The fact that QS lists China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua (at #17 slightly ahead of UPenn) and Peking (at #30 just ahead of UCLA) does not in itself show a decline in US education prowess. And while China is investing heavily, the US remains the most startup friendly country in the world with Silicon Valley alone ranked as the #1 Global Startup Ecosystem ahead of China at #3 - that’s an area in California compared to a country. That said, I agree that there is always a danger in loosing the lead, but I don’t think that will happen due to education. IMO, there are three more real dangers:
Current anti-tech political trend
Failure to offer citizenship to college grads
Heavy regulation on implementing new technology. Read “AI Super-Powers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order” by Kai-Fu Lee
I’m also reminded of a favorite quote as it applies to US tech policy:
"History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.+ - Voltaire
@cohenry , You have impressive stats, but these colleges are not 2nd tier, whatever that means. Cornell, NU etc. have holistic admissions, and only great stats are not enough. I hope you apply to a wide variety of colleges and write good essays and get good recs as well.
What is your home state ? UMich as OOS is competitive and you need to show interest and apply early. Georgia Tech routinely rejects high stats applicants, and has a holistic process (essays are important)
I think you have a great chance at Berkeley (even as OOS). Aim high but have a reasonable number of matches and safeties (your instate or Northeastern, RPI etc.)
Read GoBears thread last year about his admission journey, esp. if you are an Asian Male.
“Nor is it all that high a bar, to ask kids for some breadth. It’s just not all about who has the more wins, perfect scores, ran every club or team, etc. And really, that’s true in life, too.”
They have breadth since they do get in to a couple of their reaches, they don’t run every club, they typically have been working on this since middle school. Are you saying someone with this profile that gets accepted into Yale but not Stanford don’t have the breadth? Maybe they don’t get in because of as I mentioned, institutional reasons - race, athlete, first-gen among others. These kids are very similar to athletes wrt their singular focus, yet athletes are accepted up the proverbial wazoo at these places.
“They are now almost exclusively Asian Americans, or at least predominantly Asian Americans. Unconscious stereotyping?”
It’s conscious stereotyping for sure, the applicants even though they have won these awards, are similar wrt to profiles, Asian, upper middle income, and they all apply to the same colleges for their reaches. Whether this stereotyping is illegal discrimination is what the Harvard lawsuit is about.
“We’re falling behind in 5G. Silicon Valley is sliding and no longer the most innovative place in the world”
5G is a legitimate threat but the first article on China colleges overtaking US ones is a puff piece.
Maybe you haven’t recently visited the city of Shenzhen, a former fishing village, across the border from Hong Kong. There seem to be more actions, more vitality, and more startups there than in the Valley these days. China has raised more VC funding than the US last year, and there’re also more Chinese unicorns than in the US.
US is clearly still in the lead on higher education, but the trend is worrisome. We produce abundance of business, law, political science students, etc., but not enough high quality STEM students. The situation with graduate schools is even more dire.
Besides academic achievements, top schools want to see you as a good member of the community. Did you volunteer, have a job, generally do anything besides studying and participating in competitions? There are many very bright kids who seem to spend their time mostly collecting titles in various competitions, make sure your application is more interesting than that.