It s*cks to be from Hong Kong

International Students
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<p>Hehe…I mean in terms of applying to US colleges using HKCEE results. I just read an article about their participants. Their IPhO (international physics olympiads) results and HKCEE (O-level but much worse than the one in Britain) results are as follows:</p>

<p>Tsui Lok Man:
HKCEE: 6A1B1C
IPhO: Gold</p>

<p>Cheung Ka Hei:
HKCEE: 3A1B4D1E
IPhO: Silver</p>

<p>Lai Kai Chun:
HKCEE: 7A1B1D
IPhO: Bronze</p>

<p>Cheng Wah Wing:
HKCEE: 4A1B1C3D
IPhO: Bronze</p>

<p>All of the medalists got some "C"s and "D"s. According to the article I read, Cheung Ka Hei was fairly ill during the competition but still managed to get silver. Yet, she had 4 “D"s and 1"EEEEEE”. Just shows how harsh the HKCEE grading is and I wonder to what extent adcoms are aware of it.</p>

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<p>People i know from my school who are into the “Olypiads” are typically not very focused on their school studies, they take separate courses and summer camps to prep their olympiad</p>

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<p>Whoever wrote that article must be quite naive. The person who posted above is right. It’s a similar situation in india.</p>

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<p>Naive? Each year, out of perhaps 100,000 candidates, only 30 or so have straight "A"s. These students would make the headline news in their local newspaper. Hong Kong is one of the top-5 performers in math/science according to the 2003 survey by Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). So you have to extremely good to get all "A"s. Save your judgement before you really know the situation. Also, many IPhO medalists on the US team had gone to elite schools like MIT/CalTech. To say they don’t care about their studies within their HS is bunch of BS. Maybe in your country, but not the US. In HK, they are focused on their studies also, but the grading system is just too harsh.</p>

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<p>Grading systems are harsh all over Asia, HK is no exception.</p>

<p>What mercurysquad and chevalier were stating is that, these IPhO participants have to attend many special training camps and basically concentrate on that particular subject most of the time. They miss a lot of regular classes due to which they might have lower grades in other subjects.</p>

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<p>Maybe. But that’s not how I read it. They seem to suggest it’s not the grading system of HKCEE but them not being focused that gave them bad grades. Also FYI, these students took HKCEE LAST YEAR (around April, I think), well BEFORE they knew they would be the IPhO participants for THIS YEAR and therefore training for IPhO, no matter how intense it was, got nothing to do with their HKCEE performance. Also, there’s no separate curriculum (or full-time camp) like chevailer suggests in HK. They took regular classes at different schools and treated this as one of their ECs. They did probably train together on the weekends or after school.</p>

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<p>I totally agree with you, sam.
Just in case you don’t know, these international science olympiad participants from Hong Kong don’t really miss classes to train for the olympiads. Preparing for the HKCEE must have been on the top of their priority list even if they knew they were going to be olympiad participants, because without a good results in HKCEE, they might not get into Secondary Sixth year (equivalent to Grade 12) and hence Secondary Seventh year, and consequently, affect their local university admission. Knowing some previous olympiad participants, they get to prepare for this only on weekends and afterschool hours - definitely not during school hours.</p>

<p>For US olympiads award recipients, no doubt many are accepted by MIT/Caltech - MIT/Caltech are universities in their own home country; however, for those in Hong Kong, there is only 8 universities in which the university admission system is based wholly on grades. They could apply for US colleges too, but the chance is highly affected because (1) they are regarded as internationals (2) they might not be able to support a 4 year college degree financially. This is the same for many other students in other countries in Asia and Europe I suppose.</p>

<p>In addition, perhaps some statistics might be useful in showing you all how harsh the grading system is (btw, the grading system is a pull-curve system) - </p>

<p>Percentages of students receiving an A : —
In HK Advanced Level
Chinese Language - 2.0%
Biology - 2.6%
Chemistry - 3.8%
Economics - 3.6%
History - 1.9% and 2.4% for syllabus A and B respectively
Mathematics and Statistics - 2.1%
Physics - 4.4% (2.2% for girls)
English - 0.8%</p>

<p>In HKCEE: (note, the standard of HKCEE is up to GCE AS level, i.e. higher than GCSE)
Chinese Language - 3.3%
Biology - 5.4%
Chemistry - 4.8%
Economics - 3.1%
English - 2.6%
Maths - 4.0%
Physics - 4.9%</p>

<p>In AQA GCE Advanced levels in UK:
Biology A - 23.3%
Biology B - 21.6%
Chemistry - 30.2%
Economics - 30.7%
Further Mathematics A - 45.1%
Further Mathematics B - 47.8%
Mathematics A - 32.3%
Mathematics B - 34.5%
Physics A - 28.8%
Physics B - 26.0%</p>

<p>And in GCSE in UK:
Economics - 13.9%
Mathematics - 11.1%
Biology - 41%
Chemistry - 43.4%
Physics - 43.8%</p>

<p>I doubt any adcoms really understand the system in HK. Even if they say they do, they usually only understand the system in international schools like HKIS/GSIS/IS/KGV/LPCUWC, etc. Plus, how could one really understand the experience one get from HKCEE / HKAL without really going through it? Perhaps those in China doing Gaokao would understand it best.</p>

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<p>thankful,</p>

<p>Thanks. Where did you get those stats? I was trying to look for them! Note how some subjects have 30/40% of A in UK. Those 40+% are higher than % of A-C in Hong Kong. That means some people with an A in, say, physics in UK, could get a D if the exam board in UK adopted the grading curve similar to the one used in Hong Kong .</p>

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<p>thankful,</p>

<p>by the way, i saw you on NU board the other day. did you turn down stanford for northwestern? it’s not very common. most people who do that are hpme or journalism/film majors.</p>

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<p>The 2005 HKCEE results are just out.</p>

<p>Out of about 120000 candidates, only </p>

<p>15 students (0.0125%!!!) have 10As
34 have 9As
75 have 8As
152 have 7As
239 have 6As
309 have 5As
463 have 4As</p>

<p>Overall, only 1287 (~1%) got 4As or more! </p>

<p>Students typically take 8-10 subjects.</p>

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<p>well, if you want to get into those top colleges in US, then you should be in those top 1%, shouldn’t you? =P just kidding</p>

<p>Im sure that colleges have some idea about the situation, maybe not completely, but they should know to a certain extent that it is a lot harder to get A’s in Hong Kong from seeing applications from Hong Kong students. For instance, if you have A’s and some B’s and C’s but have excellent SAT scores and SAT II scores, the colleges would know that Hong Kong grading system is difficult.</p>

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<p>yeah, sometimes it really sucks to be from Hong Kong. While HKALE is sometimes mistaken to be far easier than GCE A-levels, the fact is that getting an A or B or C or D in HKALE is harder than getting an A in GCE A-levels. Two of my friends took both HKALE and GCE A-levels and ended up getting much better grades in the latter. One of them got 2Bs 1C 2Ds in HKALE and straight As in the GCE A-levels while the other one got 2Ds 2Fs 1U in HKALE and 1A 3Bs 1C in the GCE A-levels. No lie, I swear!</p>

<p>While HKALE is harder, it’s not something one can feel proud of. It is an unforgivable insult to an excellent student. Having poor grades on one’s transcript is no laughing matter when it comes to applying top colleges in the US.</p>

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<p>To add another example. My former neighbor in HK got 800 on SAT math but got a D in HKAL pure math. That grade made him look a lot worse than he actually was. He was kinda thinking about getting into some top architecture program in the US but that grade pretty much killed his dream. He couldn’t settle for any second-tier program because HKU has a very good program of its own.</p>

<p>I am definitely not proud of it. I have no idea what the exam board in HK is thinking. It appears to have no benefit to students whatever. I think some of us can write the board a letter. Sure, maybe they don’t want to give as many A as the UK board does because it’d be difficult to differentiate who are really the top students. But the current grading system is too harsh. That probably plays a significant role as to why there seems to be more (sometime a lot more) students from Singapore than from Hong Kong in some of the top schools (like Stanford) even the two are very similar in many ways.</p>

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<p>HKAL normally has little impact on your college admission unless you are taking a gap year. The results come out in July by which time you should be thinking about packing for college already. Thus your HKCEE(O-level) scores are of utmost importance if you are applying to US colleges.</p>

<p>Alternatively you may consider the IB program which has a definite advantage over HKAL in US college admission. In this case, the predicted IB scores are used for evaluation.</p>