<p>“That’s been my experience, as well. Our math education largely ignores proofs. For non-prospective math majors, geometry is the only class where proofs are emphasized. Unfortunately, if my average high school is any indicator, even geometry is now taught without proofs. And if proofs aren’t taught, then you can forget about construction.”</p>
<p>Math teachers, and public schools in general, (and even many privates), are you listening to fabrizio? He’s spot on. (And it’s really shocking what basics students are NOT learning in math now.) They’re all in private tutoring, but learning the BASICS in tutoring.</p>
<p>While having $$$ doesn’t guarantee admission, it certainly helps – since it helps in getting a top-notch education, including English lessons (which don’t come cheap).</p>
<p>And while the kids of doctors, lawyers, middle-management types (who are a “dime a dozen”) need excellent grades to get in – the scions of the Chaebols, just like the kids of the politically connected or super-wealthy here in the States, the Gores, the Bushes, the Lifshtzes (aka the kids of Ralph Lauren) somehow find a way to get in despite not having the top scores/grades.</p>
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<p>Actually, ESL education in SKorea is notoriously bad (esp. for the amount of $$ they spend on it).</p>
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<p>And you would be wrong.</p>
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<p>Unless you go into engineering or a few other areas of study, the starting salary for most college grads is the mid-30K to mid-40K.</p>
<p>Starting, perhaps. But most people will hit at least the 50K range at some point in their life if they get a BA from some halfway-decent college.</p>
<p>That not only applies to internationals, but to American citizens as well. Rich Americans will have an edge in SAT preps and getting tutors too, and famous people’s kids, regardless of their nationality, will get into good schools with relative ease. Then, why would being international and having money help them to get in more so than any others in similar socioeconomic situation from the U.S.? It is no different. But, anyway, what you just said now contradicts what you said before:</p>
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<p>here, you made it sound like the top schools in the U.S. will cut slack with international rich kids while not paying much attention to the academics at all. But, the international applicant pool at top schools are even more competitive compared to domestic, and the international students, regardless of their financial situations, tend to be among the strongest students among admitted students at any school.</p>
Elastine, I suggest you look at some previous posts. English is very very far from being treated like a native language in Korea. In Korea, English is literally treated as a foreign language, just as how Americans treat Korean as a foreign language. No subject in Korean elementary, middle, and high schools (with the exception of special high schools like Minjok) is taught in English.</p>
<p>Some info about me.
I spent my elementary school and most of my middle school in a International School in Korea (Seoul International School), and spent 7th grade at a Korean Middle School (Naejung Middle School) and came to the US to study.
Since I hang out with international kids, and my parents live in Korea,
I am blessed to go back to Korea every vacation (mostly 2 times a year sometimes 3)</p>
<p>I have many friends in Daewon and Minjok as well.
From what I know, some are just like the people who people in this forum describe. Memorizing and 24/7 studying.
However, one kid, who got scholarship to Duke,
He is work hard play hard person.</p>
<p>The opinions dont look right too
Honestly, I could say I am pretty comfortable in English/ Korean,
However in Korea I am forced to use Korean since people frown at me when I speak English. They do not like people who speak English because I believe that they can not understand English that well. Well, English is taught in schools, however they do not encourage discussions, and teachers are Korean-raised teachers, which therefore class discussions in English are difficult.</p>
<p>In terms of crazy SAT scores,
I know many international Korean kids in private/public schools, however they are not like the Koreans that you think they are.
Having supervised and worked at an SAT institute last summer,
there were very high SAT scores, on the other side there were very low scores as well.</p>
<p>Well, Minjok and Daewon might be the only foreign high school that was shown in the article, there are plenty more too.</p>
<p>my opinion.</p>
<p>Koreans in Korea have the motto
If you are in Korea, why aren’t you speaking Korean?</p>
<p>This makes Korea sound like hell. I think that they should be commended for their achievement, but they should still have some fun. You only live once.</p>
<p>Anybody have any information on the SAT cheating scandal that took place not too long ago in Korea? Also, allegations of fraud by the schools to assist applicants to U.S. colleges. How widespread is the cheating?</p>
<p>yeah it happened at Han young foreign High school,
Somehow copy of the SAT got released before the exam date.
so I believe last year’s January scores got cancelled</p>
As far as I know, cheating is nonexistant in elite Korean high schools. This is not only because all the students there are too capable and smart to even consider cheating but also because teachers are really observant.</p>
<p>who cares? people on CC are really catching feelings, as if they were personally insulted in this article. idk why everyone is agruing, you guys have different views.
/thread</p>
<p>Prestige is just dumb… if you beleive in yourself and actually have an INTEREST in what you are learning and do well you probably can acheive entrance into a top university WITHOUT worrying about prestige. </p>
<p>I have a couple exchange students at my private high school. They are from East Asia, and are very proficient students, and are definatly top of their class, but they in no way study 24/7. Most spend a good amount of time doing other things, I think cases like this are VERY extreme.</p>
<p>My Korean student went to a private boys’ school that I believe is fairly competitive. His English is insufficient to enable him to participate at a decent level in any class that requires reading moderately sophisticated texts, and he has had more exposure to the language than the typical Korean. (Standard sophomore year American Lit such as Hemingway or Fitzgerald would be extremely difficult for him; Shakespeare or Dickens, impossible.) He dropped out of the English course we placed him in that required reading short stories, because it was too hard. I have given him entertaining novels in English to read, in an effort to help him improve his English, but he doesn’t attempt them. (Nor does he take the other steps he ought to if he wants to improve his English enough to really succeed in school here.) At home, he said he reads perhaps one book per year outside of required texts. It is very difficult for him to understand much of what is said in classes. His science vocabulary is completely Korean, and therefore useless anywhere else in the world. (Their notion of teaching chemistry is apparently to have the students memorize the periodic table–in Korean.) His notions of American and world history seem to come from Korean comic-style books with racist and anti-semitic overtones. </p>
<p>Although they apparently went to school from 7 am to 10 pm every day, I see no intellectual curiosity, no motivation, little self-discipline. He does what he is made to do, and needs a highly structured environment. This is no uber-student. I am fairly confident that he is more typical of the Korean student than a handful of the elite in two schools profiled by the Times. (He’s also a very nice kid. I feel sorry for him, because he has completely unrealistic expectations of the kind of school he will be able to get into here, and a lot of family pressure.)</p>
<p>The “holistic” admissions progress is a front to seem more legitimate than it actually is. The most effective way to predict a college student’s grades–and this has been proven countless times–is to use their IQ combined with their GPA. The old style SAT used to be a de facto IQ test, so it worked really well after a while and now, after the drastic change to the way the SAT works, it doesn’t predict college grades nearly as well.</p>
<p>The western system is much more subjective and can be un-meritocratic. Ideally, all schools should be as meritocratic as possible… the “holistic” system that western colleges use detracts from that. Hence, I actually think the Asian system (or alternatively, the American Law School system) of admittance is much better.</p>
<p>I don’t expect anyone to admit it, but I think most of you prefer the western system of admittance because you’ve spent your teenage years tailoring yourself to it and bowing to the authority of it.</p>
<p>References to “selling the Brooklyn Bridge” abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity. For example, “If you believe that, I have a wonderful bargain for you…” References are often nowadays more oblique, such as "I could sell you some lovely riverside property in Brooklyn …</p>