NYTimes: "Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills"

Applying to College
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<p>Those schools are a reflection of the Korea education system. The only difference is that instruction is taught in English and they have the desire to go to an elite American University.</p>

<p>All the other Korean students would rather go to one of the SKY universities (Seoul National University (SNU), Korea University (KU), and Yonsei University (YU).) than HYP in the US.</p>

<p>Regardless, their (the 2 high schools in Korea) success shows they are doing something right.</p>

<p>And Harvard not taking anyone seems like they did it out of spite and principle…</p>

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<p>Have you guys been to Korea?</p>

<p>There are no natural resources there except for kim-chee. lol</p>

<p>But the way America has built itself is a mystery. We have some of the worse students (compared to other students in standardized test, drop-out rates, etc.) yet we are so successful and have the best universities.</p>

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<p>korean kids spend a lot of time memorizing and studying…american kids spend less time on studying and memorizing but a lot of time on EC’s they have no interest in…i think both the systems are messed up and deprive teens of being teens and having fun</p>

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<p>homesizzle,</p>

<p>It wasn’t always the case that the US had poorer resources in education.</p>

<p>As for the rest of the arguments, I can assure all of you that most of the people I met in Japan and Korea were not superhuman. Even those working good jobs. They were normal people.</p>

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<p>I don’t know if this was made clear to you (specifically krongman), but these kids they are talking about are not the average students. They all took some middle school test, and these are the top 1% scorers in the country. The United States is different from Asian countries (like china), because they provide a high quality education to ALL students. Those who wonder how American schools are so amazing, have to think about things in relative terms. Those students are the top 1% in Korea, and in the United States, Harvard has a selectivity much higher than just the top 1% of students. That’s why Harvard is better.</p>

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<p>ridonkulous0,</p>

<p>No way! EVERY SINGLE KOREAN is top 1%. Their top 1% is just top .001%! In fact, Korea had to invent new scales because they’re so uber.</p>

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<p>I hope you are being sarcastic!</p>

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ok then… :slight_smile:
I hope you know that as much as you might wish it, it is statistically impossible for everybody to be in the top 1%, just in the same way that it is impossible for no child to be left behind (the test to assess this is graded on a curve.)</p>

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<p>This might have come up earlier in the post, but I was just too lazy to read every single one of them, but in Korea they start to separate bright kids from the less in kindergarten, and form what is called “Ivy League Class” or “Special Purpose High School Class” and make them study like crazy starting when kids are like 7 years old. It is completely insane. And those classes are hellofa expensive too; depends on “the effectiveness” of the program, it might even go upto several grands a month. I think Korean high schools are needless to comment on, for they have grown into big phony Ivy Leaguer-making factories. urg.
I personally know a kid who took his SATs in grade 3. Of course he did bad, but ew, SATs in grade 3?</p>

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<p>Do you wanna know why, despite all these crazy things happening in college admission games, the US has the best universities in the world that Asians are dying to get into?
That is because the educational emphasis is competely the opposite, eg. US vs. Asia. Yes, that’s right, students there study their butts out until they get into colleges, and then, unbelievably they run out of gas and tend to lag behind their US counterparts. Another reason is that in their education they are focused on memorizing in order to get good scores while the US students are more focused on such things as creativity and deeper understanding of the subject, which are far more important in collegiate studies later.</p>

<p>Look at it this way. I don’t know about far into the future, but almost all the advances and new developments made in sciences and technologies recently were done here, not there. Only problem was that; things were invented here but they were just better at refining it and packaging it for sale. Oh, and also good at making the quality product. Yes, it is true that these are the areas that we need to improve…</p>

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<p>to: d4r7h3v1l who asked
“At what cost?”</p>

<p>Let’s see what cost Korea (and now N. Korea and S. Korea) has ALREADY PAID for NOT educating its people and keeping up with the rest of the world and consequently unable to determine its own course.</p>

<p>–500 years before 1910 : Chosun occupied the Korean Peninsula as an independent Kingdom. Small but peaceful. Never invaded another nation unlike Japan/China/Russia.</p>

<p>–1910 - 45 : annexed by Japan against the will of Korea. Japan tried to wipe out culture/language. ever heard of comfort women?</p>

<p>–1945 - 50 : Korea divided into 2 via 38th Parallel, which is just a line on the map. Completely arbitrary, again against the will of Koreans.</p>

<p>–1950 - 53 : Korean war. Millions of civilian Koreans killed. 35k US soldiers killed and many more wounded. Many UN/S. Korean soldiers killed and wounded. Country devastated which didn’t have much even before the war.</p>

<p>–1953 - present : 2 Koreas at constant “state of war”. </p>

<p>And this in a country that has no natural resource to speak of. Only resource Korean can produce/sell/export is making something with hands/brain. </p>

<p>Mean no offense to you or anyone but have you gone hungry REGULARLY? And just fall over and die in case you caught any disease more serious than diarrhea? That’s what Koreans experienced on and off for past century because of poverty, which was result from lack of education.</p>

<p>Forget about Koreans/Asians valuing education. It would be UNFORGIVABLE if S. Koreans didn’t put so much attention on education after what the nation has gone through past century.</p>

<p>In case you didn’t know, TV series M.A.S.H is not based on Vietnam, but in Korea during the Korean War, the forgotten war which produced just about same # of casualty (killed) for US as Vietnam.</p>

<p>And from what I read, my understand is that the students are at the 2 school because they WANT TO. There are many average students who are forced to study and most do. So I think it’d be perhaps wrong to criticize the school/students. May be I’m wrong on this?</p>

<p>Maybe they should ease up or try more ‘creative’ way of learning. But they have been under much stress to improve their lot and experimenting with ways of teaching that are used in much richer nation was a ‘luxury’. </p>

<p>True some of what’s going on there is too much/crazy. But I just wanted to provide some background story.</p>

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<p>Don’t these kids ultimately run into a mid-life crisis? At age 40, they’ll look back and see that they have spent all their wonderful years getting riches that are of limited satisfaction to them…</p>

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<p>Elastine,
I think those who work too hard and do achieve success have mid life crisis because they realize it wasn’t what they want in life.</p>

<p>Those who don’t work hard or too lazy to achieve success have mid life crisis because they realize they achieved nothing in life.</p>

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You actually had to <em>ask</em> if she was being sarcastic?
Wow.</p>

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<p>^^^ These people we are talking about would fall in the first category you state, right? They are being pushed into all this by external influences and the society, rarely by their own self.</p>

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<p>lets all go to france.</p>

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<p>Elastine,
True.</p>

<p>But if you read all of my earlier post, you will see there are/were some people who don’t have the luxury of experiencing mid-life crisis.
Having 3 square meals a daywas considered a luxury in korea not too many decades ago…</p>

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<p>Bowler Hat,</p>

<p>I’m a he, thank you very much.</p>

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<p>US universities becomes the top in the world because they have money to attract the best minds, best research. If other parts of the world (say maybe china in the future) are willing to spend tons of money for their research, I’m pretty sure their unis will go up in rankings and publications, etc. Also most of these advancement are done by grad students and we know some large portion of grad students and profs come from these asian countries (or people who immigrated here). Researchers will flock together if there’s enough money and brains aggregating in one place. </p>

<p>honestly, I am jealous of these koreans. They are so disciplined and hardworking, wish I could have 50% of their determination. /sigh</p>

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<p>This is classical asia. And for what? my dad says that the people who do the best in school aren’t the people who get the richest afterwards. So whats the point? its obvious none of them are studying for fun or passion</p>

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<p>Yea, Korea has had many hard times. But the kids in those schools choose to work very hard. They had to be top few in Korea to get in.</p>

<p>I agree that Koreans are very, very obsessive. Most of high schoolers I know in Korea stays very late at school.</p>

<p>I went to a SAT prep in Korea when I was visiting in the summer, and all the parents of the kids I’ve met were pretty crazy. And the classes were expensive too. I spent 3200 dollars(American) for 6 weeks on SAT prep classes. It wasn’t even that good. All they do is look at which university people went to and hire them as SAT teachers. All teachers are from top-tier schools. People there are pretty brand name(as in school) obsessive.</p>