<p>Thank you, lake. It’s really difficult because I work with my clients in good faith.</p>
<p>What I would describe as costly and “sophisticated” packaging of Chinese-American applicants to a very select group of top American universities is the norm in Silicon Valley. These students generally don’t have issues with the English language.</p>
<p>Packaging and cheating are two different things.</p>
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<p>Keep in mind that such packaging services are priced and marketed mostly to upper/upper-middle class families who can afford the high fees and are aware enough to feel the need for such services. </p>
<p>While similar services existed on a smaller scale back in the early-mid’90s when I was in high school, they were mainly the preserve of families from well-off NYC area suburbs…and it wasn’t limited to just Chinese-Americans. With the exception of the Upper East Side and similarly well-off minority, most of us neither hand the money nor the awareness that we needed such services. </p>
<p>Didn’t hurt our college admissions stats despite the fact my NYC specialized HS was already more than 50% Asian-American*…with most of us being working/lower-middle class and eligible for free/reduced school lunches. </p>
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<li>Heard it is approaching 60-70% Asian-American nowadays.</li>
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<p>The issue is not Chinese versus non-Chinese. Everyone does it, it’s just that some cultures are better at it and some are not as good, clinging hopelessly to some moral standards or assumptions that are more romantic than realistic in nature. </p>
<p>I have found that life is considerably simplified if one adopts the model mentioned above, i.e. instead of assuming that everyone is honest and has some common moral baseline, just assume it’s a free-for-all…</p>
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<p>It depends on where you draw the line between the two categories. Exactly like cobrat said, it is a very small subgroup of high school students in China who even contemplate applying abroad or have the family means to pay for it and for the agents, and I’m not sure if they would recognize the difference between packaging and cheating. </p>
<p>It’s like if you hire an expensive lawyer to support you on something of which you have little understanding, and the lawyer is telling you to write a certain statement or do certain things because that’s what you need to do and what everyone does. It sounds dishonest, but do you have the knowledge or the guts to say no, this is not how it should be done?</p>
<p>Just as in the case xiggi was pointing out: </p>
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<p>Sure, but what if every past exam from College Board has already been illegally released in black market and everyone else has been buying copies? What many people do you think download/rip music illegally from Youtube and the internet? </p>
<p>People engage in immoral behaviors because they can and because there is little consequence in store as a deterrence. Isn’t that the root of a lot of the problems, both in China, and elsewhere too: rules and reinforcements don’t keep up with the expanding society and official laws don’t diffuse down to small/local departments. As a result it’s hard for people to deal in good faith because they don’t expect the opposite party to respond in good faith.</p>
<p>"…just assume it’s a free-for-all…"</p>
<p>just WOW</p>
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<p>I’m so glad that is not the case. That is a cold and painful world that you’re romanticizing.</p>
<p>In other countries (e.g. China, Russia, Somalia) it is a free-for-all. Don’t put the U.S. in the same grouping just because of some corrupt politicians/institutions. In the U.S., corrupt politicians/institutions do get caught and do do hard time.</p>
<p>People here have expressed many opinions about what China and Chinese people is like, including some imagined experience of dealing with Chinese. </p>
<p>Though the reports in US mains stream media about China all have some truths in them. Taken as a whole, the picture of China people gets here is wildly distorted.</p>
<p>Go visit China (which I try to do every year), see it upclose. Everyone I know enjoy their experience there.</p>
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<p>I would hate to live in a society where it is true. We should not accept the lowest common denominator of human behavior as the standard. There will always be corrupt and immoral individuals but you can’t just shrug and give up. The world would be unbearable.</p>
<p>The wealth and opportunity of the West has been based, among other things, on the ability of strangers to do business with each other and faith in the enforceability of contracts. We don’t have to rely on just our family or our tribe. Why would we want to throw that away?</p>
<p>Thanks, too, lakes for your kind words, and for being able to decipher my full-of-typo posts! </p>
<p>as for this
This sounds like the “everybody is doing it so why shouldn’t I” mentality. Why? Because its WRONG.</p>
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<p>Perhaps it’s an artifact of me hailing from a part of the world where optimism is generally frowned upon… I have no qualms about moral relativism. It must be nice to be able to afford moral absolutism… Maybe in my next incarnation I’ll be able to do so.</p>
<p>^But even better, hopefully something will convince you of that in this lifetime! </p>
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<p>Of course it’s wrong. But that’s because someone told you that it’s wrong and reinforced it, isn’t it? :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>I’m ethnically Chinese, love the fact that I am, know local Chinese communities to be welcoming, the people to be kind, honest, generous, and loving. I would highly resent any suggestion to the contrary. But there are inherent problems with the system that I wouldn’t hesitate to point out, in hope that you recognize it for what it is rather than any romanticized or sugarcoated version, and in doing so come to appreciate what you take for granted… I also hope that one takes this and makes smarter decisions. It is unfortunate that some people harbor underlying prejudice against an ethnicity as whole such that we can’t discuss these problems objectively.</p>
<p>The situation described in the OP’s article doesn’t benefit students in China at all, nor are colleges getting the really top students in China or being fair to other international and in-state students in this manner. Maybe years from now, the fraudulent college admission scheme as described in the article can by solved by more vigilant efforts and modified practices on the part of colleges.</p>
<p>"“To older Chinese of mine and jaylynn’s generation who subscribed to inherited Confucian scholar-gentry ideals…the defining characteristic of a genuinely moral and ethical person is that he/she acts morally/ethically EVEN IN THE ABSENCE of any laws or in the knowledge no one else is watching and he/she can “get away with it”.”"</p>
<p>Cobrat, you are preaching to the choir. 
But once again, please be realistic, while teaching ethics should be done in school, and there is an abundance of resources in Chinese literature and others, you can’t expect everyone to follow. If merely teaching ethics were enough, then why do we even need laws and law enforcement? The real-life answer is, whether in China or elsewhere, even after ethics is taught, some would hold themselves high, others would be marginal, and a few would be hopeless. So a more practical framework is to build an environment conducive to socially-beneficial outcomes, instead of trying to turn everybody into a monk. Referring back to my earlier message, the HK government paying above-market salaries to the government officials, would eliminate incentives toward corruption for those marginally ethical. And the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) would remove the few who are hopeless. The end-product is a very clean government. And it is a real-life result, not just some ideals or theories. This is the model that the Chinese government may eventually borrow from, when the economy has grown to the point where they can afford to do so. Those offensively materialistic riches canbe put to good use. By the way, something probably your family and friends wouldn’t be able to tell you, 2 of my HS buddies were among the first teams of doctors flown into Sichuan to help the earthquake victims. Of course, the media also forgot to feature them in an article to get your attention. There are many people silently working on the background to build China. Keep the faith. :-)</p>
<p>"“In the U.S., corrupt politicians/institutions do get caught and do do hard time.”"</p>
<p>Never heard of “too big to fail” or “multi-million dollar fine without admission of guilt”. :-)</p>
<p>Well, as Andrew Young said (of Americans) “if you turn out the lights, the folks will steal”.</p>
<p>"People here have expressed many opinions about what China and Chinese people is like, including some imagined experience of dealing with Chinese. "</p>
<p>There is no “imagined” experience. I have extreme difficulty getting paid for services explicitly spelled out in a contract, because the contract means nothing. Despite saying repeatedly, let me know what paperwork you want from me, I get sent back to the well repeatedly with brand new forms that we “just discovered you have to fill out.” when I inquire, someone is “going on vacation and I’ll get back to it in three weeks – I’m sure you’ll understand.” it is so far out of the norm in dealing with clients all over the world, who are prompt with payment and rush to make things right if they aren’t.</p>
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Morals are partly taught and partly understood as basic human nature. The ability to discern right from wrong is a basic tenet in socialization of human interaction.</p>