Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

1843magazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 105 posts

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#81

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

witty_username wrote: post #34
hatmatrix wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is "best"? While their achievements are commendable, admitting all of them will lead to a homogeneous student body and presumably not the best outcome for the institution, its graduates, or society.

What is wrong with a homogeneous student body? Forced diversity is AS racist as discrimination against blacks.

One of the primary criteria I had in choosing which university to attend was one where i could interact with the types of people i never met before... people from different nations, ethnicities, religions, etc. A homogenous area like the one i grew up in has very homogenous thinking and anything outside of it was considered taboo.

That's ahat eventually happens when you don't havr diversity.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#82

Post by csa »

crispyambulance wrote: post #75
School-Cotton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? If the 1000 best candidates are Asian then you should admit the 1000 Asians. I can see giving extra help to historically marginalized races at the expense of whites, but why ding Asians? They weren't responsible for racism in the US. They weren't the ones stealing resources from other people. Do correct me if I'm wrong but your post seems to amount to "a lot of Asians work hard and are smart, so let's have a quot…

One thing that no one seems to talk about is how to actually determine "best" candidates. Admissions officers at the most elite universities absolutely do take subjective factors into consideration. If they did not, they would end up with a lottery system choosing randomly from a pool "objectively perfect" candidates.

Your comment is spot on. GPA and SAT scores are only two factors of many.

The dirty little secret that most people don't talk about is how many/most elite schools struggle to find the best ways to fill out the bottom 30% or so of their classes. The stand out applicants, the recruited athletes, the connected people, and the demographic people are all accepted, but there are still slots open. This is where the admissions committees take calculated gambles, and it's why some people who are admitted might seem to be headascratchers.

Contrary to what many people believe, this is where the subjectivity of admissions is greatest. Be an interesting applicant, and you will be much less exposed to the subjective aspects of admissions to elite universities.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#83

Post by inimino »

kyleschiller wrote: post #2

Chinese students are products of an educational system that, for all of its high achievers, is built to suppress intellectual curiosity, creativity and individuality – the very qualities that American admissions officers value most. Let's not pretend Chinese students are turned away because they lack individuality. The fairly well documented[0][1][2] truth here is that American universities are using qualities like "…

> Let's not pretend Chinese students are turned away because they lack individuality.

They absolutely are.

As someone who has been involved in this process, this is without question the biggest challenge for Chinese students to apply to top schools. They simply do not have the individuality and intellectual curiosity that US universities want. The reason is because having those qualities is totally incompatible with high achievement in the Chinese educational system up through high school. The high scoring Chinese students were either never interested in critical thought or they completely repressed that tendency at an early age.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#84

Post by inimino »

School-Cotton wrote: post #19
crispyambulance wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admissions try to get a well-rounded student body rather than many well-rounded students but the Asian-American "tiger-mom" phenomena is not a joke for elite college admissions officers. They really do see large numbers of what are known (in derogatory terms) as Asian-clones: 4.0 GPA, violin or piano skills, and no authentic detectable motivation other than getting high grades for the purpose of becoming a doctor or…

So? If the 1000 best candidates are Asian then you should admit the 1000 Asians. I can see giving extra help to historically marginalized races at the expense of whites, but why ding Asians? They weren't responsible for racism in the US. They weren't the ones stealing resources from other people. Do correct me if I'm wrong but your post seems to amount to "a lot of Asians work hard and are smart, so let's have a quot…

The 1000 kids who studied every night and got that 4.0 GPA because they had to, and played an intrument they hated because they had to, and have never made a single significant decision in their lives, because all the significant decisions were made for them by their parents, and can't come up with an original response to a topic to save their lives, are not the 1000 best candidates. That is the point of having a well-rounded student body and the real reasons why universities exist, which is not just to produce doctors who "know their shit" (and nothing else).

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#85

Post by inimino »

kyukyukyufan wrote: post #77
crispyambulance wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admissions try to get a well-rounded student body rather than many well-rounded students but the Asian-American "tiger-mom" phenomena is not a joke for elite college admissions officers. They really do see large numbers of what are known (in derogatory terms) as Asian-clones: 4.0 GPA, violin or piano skills, and no authentic detectable motivation other than getting high grades for the purpose of becoming a doctor or…

4.0GPA, violin/piano, wanting to become doctor/lawyer...aren't these good enough for you??? High GPA means they're diligent, focused, violin/piano implied artistic talent, wanting to become doctor/lawyer suggests drive and ambition. What else do you want from them??? What else do you want??? Not many American students match up I'm afraid to say.

> High GPA means they're diligent, focused

No, it means their parents and teachers scheduled their every waking minute and forced them to study.

> violin/piano implied artistic talent

No. The parents said they had to study it, nolens volens. Showing up for three years of violin classes you hate does not show talent.

> wanting to become doctor/lawyer suggests drive and ambition

Yes, their parents' drive and their parents' ambition.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#86

Post by caminante »

lordnacho wrote: post #28

Regarding the children of famous/important people, perhaps someone can shed some light. How exactly do you specify on your application who your parents are? I remember the process at Oxford, there wasn't really a way to say "oh btw my dad is a rock star" other than the personal statement. And it's hardly going to impress the person who's interviewing you to blurt out something like that, because all the questions are…

It's an off application transaction.

The kid's parent or an agent (e.g. alumni donor) calls admissions to endorse or negotiate. This happens even if your parents are "famous" and you check the [x] for legacy applicant because the admissions team is screening tens of thousands of applicants.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#87

Post by wolfgke »

csa wrote: post #67
willhslade wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking for a friend: how do they penalize half Asians?

They don't penalize Asians or half-Asians at all. Be an interesting person, and your likelihood of getting into a given school increases dramatically, and the odds of getting into at least one of a few that your friend applies to approaches 100%. Feel free to ask more about what "interesting" means.

> Be an interesting person, and your likelihood of getting into a given school increases dramatically

> [...]

> Feel free to ask more about what "interesting" means.

For reasons that are of no relevance here (for the simple reason that this would be rather off topic) I think I know what "interesting person" means here. Perhaps in the future I will be sitting in a panel and be obligated to apply these criteria. But deep inside I think these criteria are a really limited perspective on what an "interesting person" is (I actually often find the kind of person that is selected by these criteria as not too interesting, but I digress).

For example what about the kind of people who have rather interesting views on a topic, with which universities often prefer not to be associated with? Or do things that are rather illegal (in terms of law), but can morally be justified? An example: Aaron Swartz and his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto and https://archive.org/download/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goa...). Or Aaron Swartz' JSTOR action: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aaron_Swartz&oldi... and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._...

Or what about people who have a vocal opinion on a topic that is so far off the typical opinions that one will hear in society that they will polarize people a lot - even though their opinions are very interesting to those who can handle them?

Or what about people who tried ambitious things multiple times, but failed at them, stood up again, failed again, ... In other words: Were of the kind that did not fall under the survivor bias/bias for success stories that admission panels select for?

TLDR: There exist a lot more kinds of "interesting persons" than what admission panels consider as such.

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#88

Post by wolfgke »

csa wrote: post #79
kyukyukyufan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4.0GPA, violin/piano, wanting to become doctor/lawyer...aren't these good enough for you??? High GPA means they're diligent, focused, violin/piano implied artistic talent, wanting to become doctor/lawyer suggests drive and ambition. What else do you want from them??? What else do you want??? Not many American students match up I'm afraid to say.

If becoming a doctor or lawyer is the peak what you want for some of the very best students in the country, then you're aiming way too low. Some answers of people I actually know were: - conduct bleeding edge genetics research - develop bespoke computer-based learning tools for schools (ones that were backed by amazing data and met the schools' sometimes overly specific legal requirements) - influence directly and in…

> Most people that age simply don't think big enough.

I think really big, I believe. The problem is: I am not the kind of charismatic personality that is able to convince fellows to participate (friends would rather describe me as "brilliant scientist who tends to polarizes (in both positive and negative sense of the word) people"); so I am rather completely on my own - and the day only has 24 hours. :-(

EDIT: And what about people who honestly say that they are open to such ambitious projects but honestly admit that they first have to learn the ropes and if they get to a sufficiently high skill level, they will think about such ambitious question (in other words: It makes no sense thinking about these questions as long as you don't have the skills to work on them).

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#89

Post by wolfgke »

inimino wrote: post #83
kyleschiller wrote: post #2

Chinese students are products of an educational system that, for all of its high achievers, is built to suppress intellectual curiosity, creativity and individuality – the very qualities that American admissions officers value most. Let's not pretend Chinese students are turned away because they lack individuality. The fairly well documented[0][1][2] truth here is that American universities are using qualities like "…

> Let's not pretend Chinese students are turned away because they lack individuality. They absolutely are. As someone who has been involved in this process, this is without question the biggest challenge for Chinese students to apply to top schools. They simply do not have the individuality and intellectual curiosity that US universities want. The reason is because having those qualities is totally incompatible with…

> The high scoring Chinese students were either never interested in critical thought

What you call "critical thought" is what I would rather call "'critical' thought in what is the currently an opportune fashion". I know lots of people who have critical thoughts, but not in the sense of what admission panels like to see as "critical thought".

Re: What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)

#90

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

xyzzy4 wrote: post #53
Flammy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lenders are not idiots. I'm very sure they either are signed by their families or they have other ways of enforcing collection.

A lot of lenders are idiots. My evidence is the 2008 subprime lending crisis.

You mean the ones who made the bad loans and immediately turned around and sold them to be somebody else's problem?
Post reply on HN