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<p>College admissions and major in China, Korea. and many other East Asian countries is almost completely determined by one’s score on the National College Entrance Exam. How one does in high school academically has little to do with it. If you’re a 4.0+ GPA student at a given high school, but scored too low to gain admission to a desired college/major or worse…any college…that 4.0 high school GPA won’t matter. It is one reason why many East Asian grad students I chatted with said most of their time in high school was devoted to studying topics covered in that exam in cram school/self-study and taking practice exams…not on their high school courses. </p>
<p>Also, it is an interesting discussion as the increasing interest in US institutions for undergrad is a great generational change. </p>
<p>A decade or more ago, it was often seen as a way to gain US residency for the immigrant-minded, a way for a given wealthy family to indulge a nonconformist child, and/or a way for children of wealthy families to gain a backdoor route to college admissions after performing poorly on their nation’s national college entrance exams*. </p>
<p>Back then, the preferred or “correct” route was to do one’s undergrad in one’s home country…preferably at their elite university and then come to the US for a graduate degree. This is still very much the case in Japan as the account of the Japanese Bucknell graduate who failed to land Japanese corporate jobs even with an elite Japanese Masters until he completed a second BA at UTokyo illustrates. </p>
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<li>From accounts of relatives who are familiar with the educational situation in both Chinas and East Asian grad students in fully funded PhD programs/visiting faculty who made snide comments about their fellow undergraduate nationals as “rich kids whose family wealth provided a backdoor to prestige when they couldn’t hack it on the national college entrance exam.” Granted, the ones making snide comments all have an obvious bias derived from having gone the “correct route” of doing undergrad at their nation’s top universities and then doing a fully funded PhD at a US university.</li>
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<p>Interestingly, that’s when the HYPSM prestige points REALLY count in those societies.</p>