<p>I really want to know? Are US exams, ACT, SAT I, SAT II, and AP-Level inclusive anything even remotely like GSCEs and British A-Levels? What’s it like being a 16-year old kid in the UK versus the US or in let’s say, Germany, France, Arabia, India, or Nepal v. here?</p>
<p>APs are kind of like A-levels but cover less material. There is no equivalent to the SAT or ACT in Europe (not sure about Asia).</p>
<p>Most teenagers start working at age 16 in Germany. Only about 20% of all students will graduate from high school and attend college (at least in my German state). But that’s not necessarily bad. Nurses don’t go to college, neither do accountants or store managers. Those are all jobs that teenagers are trained at on the job, usually for a period of 3 years, and then they have to pass a standardized exam that marks the end of their training period. Anyway, jobs that students go to college for are doctors or lawyers or engineers or teachers, professions that would typically require a graduate degree in the US.</p>
<p>Most of the students who want to finish high school will struggle for the last few years because the curriculum is standardized and everyone has to take the same classes. Students who are weak in sciences will struggle in calculus and calc-based physics, while students who are strong in sciences might struggle interpreting original historic documents or learning two foreign languages. Because everything is standardized, there is no need for SAT or ACT scores to compare the accomplishments of students from different schools.</p>
<p>how horrible a life the teens must be leading in Germany!</p>