Prestige of US schools among Chinese citizens

International Students
21

<p>“Willams College and Mount Holyoke College”？ Never heard as a Chinese.</p>

22

<p>I am Chinese but currently live in the US.
Yes, the liberal arts colleges have no prestige.
I’d rank the schools in this order:
Cornell
Northwestern
UCB
UCLA
UMich
UNC
ND</p>

<p>Of course, any of the Ivy Leagues have the most prestige.</p>

23

<p>strongly agree with kenny , most Americans( who have never been to china) really got china all wrong, there are just so many rumors.i talk about issues btw HK/Taiwan and mianland in public all the times. china do have a strong censorship, but it happens in lots of countries just not as serious as ours. about facebook and twitter, well there are ways for u to continue use them .</p>

24

<p>I’m somewhat surprised that several posters rated Northwestern as high as they did (for being known on China). I can understand Chinese familiarity with Cornell, Berkeley, and UCLA. All three universities have longstanding involvement in Chinese studies. In the case of UCB and UCLA, large numbers of Chinese have attended those universities going back many years, and there is a large Chinese population in California as well. Northwestern, however, does not have longstanding or strong involvement in Chinese studies. So, what is the basis for Northwestern’s prestige or familiarity in China? </p>

<p>Other questions:

  1. Is Wellesley known at all in Taiwan or mainland China, since Madame Chiang Kai-Shek attended Wellesley?
  2. How well known are Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin in China? Both have strong programs in Chinese studies and there seems to a fairly large number of Chinese students at both of these universities.
  3. How well known is the University of Chicago in China?</p>
25

<p>IIRC Wellesley does have a large contingent of Asian students, I think many of them are Korean.</p>

26

<p>I disagree with 888scale. Only smart geniuses go to MIT :D</p>

27

90% of my family lives in Tianjin or Beijing, two of China’s biggest cities. There are around 15 or so top tier schools that my family knows about.

Highest prestige 1st tier:
MIT
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Stanford

Middle Prestige 2nd tier:
UPenn
UC Berkeley (can be in 1st tier due to its incredibly, INCREDIBLY strong international reputation in engineering, math, physics, and computer science. My dad knew about it and it was his dream school when he applied for grad school in the late 80’s in China.)
Columbia

Low Prestige (but still very prestigious nonetheless) 3rd tier:
Cornell
Caltech
Northwestern (maybe)
John Hopkins
UCLA
UMich
Dartmouth
Brown

Most have not heard of UNC Chapel Hill

28

Many expatriates in China lives just fine without learning much Chinese, you’ll be fine if you live in Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou/Shenzhen/Tianjing those tier-1 cities. However, prepare to live with the heavy smog and all the Chinese Firewall that blocks numerous overseas websites (including those based in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan). VPN is a must if you need to keep using, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Also buy a N-95 mask tain case of smog. But besides all that, those cities a great place for expats. Relatively lower prices for pretty much everything.

29

@biggspc

You need to decide IN WHAT CAPACITY do you intend to work in China or South East Asia.

Do you expect to…

  • backpack & work as an English teacher and earn just enough money for beer and a bed in a youth hostel?
  • work as a regular employee for a local-based company?
  • start your own business?
  • work for an int’l NGO?
  • work as an exceptional talent
  • work in the diplomatic corps?
  • work as a teacher in an int’l school?
  • work in academia?
  • work as a private consultant to local & multi-national organizations/companies?
  • work as a skilled expat or managerial expat for a global multi-national?
  • do an intra-company employee exchange within a global multi-national

These different roles have vastly different requirements in terms of language ability, educational/career path, work experience level.

Provided you haven’t graduated from some shoddy, obscure, for-profit diploma mill, the college you graduate from doesn’t really factor. It’s the work experience or specialized skills on you CV that matters. Except for the backpacking & start your own business examples on my list, all the other roles will require a work visa. You will not get a work visa without some substantial talent or work experience on your CV. In the decade+ I’ve been living & working overseas (including in asia), I’ve met only a handful of working expats w Ivy degrees, and they were non-American.

You also need to consider compensation level. I would not want to live/work in China or in SE Asia on a local wage scale.

There are lots of people w non-technical degrees working overseas. My kids spent most of their years attending int’l schools in different countries. Most of the teachers have non-technical degrees. All of the US Embassy staff and NGO staff we met had non-technical degrees.

Being an int’l scholl teacher is a great way to see the world.
FYI
How to become an international school teacher
http://twoapplesaday.org/2012/01/25/how-do-you-become-an-international-school-teacher/

Some examples of international schools

International School of Beijing
http://www.isb.bj.edu.cn/page.cfm?p=583

Singapore International School
http://www.sas.edu.sg/page.cfm?p=353