<p>Stanford architecture rathole comment.</p>
<p>I have a Stanford degree and when I was there (many many moons ago) the students themselves referred to the Taco Bell campus on occasion … the references made in this thread were not some arbitrary comments.</p>
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<p>If you have to exaggerate in order to make Asians appear to only apply to Ivy+, then I’ve no interest to respond further. Just checked, you have get to page FIVE to get to the 50th school.</p>
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Prestigious by whose definition? Most college grads in the US will look puzzled when you mention Rhodes College.</p>
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<p>Yes. There are a few posters who seem to have a distorted view of reality and rely on confirmation bias to make their weak, data-free, assumptions.</p>
<p>Did you know many “top” magnet schools are only top experiences for a select group within them? Try to google the performance stats for a range of them. And the numbers that head off to 4 year or 2 year colleges- or none. </p>
<p>Magnets do help many. And magnets come in various forms. Rather than allow some kids to just outright fail, I’m all for job and personal skills training. But understanding the US educational system is more than “our” ideas and what we know about “our” neighborhoods or areas.</p>
<p>Speaking for my area, we have some community schools doing a superb job with bright kids who need the right opportunities. They then transfer into a number of very good high schools, including privates. Much parent support, within those communities. Competitive kids.</p>
<p>And, owing to the sort of standards and mentoring, those same kids-- well, so many on CC complain bitterly about them only getting into top colleges because someone else felt sorry for them or wanted an improved ranking in some media rag. Eyes wide shut.</p>
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<p>Well, you may be heartened or depressed to find that the new dorms they just broke ground on and the changes to the original Chemistry building (closed since one of the earthquakes IIRC) has been designed in the style of In-N-Out. </p>
<p>This was in an effort to offer a balance to the Taco Bell design and to appeal to more students in a blatant attempt to lower their admission rates.</p>
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<p>And that’s a good thing? </p>
<p>Where do the average kids fit into that scenario? </p>
<p>The U.S. education system is currently failing not so much because the best and the brightest are being tramped down…it’s failing because it is not bringing the average kid up to educational standards that are on par with other countries. When I read “The Smartest Kids in the World” I was impressed with the Finnish and Polish approaches to education because those systems have an expectation that all kids should be educated to be the best they can be. Different means of getting to that point, but some interesting ideas that could applied here from both. </p>
<p>Education should be about growth and development for all, not about separating out the wheat from the chaff…or making sure that MY kid gets into super-prestigious-impress-your-neighbors U.</p>
<p>To continue on @fluffy2017’s theme and this thread being hijacked so many times…after all, this is about crazy parents…it is true that many of the diehard Californians love In-N-Out more than any other burgers…and that the Old Chemistry building will be remodeled with the likeness of this cult chain…especially with the symbolic “crossed” palm trees… </p>
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<p>…the only question is…will they serve the burgers? And if they do…I can guarantee my K2 will cancel quarterly meal cards for burgers 3 times daily ;)</p>
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<p>Could it be that you never paid attention to the printed version of the USNews, but I can assure you that they find a way to list fifty schools in the first page of the rankings. The same page was available until Morse and his wise acolytes decided that such information would be better presented in a nitwitty FB format. Fwiw, in the 2011 edition, the “first page” of universities was found at page 88. All fifty of them! </p>
<p>As far as not responding further, that is your decision! </p>
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<p>I am afraid that you just provided the best illustration of my post. On a personal note, I’d find it plenty prestigious to be picked up by Dave Wottle on my way to a Rhodes interview. An obvious insider’s joke related to a friend who happened to choose Rhodes over Yale in her quest to attend a great school. The shunned Yale did not hold a grudge as they accepted the tuba playing aspiring doctor to its medical school. </p>
<p>As some do with a tongue before speaking ill, perhaps you should twist your keyboard five times before let it spit non-sense. </p>
<p>^What does your anecdote prove? I also know people who turned down Cornell and Brown for UMass. Does that make UMass undergrad prestigious?</p>
<p>My anecdote was not about “proving” anything. Your own statement about the lack of prestige of Rhodes performed that task admirably. </p>
<p>And, again, rather than challenging the point I had made, you simply confirmed it. Would you like to add that few (if any) Asians would consider Rhodes worthy of an application? To add some effect?</p>
<p>Fwiw, if you really think Rhodes is way too low on the “prestige” scale, should we try with Washington and Lee – a highly reputable LAC? How many Asians do you think enroll in a typical class? Would it surprise you that the answer is fewer than Hispanics? </p>
<p><a href=“Washington and Lee”>Washington and Lee; </p>
<p>Not prestigious enough? Let’s try Davidson:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.davidson.edu/Documents/Administrative%20Department/Institutional%20Research/CommonDataSet_2012-13.pdf”>http://www.davidson.edu/Documents/Administrative%20Department/Institutional%20Research/CommonDataSet_2012-13.pdf</a></p>
<p>Do you still want to see the Wellesley numbers and compare?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/assets/common_data_set_2013.pdf”>http://www.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/assets/common_data_set_2013.pdf</a></p>
<p>and Smith
<a href=“http://www.smith.edu/ir/docs/2013-14CDS_2013-2014_Smith.pdf”>http://www.smith.edu/ir/docs/2013-14CDS_2013-2014_Smith.pdf</a></p>
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<p>I think a separation of wheat from chaff is a natural result of an educational system that promotes growth and development for all.</p>
<p>If wheat and chaff are not separated by an educational system, then images of Mao’s China come to mind.</p>
<p>Of course we know that no educational system can guarantee acceptance into super-prestigious schools. That process is fraught with mystery and randomness as is evident from many threads here. </p>
<p>But I have no problem with an educational system that gives talented kids good opportunities to let their talents shine and maximizes their chances to get into super prestigious schools. And if positive results also impress the neighbors, well some of us are not our neighbors’ keepers.</p>
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There are certainly plenty of Asians who don’t do this–I suspect that those who have been in this country longer, and understand the educational system better, are less likely to do this. But I have to say, essentially all the people I’ve encountered with this attitude, both on CC and IRL have been Chinese immigrant families. There may be others with this attitude, certainly. As I’ve said, it wouldn’t surprise me to find this attitude in any family that came fairly recently from a country with very high-stakes testing that determines your future. That’s the culture part of this–in those countries, if you don’t get into the top schools, you really have failed. That’s just not the case in the U.S.</p>
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<p>That’s odd as much criticism of the US education systems I’ve came across in both the domestic and international MSM and within education circles is centered on how the prevailing culture caters so much to the average and struggling students that kids who excel and aren’t in areas where they have public magnets, academically accelerated programs in the area, or can pay for an academically rigorous private school end up being neglected in comparison to many other performing nations’ systems. </p>
<p>It’s in stark contrast to other countries where the best students are tracked from around 12-13 onwards to academic(college) track, various vocational tracks, and going into the workforce. </p>
<p>Also, some of those countries have no compunctions about allowing struggling students to sink and those who are violently disruptive to be expelled and denied the ability to continue their education. </p>
<p>Wheat from Chaff: Let’s look at Chinese education under communism. At the end of WWII and the Communist Revolution, the literary rate was about 15%, which I believe was more or less the historical norm. It was 80-90% by the mid-70’s. Given the complexity of Chinese literacy and the devastation of a century of wars, this is an amazing statement about the accomplishments of an education system that promotes growth and development for all.</p>
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You’re entitled to your opinion of what’s prestigious. I still stand by my statement – “Most college grads in the US will look puzzled when you mention Rhodes College. “ My claim is most likely still valid if you replace ‘college grads’ with ‘people with advanced degrees’.</p>
<p>Interesting you should mention White and Loaded. W&L turned down much greater percentage of Asian applicants than white and then turnaround to assure folks that they are working on diversity. They are short on minority, period.</p>
<p>Now onto Davidson. The CDS you linked says 30 Asians out of 490 first year students. That’s 6%, which is greater than the 5% overall Asian demographics.</p>
<p>If you go down the ladder, yes, you will find a school here and there that dips below 5% in Asian population (I pointed out Yeshiva upthread), but what would these few outliers prove? Also, some of these LACs are so small that you can disqualify them for the purpose of this discussion due to their insufficient sample space.</p>
<p>@mamalion</p>
<p>China has a merit based system. Not the holistic one.</p>
<p>If you concentrate on achieving kids and promote them, than average kids try to achieve as well.
If you concentrate on failing kids … you nurture failure.</p>
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<p>Of course, tracking does exist in some of the best educational systems. They make the mistake to offer less classical education where no Latin or Greek is needed in favor of living languages; they compound the mistakes by offering technical schools where people with technical abilities can develop marketable skills, and last, they tend to cling to the practices of the Middle Ages when guilds developed apprentices who could could cook, build straight walls, bake breads that are edible, of repair their chariots (now automobiles) without an electronic tool, and ultimately let those folks grab a spot in the middle classes. </p>
<p>We, of course, are smarter. We prefer to offer an “equitable” education all the while praying the chaff will drop out before the statistics catch up with them, and grab some of those high paying jobs that require no education nor skills. And, we count on those people to staff the next WalMart and join the industrious illegals in cutting our grass, fixing our leaking pipes and HVAC. Jobs that require little reading or mathematical abilities. </p>
<p>Indeed those other countries are heartless idiots who have yet to understand the superiority of our education system, and how rare people who live in poverty or abject poverty are in the United States. </p>
<p>Cobrat, I really would like to know what foreign system you did evaluate, and how many happen to be part of the industrialized world and comparable to ours. I have to admit that my knowledge is limited as I only know a bit about the Western and Northern European and Latin American models. I have no expertise in Africa or Asia. </p>
<p>Perhaps you can share some lights about what you had in mind, and I can add what happens in places such as Belgium, France, Holland, or Germany, and perhaps Argentina and Chile. </p>
<p>Finland and Poland</p>
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<li>No affirmative action</li>
<li>No holistic system</li>
<li>Not a big difference between top 20 and bottom 20 colleges. </li>
<li>College education is very cheap.</li>
<li>There is no rat race to be admitted to the best colleges.</li>
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<p>Do you really want this package in United States? </p>
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<p>I would not recommend the Chinese Communist education system under Mao… with its education through forced labor, humiliation of teachers, amputations of musicians’ fingers…for the US. In fact, China does not even support it for China. Let’s see what others say.</p>
<p>^^^
As a matter of fact, there is much to be said for that list! I especially like #4! </p>