<p>(response to #13)
Pizzagirl, </p>
<p>(1) I totally agree with your opinion. American HSers’ goal for study is not high SAT score or admission to the highest-end college except for a few students (the share of those students in total is really small number). American students know there are lots of life and career paths and they know lots of ways to prepare the individual long-term goal at different colleges even in the group who want to get higher education. However it is somewhat different in the case of Korean HSers. Quite large percentage of Korean students work very hard to get higher scores at Korean SAT exam and to get admission to better colleges with basic functions and goals of education sometimes ignored. Thus, I hypothesize that motivation for study for them is to win the tournament. Actually all of them are losers of the game triggered by backward education system.
In this point your comment is consistent with #2 of MY OTHER ARGUMENTS of the first post. </p>
<p>(2) Now we assume that y variable is performance at college rather than SAT score, and assume that one American student and one Korean student (graduated from Korean HS), who has almost same socio-economic and individual background and academic capability, take the same lecture at the same American college. Who does show better performance? As most CCers think, we don’t know exactly. But it is certain that two students spent HS days under different cultural and education system, and that PROBABILITY of Korean student reaching at the same level of social skills, emotional and self-management skills (and critical thinking skills) as American SHOULD BE LOW, because they allocate more time to study instead of extra-curriculars and critical thinking on life and society during HS. In other words, Korean student suddenly face more difficulties than American to show the same performance at colleges, and she does’n know how to deal with even this is the really rare case at the distribution of probability.</p>
<p>Yes, this hypothesis can be applied to two American students who has different socio-economic background. The probability of success (graduation or better GPA) of one student with adversary environment should be lower than student with better background simply because of more challenges they have to overcome than the other. However, we know that most of them are late bloomers and this is considered at holistic admission process.</p>