<p>This seems to be an older thread, so I’m not sure if these thoughts are coming too late to be of help to the original poster. But I can totally understand why Korean parents would be skeptical of choosing W&M over an internationally known, brand name university like UCLA, but I don’t know if “ignorance” is the best explanation. And to respond to a poster’s hesitation about freaking out his/her Korean parents with challenges that include, “Why would you wanna live up to their expectations?” demonstrates a lot of, yes, ignorance.</p>
<p>My parents grew up in Taiwan and while they and their friends were all fairly Americanized and familiar with W&M, the school still wasn’t mentioned in the same breath as Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Rice, MIT, or the Ivies (and even of those, places like Dartmouth and Brown were held in lower esteem). For my parents’ generation of Asians, and the generations before them, those were America’s totemic schools, where Asia’s best and brightest went for graduate training, usually in the sciences. The people who went to these schools, and also to other flagship state schools like Texas, Illinois, Washington, Minnesota, etc., either returned to their home country as conquering heroes, armed with all the benefits of an American education, or found work in America and achieved the American dream. </p>
<p>Familiarity has to factor into which schools are revered internationally–W&M just doesn’t have the same history of international students–but I also think the idea of valuing a great undergraduate education is a relatively new one to people like the original poster’s parents, though probably more tolerated now largely because it can expedite the entrance into a prestigious graduate school; for educated Asian parents, a bachelor’s often isn’t enough for their child. (That could be one argument the original poster could use with his/her parents, that going to W&M will give him an equal if not better chance of going to a good grad school.)</p>
<p>The predisposition towards the sciences, emphasis on practical training, and the assumption that a university with great graduate programs automatically makes for a good place to go for undergrad, also can help explain why W&M lags in terms of international reputation. Speaking generally, it seems like the importance of liberal arts, and a liberal arts education, while understood intellectually, is not top of mind while selecting a college for most internationals. Take a look at the Academic Ranking of World Universities, put out by a Shanghai university, and which sort of serves as a global version of the US News and World Report rankings. </p>
<p>[Academic</a> Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)](<a href=“http://www.arwu.org/index.jsp]Academic”>http://www.arwu.org/index.jsp)</p>
<p>You can argue about these rankings’ accuracy and methodology all you want, but they do provide an interesting picture of what internationals (Asian, in particular) value in universities. The schools dominating the top of the list are largely big, well-endowed, research-oriented universities (mostly in the sciences) with lots of graduate programs; Dartmouth doesn’t even make the top 100. W&M doesn’t crack the top 500, but neither do Amherst or Williams. Culturally, a lot of American ideas toward education just don’t export very well. </p>
<p>As for the W&M versus UCLA debate, previous posters have hit all the points that I would: that when it comes to an individual undergraduate experience, W&M can offer a lot of things that UCLA probably doesn’t. But I’ll also add that if the original poster plans on returning to Korea after graduation, a UCLA degree will likely have more cachet and possibly open more doors.</p>
And I certainly agree with the notion about prestige. I do believe also that the quality of education I will receive would be more important than the name value as I see that I will not be able to access the courses I would like to take at UCLA since there seem to be a great number of students.