Posted on 01/04/2009 6:45:04 PM PST by Steelfish
Chinese aim for the Ivy League The Boston Globe Sunday, January 4, 2009 BEIJING: The book spawned a genre, selling more than two million copies in China on the premise that any child, with the proper upbringing, could be Ivy League material. Now, eight years after the publication of "Harvard Girl," bookstore shelves here are laden with copycat titles like "How We Got Our Child Into Yale," "Harvard Family Instruction" and "The Door of the Elite." Their increasing popularity points to the preoccupation - some might say a single-minded national obsession - of a growing number of middle-class Chinese parents: getting their children into America's premier universities. Because government policy allows families only one child, many parents feel immense pressure to groom their sons and daughters for success and, in the process, prepare a comfortable retirement for themselves. They fervently mine the expanding volumes of child-rearing manuals - "Stanford's Silver Bullet," "Yale Girl," "Creed of Harvard" - for tips on producing what the Chinese term "high-quality" children. "Harvard Girl," written by the parents of one of the first Chinese undergraduates to enter the university on a full scholarship, chronicled Liu Yiting's methodical upbringing, which the book says instilled the discipline and diligence necessary for academic success. The tome has a place in many urban households with high school-age children, and new parents receive the book as a present from family and friends. "Going to Harvard means that the way they raised their child was successful," said Yang Kui, publisher of the best seller. "People are willing to copy and learn how they did it."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
What I would say is that foreign students in general, regardless of their innate abilities, demonstrate a work ethic that I wish my children could approach.
The Chinese have always had a deep respect for learning and education as part of their culture. They traditionally work hard, study hard, and are very competitive in college admissions. Better them in the Ivy League than a bunch of talentless affirmative action fakers who SAT’s and grades are so low they wouldn’t even qualify for a trade school.
As a teacher myself, I agree. But if you look at the demographic composition in the UC system like UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside etc you’d find a very large proportion of Chinese. Nearly one-half of science post-grads are Chinese. What all this means is that a work ethic combined with a higher level of education for graduation makes for an unbeatable combination. A colleague of mine in Singapore sent me the math tests for 7th graders there which is about as difficult as what college freshman may face in the US!
It is quite sad to compare the hardworking Chinese to our lazy, arrogant “Millenials” who are perhaps the most pathetic generation in American history.
Actually I had one bright young Chinese girl tell me that she had to argue her father into sending her to NYU. He wouldn’t let her go to the Ivies because he thought their degrees were worthless, and wanted his daughter to attend a professional school.
She talked him into a compromise, since NYU offers a lot of internships with New York businesses—or at least it did before the financial bomb hit.
If I wanted to hire someone who would work hard and do a good job, about the last place I’d look is at an Ivy graduate. Too bad, because it wasn’t always that way.
“...If the Chinese are so smart, why aren’t there any “Ivy League” quality schools in China?”
There are - schools such as Tsinghua, Beijing Univ., Shanghai Jiaotong, etc... extremely difficult to get into, and moving into research, etc... as are US top schools.
The Chinese are still fascinated by the US though, and the Ivy’s carry special cache for them, as they simply see that the Ivy’s Grads are respresented in Gov’t and Business at much higher levels than other schools.
My daughter-in-law was a dropout from Beijing University, who came here after a couple of years of running a restaurant in China to get her degree from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi, to yankees.) My son was on his third attempt to earn a degree there, and she was clearly Mensa material - I know that because she achieved a Mensa qualifying score on her GMAT a couple of years later, and I am a Mensa test proctor.
But the two of them somehow clicked. They moved in together, and she really got him on track - made him change his major to business, do his homework, and tutored when needed. After over 20 years with IBM I had been taking some business courses myself - all “A” grades - and had been invited into the startup graduate program at Christian Bros. College (later, university) in Memphis. She came to my graduation, and decided that she would seek a MBA after her Bachelors in journalism. To do so, she had to cram all of the undergrad prereqs into her senior year.
Also, she had brought a major homework assignment with her. As I first saw it, the paper was about a “C”. Her vocabulary was good, but she needed a lot of guidance on organizing her paper. We talked about it for over an hour before she rewrote it - and it earned an A. She did not ask for my help again for several years - after her MBA, and a year on a PhD in Economics, while my son finished his BBA.
But then David convinced her that if she could get into one of the top ten law schools, a law degree would ensure their future. And she asked me for help with her personal statement that was required with her application. Again, she had the dates and places, but no real narrative, and she needed help putting it together.
She was turned down by Harvard, Columbia, and Yale, but accepted by the others on her list. Boston offered a full ride, but she settled on Georgetown, where she graduated Cum Laude. And I found out later that she was regularly helping the young royalty - sons and daughters of high ranking Chinese officials - with their own personal statements as they applied to prestigious American universities!
Unfortunately, my son never matched her success. His epilepsy lost him one job after another, and he never was able to support her at Georgetown. Even after he came back here and she moved into a dormitory, she earned more as a part-time legal intern than he ever earned. The divorce was unavoidable, but they remained friends and in contact with each other, even after she married an English lawyer in Hong Kong. David died in 2005, smothering after a seizure on his bed here at home. She and I exchange notes or phone calls occasionally.
I don't think any racial or ethnic group is inherently any smarter than any other. However, certain cultures (such as in China) place a very high value on education while others (the underclass culture in the US) do not. It's not surprising that Asian students (both foreign and US-born) are over-represented in elite US schools.
Great story!
chicom bump for later.........
And who is to say, that over the course of time, there wouldn't be. One has to take into consideration, the course of time, society, family structure, etc. As China collapsed into chaos in the 19th and into the 20th century, schools in the West flourished. Now, schools in China (as well as the rest of Asia) are growing and improving in a setting of political and social stability.
But you are right, the Ivy League schools have a heritage to be proud of that is yet (key word, "yet") to be fully duplicated by China. But don't count out schools in China or the East, someday to create that same heritage ;) I'm confident (very much so) that it will be duplicated there, led by today's hard charging students.
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