The differences:
American students don’t bad-mouth other countries for those countries not granting them full-tuition scholarships to study there, like it’s an entitlement.
Skilled foreign workers brought into the US on a H1-B are undercutting domestic wages (e.g., Disney). Whereas, skilled American workers overseas are paid a premium compared to local wages.
I can’t say I’ve heard of many international students bad-mouthing the US for not granting foreigners full-tuition scholarships. However, that’s just my experience in one relatively small international school, so maybe I just haven’t encountered the subgroup of students voicing such complaints.
Is it frequent for internationals in some areas to make such statements?
I haven’ seen one around me, but I did see only a few in international forums. However, it’s not frequent at all
I think GMT is referring to financial aid scholarships, not just merit.
Honestly, I work at a smaller university and I believe that it is about 50-50 between full pay international students and those with some kind of aid. And even some who are full pay are working two jobs to do so.
The most common concern is that some have scholarships from their government to go to an American university, but they often need to keep a very high GPA, B or higher, to maintain their scholarship. It is very stressful for them, and honestly I’d be more than a few get that kind of scholarship based on connections over qualifications.
I do know that there are CC posters who say they are international and want to know which schools will give full financial aid to international students. But I don’t get how they can have internet access and knowledge of US universities, yet they somehow don’t understand that many US students don’t get near full aid.
Well I don’t think they understand how financial aid works, so no surprise
This is kind of what I was saying. They want to come, but have no idea or expectation that there is very little chance of acceptance at elites, and they are the ones with all the FA. Many also have no idea that if you finish a US college, you still can’t stay in the US.
Perhaps immigration is easier in the rest of the world? Or financial aid is more generous outside the US that leads them to think it will be easier than it is?
And yes, if you want to go to school in the US, you should be able to work the Internet well enough to find these things out. You did Paul;)
I think lots of people outside the USA are lured by this American Dream, which I think it still exists but has become much difficult to achieve these days. It’s kind of like stereotype, right?
Also, not just international students, but also citizens don’t know much about non-elite schools like UAlabama/Howard/Clemson/Hendrick college that give merit scholarships to international students as well(of course, it’s not easy) because simply not many people bring them up. I didn’t know about Ualabama scholarship until my friend told me in school(I should thank him for that), and it’s been fairly recent that UAlabama’s merit scholarships are brought up I think
But see, by finding that out, you are showing ingenuity that others have not! Good for you!
International students are charged with higher tuition fees and the admission is more selective. You think those international students do not deserve the spot for all their qualifications and pricey tuition fees?
So instead of blaming the foreigners, I think Americans should work their asses off. The world is competitive boy. It only makes you look stupid if you start blaming foreigners because US itself is a magnet sucking all good and qualified people, the country itself is built on foreigners. Take all the H-1b visa workers, there won’t be Silicon valley. A considerable amount of Phd candidates is foreign-born, US won’t be a leading country in research, if it does not utilize overseas talents. Take all the international students, and the colleges will face bankruptcy.
So stop blaming foreigners and look at your self. Do you deserve it?
Over the years, I’ve read a bellyful of posts like this.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/15726306/#Comment_15726306
Wow this indian kid is terrifyingly arrogant and self-righteous. He reminds me of the guy in Three Idiots who kept eating memorization pills from a quack
I think there is this myth out there that we poor Americans are not too smart and need all the brains internationals can supply. The truth is, this is a huge country, and yes, many are dumb, but we have millions of brilliant minds. We’re good here.
And if you took all the H1b’s, it would probably mostly impact menial professional areas where they are brought over to save cost.
Adults working out in the world know this. We know there are areas where we need people, and that are not helped by a consultantcy firm/agency bringing in people to staff a compliance or statistical project. But since they do, it furthers the myth that America is stupid. And that good or great should merit you an easy in at an elite US school. You need to be spectacular!
^^ That’s very true, HRSMom. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard from Europeans just how dim Americans are. I just smile and nod, then shrug my shoulders. Not worth it to argue.
LMAO
We certainly aren’t a country of dunces, but on average our schools have plenty of room to improve.
The latest PISA results show the US ranked behind Poland and Latvia, among others.
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf
Some common criticisms of the test or rebuttals to our results are addressed here:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/01/08/15hanushek.h33.html
There are quite a few international applicants as qualified, if not more so, than students on the cusp at many US schools.
We have millions of brilliant minds. The rest of the world has perhaps 10-20 million at the very least, many of whom want to study here in the US. It shouldn’t be all that surprising that American colleges accept quite a few more today than they did 20 years ago.
I really don’t know why the US self-flagellates itself every year over PISA scores.
The east asian countries top the list every year, and we have to listen to paeans of how virtuous their school systems are. But what is left out of the discussion is that parents in east asia spend a sizeable portion of their income on tutoring/cram courses for their kids to supplement public school education. Is this what we want in the US? The abdication of educational accountability from daytime schools to night-time, parent-funded cram classes? I live in asia now. I see all the ad, billboards, flyers for Kumon & private tutors, everywhere.
And to benchmark against countries like Latvia & Estonia which have racially homogeneous populations the size of an American suburb is ridiculous.
Dismissing Latvia and Estonia as racially homogenous outliers ignores the significant ethnic Russian population (in the neighborhood of 1/4 of the population in Estonia, a few percentage points below the combined share of blacks and hispanics in the US).
This group is very much a marginalized community - a study conducted a few years ago estimated that 50% of them are barely integrated or not at all - and yet these countries have performed quite well on the PISA nonetheless.
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/russians-estonia-twenty-years-after
If PISA scores are a flawed benchmark, here’s another. 14% of the US population is illiterate - with the rate among high school graduates closer to 19%.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-cant-read/
We certainly have a good education system, but when discussing high school graduates a small dose of humility wouldn’t hurt. I often hear friends and distant family members make the claim that our K-12 education system is the world’s finest. The above statistics suggest it isn’t, just as our health-care system isn’t the world’s best (another common belief) nor was it any better before the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
I make this argument not because I want to bash the US, but because the first step to solving a problem is admitting that it exists, and many people aren’t there yet.
Oh we admit it exists. But comparing Latvia to the US is kind of silly in the grand scheme of things. Latvia to Rhode Island maybe. Or the US to another continent, but otherwise it is apples and oranges. Of course even with the US we measure between the states bc they each control their own systems, funding, etc for the most part.
@NotVerySmart wrote
I never said Latvians & Estonians are ETHNICALLY homogeneous; I said they are RACIALLY homogeneous. The last time I was in Latvia, I didn’t see any but White people.
It’s a red herring that a group has to be integrated in the larger community for their kids to be a academically competitive. Stuyvesant HS is full of poor immigrant students, notably lots of poor immigrant Chinese students living in ethnic ghettos like Chinatown, and poor Russian immigrants.