Some advice/perspective for international students

y17k
Fri, 08 Apr 2005 11:24:59 +0000

I recently read an article on these korean kids going to elite colleges and some of the stuff they do is insane. For example, there are specific “volunteer” trips to third world countries JUST so that these kids can rack up some volunteer hours. Also, its not uncommon for rich parents to spend 30k on college counselling (i know these types of services exist in the us as well) to refine their application.

I have a friend who’s going to the same SAT school as some korean girl who got into like 8 elite colleges (Yale Princeton etc) 2 years ago, and the teachers at the school say that she was NOTHING like what her application would have suggested to colleges. Her parents even coerced teachers financially to encourage them to write favourable recommendations.

Neha1~
I (arrogantly) thought that my hook would be my academic achievement. I was very highly ranked nationally (top 0.1% of school leavers) like Eos here, and thought that that would be enough to get me into a few Ivies. However, now I realise I was just a fish in the small pond. Even being in the top 0.1% of school leavers nationwide means that there are ~120 students IN MY COUNTRY ALONE that have done as well or better than I have. Hell, Harvard admits ~120 international students from ALL OVER THE WORLD lol.

Whatever doesn’t kill me will make me stronger (as the cliche goes ^^) and I can honestly say that through this experience, I was very humbled and it has given me the motivation to try harder in the United States. This process was an “eye-opening” process and I hope you all feel the same way. After all, we can all go to excellent graduate schools :P.