school in China was 79.2%, and it is believed to be above 80% today. This year, over 25% of all 18 year old Chinese kids will go to college.</p>
<p>Child beggars is old news and you will have difficulty find any in major Chinese cities today.</p>
<p>Many urban families own multiple apartments, which were usually bought relatively cheap before or at the beginning of the current real estates boom. </p>
<p>And you should go to China to learn more about the country, instead of just reading about it in the U.S. media. It is changing rapidly every day.</p>
<p>no way its 100% free because my cousins are paying for their schools and its not private. and i went to shenzhen just last year and there was definitely child beggars. middle class dont tend to have more than 1 but those with more money tend to have more then 1 whether for themselves or for mistresses.</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>
<p>It doesn’t put a bad taste in my mouth for that reason. Rich people have been able to buy more advantages than poor people ever since the invention of money. What put a bad taste in my mouth were quotes in the article such this:</p>
<p>“Some of these agencies offer to write their clients’ college essays from scratch, train them for alumni interviews and even modify student transcripts, consultants have said.”</p>
<p>or this:</p>
<p>“The students just supply their information and we do all the work,” said one representative, who requested anonymity to protect his job.</p>
<p>or this:</p>
<p>"Reached by telephone, an agency representative said the company did a lot more than just polish r</p>
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Some better schools may charge special fees to students from outside district or students did not meet test score, though the latter is illegal for elementary and junior high. </p>
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Last year, yes. But not anymore now.</p>
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Not most, but many have more than 1 apartments. Over 300 million Chinese are considered to be middle class.</p>
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<p>I’ve done a lot of 3rd world traveling and child beggars or product-hawkers seem to be prevalent almost everywhere. Of course, if you travel in certain circles, such as with “middle-class” or professional families, you may never get to see the very poor underclass who need to do this in order to survive.</p>
<p>I knew several moms who out and out admitted that they wrote their kids essays or had someone who was an excellent writer do so. Not to mention the many revisions and edits an honest essay can undergo. This just does it on an organized level. As I said, you can find someone who will do a lot of these things. There is a reason that they want a thumbprint for LSATs and other tests where so much is at stake.</p>
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<p>If you visited Shenzhen, it may be the case, seeing as how Shenzhen is one of the most developed and most expensive (to live) cities in China. I visited Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen last Christmas, and there were cars everywhere in all three cities, even Wuhan, which is the least developed of the three. In fact, cars were so prevalent in Wuhan that it was not possible to drive faster than 30 miles per hour, even on highways.</p>
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<p>Corruption to get the money. I don’t deny that it exists and is a problem; the CCP is very corrupt these days as a result of absolute power. I question TO WHAT EXTENT Chinese F-1s pursuing bachelor’s here are the children of corrupt officials.</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 is only an iota of difference between buying forged transcripts and having your application massaged or even “manufactured” by high-priced admission consultants. Considering that international students comprise less than 10% of Ivies, I think what you’re talking about is a very small number of people from a very, very, very large country.</p>
<p>The NYT article elicited negative responses from me as well, as some of the “services” the consultants offer are clearly out of bounds. Nonetheless, nothing the Chinese are doing has not been done by Americans. It just attests the fact that money can buy a lot of advantages, some fair, some not. Remember, college admission is far from the most outrageous thing that money can buy. </p>
<p>@emory83: The trips you took to China were basically wasted. It’s embarrassing to see that your observations in China were so crude and erroneous and unnuanced. I hope Emory will teach you critical thinking and analytical skills.</p>
<p>forget money. How about how many American parents write their kids application essay. I know an ivy educated parent that wrote the kids essays in high school, what do you think this parent did for the kids college app essay!</p>
<p>It’s a common behavior for highly ambitious parents to do the work their kid should do</p>
<p>And I bet it’s harder and harder for admin readers to catch the frauds</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between helping on an essay or polishing a college application and outright forging a transcript. If you don’t think so, check with the people in the US State Dept whose work is to weed out fake papers used for student and other entry visas in the US. </p>
<p>As someone who has done my share of recruiting, interviewing, and hiring, I often laugh when I run into ‘massaged’ resumes - like the guy whose resume outright boasted “he was one of the three people who wrote the Linux Kernel” or the dude who claimed he wrote 100k lines of code in a year (must have counted /usr/include files too…). These are usually not intentional, just juvenile. But, that’s quite different than outright forging credentials.</p>
<p>Here’s something scarier: A random woman I chatted with one day, told me she wrote her husband’s med school admissions essays because she was a great writer and he was not.</p>
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<p>The child beggars in Chinese cities had been mostly an issue of crime rather than a reflection of poverty. Once the Chinese government and police were shamed into taking action by an online blogger, child beggars disappeared from the streets almost overnight earlier this year.
Here is one report about it: [Child</a> Beggars and a Revolution of Digital Conscience](<a href=“http://chinageeks.org/2011/02/child-beggars-and-a-revolution-of-digital-conscience/]Child”>http://chinageeks.org/2011/02/child-beggars-and-a-revolution-of-digital-conscience/)</p>
<p>I’ve traveled extensively all over China over the years, often in remote and very poor areas. There is poverty, both in cities and rural areas. But you will hardly ever see beggars in the countryside or small towns, but always in large cities with lots of wealth.</p>
<p>I disagree with an above post that has the idea that “everyone” does these despicable, cheating practices. No, I wrote my own essays and my kids wrote their own, too.
In our lives, some of us are honest and have honor. Thank God there are still some honest people in this world.
It’s a slippery slope, poor ethical practices (along with outright cheating, lying) may pass muster in some places, however some of us do NOT live by the plan that the ends justify the means.
It’s sick that some condone the practices described in this article and I strongly dispute they are prevalent all over and just following what rich people, whatever, have “always” done. Ridiculous.</p>
<p>@Haddon1267
nothing i said is false. this is the cold truth. i was expecting better people and better things but sadly, this is how it is. im not the only one with this kind of observations. lots of chinese americans who went back to visit china again also witness and feel the same way. my comments all originate from the observation of relatives, their friends, and all the people in the city and how they act toward other people and situations. i was actually being less harsh. the image that the US have of china is totally laughable. lets just say china is capitalism with corruption on crack. majority of the people only thinks about themselves to such a degree that you cant trust 96% of charity organization that originated in china. i almost got ran over twice (onc was a bmw, the other was a police car!) and i definitely did not violate any traffic laws. it was summer so they had their window open and the police people were shouting how i should respect their car and let them go first even though they just ran over a red light. i witnessed a woman with a little kid trip and all of her stuff fell on the ground yet not only did the people on the street not help her, they walked on her stuff and not even apologize! no one even looked surprised. but the food was definitely very good and there have been major construction/tech advancement.</p>
<p>^ @emory:
I am sure you heard from people and you saw things in China. But think about it, if China is such a totally dark place and the Chinese so lack in humanity, how can the country reach where it is today – with sustained development and the vast majority of people pretty content with their lots in life?</p>
<p>For one thing, China has a compulsory 9 year education, tuition free. It’s not true that if you are not rich, you have no access to basic education. Second, China’s economy is the second largest in the world; it cannot be totally built on a corrupted officialdom. There is a huge and growing entrepreneurial class in the county that operate in a very much free market capitalist fashion (maybe less refined than the U.S., but nonetheless). Also, China is the world’s largest automobile market today. Among the car owners are policemen, teachers, shopkeepers, regular office workers. The economic growth is spreading across economic classes and regions (although not in a totally fair fashion). </p>
<p>I am not here to defend China, the least the Chinese who cheated to get into Harvard. But I do want to counter your prejudice. I also feel that there is a undercurrent (stirred by a small number but vocal posters) of xenophobia, negativism, and sometimes borderline racism on various CC threads . And your diatribe does not help anyone to look at the matter rationally.</p>