“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Never
in the history of the world have people been so mobile and never have there
been so many changes and challenges. In a great TED talk, Pico Iyer asks a
question: What is the 5th largest country
in the world?
His
answer: those who live in a country other than the one they were born in. One
of the fastest growing numbers of the migrating populations -- those seeking
educational opportunities. Hundreds of thousands of students are leaving home
and often spending great sums to enroll in schools mostly in the US, UK, Canada
and Australia. The country that sends the most students across the world in
search of the best educational opportunities: China, but India, Korea and Saudi
Arabia send many students away and the list of countries sending students
abroad numbers in the hundreds.
 |
| Graph from Open Doors |
Best of Times
The
graph demonstrates it is the best of times for international students leaving
their country to enroll elsewhere for their education. The growth is breath
taking. Schools benefit by bringing in students who are not only predicted to
do well academically, but will also add to the range of voices and experiences
on campus. And no less important, at least to most schools, is the money these students
bring. Almost all undergraduates who come to the US (and other places around
the globe) are full payers. Very few schools have financial aid for
international students and few offer merit aid that will come anywhere close to
the total cost for attending the school. Local economies benefit too as these
students spend money on housing, food and lots more. The staggering cost of
education at many colleges has left many in the US unable to afford attending them
unless they take on debt or get significant aid. International full paying
students have helped support low income US students and in some cases have kept
the schools from running short of cash to operate the schools. And it isn’t
just colleges that have grown dependent on international students. There is
huge growth at secondary schools too:
“A fast-growing number of
families are sending their children to America earlier to study (and moving
with them) as well. In 2013 about 32,000 Chinese received visas for study at
secondary schools in America, up from just 639 in 2005.
The raw
number of incoming students, the range
of schools attended and the money brought in all support the thesis that these
are the best of times in international education. The numbers don’t lie. But
they also don’t tell the whole truth. Not even close.
Worst of Times
November
3, 2011 is an important date. A New York Times story, written by Tom Bartlett
and Karin Fischer, detailed for a broad audience what many in international
education knew but had not talked about much in public. The story highlighted how students from China were getting
accepted to schools in the US and elsewhere by using, to say the least,
unethical methods. The story was based on interviews with students but also on
a report that had been previously published:
Zinch China, a
consulting company that advises American colleges and universities about China,
last year published
a report based on interviews
with 250 Beijing high school students bound for the United States, their
parents, and a dozen agents and admissions consultants. The company concluded
that 90 percent of Chinese applicants submit false recommendations, 70 percent
have other people write their personal essays, 50 percent have forged high
school transcripts and 10 percent list academic awards and other achievements
they did not receive. The “tide of application fraud,” the report predicted,
will likely only worsen as more students go to America.
I already knew about all of these issues and so did others
who had spent time in China talking to insiders and students. (Full Disclosure:
I should mention that Zinch also released a white paper back then outlining
what I had implemented at the University I worked for to detect fraud and
cheating in a low cost way that would also improve recruiting and encourage
educational reform. My solution was
pretty simple and I will come back to this topic later).
Since then, however, the number of stories about fraud and
cheating has now become so prevalent that not a week goes by that another major
media outlet does not publish their own story about all the irregularities
going on in China (and to some degree in other parts the world too, including
the US). Each story seems to confirm that the issues of fraud have worsened
since the story/report came out. What was once a dirty secret, however, is now
“common wisdom” but common wisdom also has the danger of not being as useful as
more nuanced approaches.
I agree with much of what has been written about cheating,
but I also have a number of significant caveats. Rather than simply pile on
more condemnations, I propose to look at some of these issues from a broader
perspective and to look at the role the various parties involved in this landscape
play in what some might call the worst of times for an ethical approach to
admission. More importantly, I will question some of the assumptions that many
have about the students, about what constitutes fraud and cheating, and finally
what are some simple and cost effective things that can be done to improve the situation.
After the Zinch data came out a number of people questioned
the stats. They said the percentages of students doing unethical things to gain
admission were too high. I would say that today the percentage might actually
be too low. Even as I say this however there are a number of factors that make
what these percentages seem to mean less helpful than might meet the eye.
Transcripts
What admission officers see when they get a transcript from
China (and some other places too) are not in many cases what they will see when
they look at a transcript from an American high school. In most cases the
grades and courses listed are not accurate. There are several reasons why this
is so depending on the school, on whether the school has control over the
transcript, and perhaps most importantly the cultural differences between what
a transcript means in China and what it means in other places.
Grades: The grades that
students earn in Chinese high schools are often much lower than grades given in
the US. Schools use low grades to motivate the students. However, schools in
China have learned that sending transcripts with low grades to selective US
schools virtually assures the student will not be offered admission. As a
result, there are many schools in China that have what they call an American
transcript. The transcript is sent by the school and is therefore official, but
the transcript is almost always filled with all A’s. The schools (and some of
these are the top magnet schools in China) feel that a lower grade in China
should be increased to reflect the grade inflation in the US. This practice of
changing grades raises questions. If the schools themselves change the
transcripts is this then fraud? Schools in the US weight grades for many
classes but weighted grades are not a part of the education system in China. US
admission officers at selective schools rarely ever see a grade of C on any US
transcript these days. Even one C can sometimes be enough to keep a student out
of contention. In China, a C can actually be what it is supposed to be-- an
average grade that many students get. In the US these days, A’s are the average
grade at many schools. Are the officials in China wrong to change the
transcripts?
I mention this as I had a
heated discussion about this issue with an official from China. They feel
justified in giving students high grades, as this is what they feel the
students would earn if there was a weighting system. It is important to
remember too, that many students applying from China attend what are called key
high schools. These are the equivalent of magnet schools in the US like Stuyvesant
in New York or ‘Thomas Jefferson High in
Fairfax, VA. In order to earn a spot a student must place at the very top of
students taking a city wide exam. The acceptance rates into these schools are
far lower than they are at US magnet schools. Hundreds of thousands of students
are vying for a few hundred spots. In other words, the students at these
schools have already demonstrated high academic potential. The level of competition
at these schools is unlike what most in the US can imagine. For example, some
schools I have visited have proudly showed me their bulletin board which tracks
student progress. Each week the grades of students are posted, by name, so that
everyone in the school can see how a student stands in relation to his or her
classmates. Competition is not only not discouraged, it is re-enforced so that
the top students at these schools can do well on the national exam, the Gaokao,
and get accepted to prestigious universities like Beida and Tsinghua (the
Harvard and MIT of China). Students at these schools are incredibly driven and
are in most cases prepared to do well at any school in the world. I say this
having talked with thousands of students from China over the years. I have
watched the top ones go on and do exceptionally well both in China if they
choose to stay or at top universities around the world. Is it any wonder that
officials would want to raise the grades of these students knowing that low
grades on a transcript, while motivating these students, will hurt their
admission chances outside of China?
If this practice were the
only issue then I think the controversy surrounding transcripts would not be
quite as great at it is. Unfortunately, at many schools things are much worse. There
are many schools that not only don’t post grades, the grades themselves are an
afterthought. Jordan Dotson has been in China for over a decade working in
Shenzhen, a city with some of the top schools and students in China. His
ethical approach to admission and his insights into the process have educated
me in ways no one else has. He does not mince words about what grades do and do
not mean in most schools in China:
The grades are meaningless. Only Gaokao
matters, so everything that happened before that point is ONLY used to
determine how much a student needs to be preparing, and with what focus, for
the Gaokao. It's really not such a bad concept, if you think about it.
Grades are only used as analytical tools to ascertain weaknesses-- gaps in a
student’s education. If a student asks for "transcripts," of
which they don't really have anything useful, they just make up a bunch of stuff
that looks like what the Americans are asking for. Now when someone IS changing
grades at these "normal" high schools, for the explicit purpose of
increasing a student's chance of admission, what we call cheating, it
doesn't always seem
like cheating to them. Many people are willing to cheat here, yes, but many
others don't consider this cheating. They're just trying to appease a pushy
American system that doesn't really make sense to them. Remember that the semester-by-semester grades aren't that important to
them, so writing in "A" when the student had a "B" has
little meaning. What does an A or B matter when the student still hasn't
taken the test? When they still have one year to review and learn what they
didn't learn in that short semester?
To some readers, what Jordan says about grades not mattering
is a strange concept, but at places where national exam results are all that
matters this can be the case. Schools that get numerous students into top
schools will be rewarded with raises and promotions and the families and
students will be looked at with awe. (Some in the US worry that the
implementation of Common Core standards may lead to schools being evaluated in
ways that may begin to reflect this model.). Given the size of China it should
come as no surprise that there are marked differences in the way schools assess
students.
There is one piece of this puzzle about schools and transcripts
that not enough in the world of admission are aware of: “International” vs. Chinese National Curriculum.
First of all, an international curriculum is different than
an international school. Most international schools in China do not enroll
Chinese nationals. They are filled with expats. Some Chinese schools call themselves
international but they are composed of Chinese nationals but do offer an AP or IB
curriculums. Some schools have within the National school itself both national
and what they call international curriculums. National students are studying
for the Gaokao. Students in the international curriculum have opted out of
studying for the Gaokao and have committed to studying outside of China. If
this isn’t confusing enough, there are three important things that need to be
clarified about the students and the curriculum in each of these tracks. There
also needs to be some clarification about why more and more students leave
China while in high school to finish secondary school in another country.
Many of the students in the international track spend the
last year of high school preparing for SAT, TOEFL and AP exams. Put simply,
these students are not actually taking
classes in the school. Instead, they are spending all their time outside school
preparing applications and doing test prep. Here is the way Jordan describes
it:
The students don't go
to school their Senior 3 year; instead, they are taking SAT classes if
anything, despite consistent,
English-language transcripts listing a full class schedule. Universities could
classify these schools as the ones who may have some "AP" classes,
but still list broad subject titles for all three years of high school. That
is: Math, Chemistry, Physics, Politics, Biology, etc.
Many admission readers are not aware that some students in
the international track are not in school for the last year. (It is important
to note, however, that some schools really do offer AP and IB classes.) In
fact, some readers look at the students who have AP classes and who have a
transcript that lists senior year AP courses as more trustworthy and possibly
more academically prepared than students who are in the national Gaokao prep
program. Admission readers know what AP tests are but may not be as aware of
how intensive the Gaokao track is. In other words, some admission officers give
an edge in admission to students who are, for all intents in purposes, not in
school their senior year and may not be close to the top students in the
school. A student who gets in to Beida or Tsinghua has done something far
harder than getting into an Ivy or Stanford or MIT. The acceptance rate for students
who apply to the most elite schools in the US is between 5%-10%. The acceptance
rate to get into the Chinese equivalent of Ivy level schools is about 1/7000.
Once again Jordan puts it well:
If the school does NOT
have an international program, and they're providing these wishy washy (but not
sinister) transcripts, then this school's students have probably taken more
real classes (and more difficult classes) than those in the fancy international
programs. Simply by virtue of the students being in a Gaokao-curriculum school,
it means they're mastering extremely difficult academic material. We can't say
that for some of these "elite" schools with international programs
and AP classes.
Note: the Chinese government is changing the education
system to place more emphasis on Chinese subjects and cutting out some of the
‘international programs. It will affect some of the ‘international’ programs
offered but in what way is still uncertain.) Jordan summarized the reasons
behind the change and how it might affect students:
“The new legislation
has two edges: 1) promote nationalism, 2) consolidate and centralize
education-related graft to approved parties. This falls directly in line with
much of this government administration's recent actions ("tigers and flies").
I believe that
schools will still be able to retain the existing systems for helping students
with transcripts and Letters of Recommendation, however.” Colleges need to
be aware of these changes and need to keep updated about other initiatives.
Here is another trend in admission that affects
international students from China (and other places too). In the last several
years the number of students who have been offered admission to the most elite colleges
and universities who are attending secondary schools outside their country has
increased. Students who have left China or Korea (the two biggest sources of
international students coming to the US during high school), seem to be getting
an edge in admission. On the surface this makes sense given what I have written
above. The transcripts of students in China are suspect and so are many other
things and those who attend schools in the US, UK, Australia, Singapore etc.
attend schools that educators trust. The parents in China have noted this, so
many have followed suit and sent their children abroad at an earlier age. This
has helped many private schools that have had problems enrolling enough full
paying domestic students. On the face of it this all seems like good news. But once
again there are underlying factors that complicate this issue.
As noted, many of the best students in China are enrolled in
the Gaokao track. A goodly portion of the students who are going abroad are
doing so not just because they know schools trust their transcripts but also because
they face a lower level of competition than back home. I am not the only one
who has noticed this. Terry Crawford, whose article on Chinese education
in the Atlantic Magazine should be mandatory reading, puts the issue this way when I
asked him about it in an interview:
There is one thing I would note, however: we continue to be
impressed at how time in the U.S. for high school does not necessarily make a
top candidate, or even a student with adequate English. Many go to the U.S.
because they did not do well on the high school entrance exam, and parents see
high school in the U.S. as another bite at the apple. If a student is able to
get into a top high school in China, my sense is that many will go—a student
who legitimately gets into Renda Fuzhong, Nanjing Foreign Language School or
Beijing No. 4 has already indicated that they are in the upper echelon of high
school students in China, so turning down the chance to go to one of the top
high schools is not something to be taken lightly. In China, there is a greater
national awareness of its top high schools—much greater than in the U.S. The
“going to the U.S. high school for a second chance” is of course not every
student—we interview many top students who are applying to top boarding schools
in the U.S.—but it is a significant percentage.
Parents who have
noticed that their child has not scored well enough to get in to a key high
school may send their child abroad to get a second chance to get into a top US school.
I would also add that there are many parents who are doing the same thing even
with some students who attend top high schools in China. These are the students
whose grades on the bulletin boards do not top the class. In other words, there
is evidence that they will not have a good shot at getting into top schools in
China. If it appears that I am saying these students are not great this is
anything but accurate. I know many students from China who have finished school
in Singapore, the UK and the US who are among the most impressive I have ever
met (I feature a number of interviews with students like this on my blog). But
I have also met some who were only marginally prepared to converse in English
and who do not have the same overall strengths as some of the top Gaokao
students I have met and interviewed. I fear that some exceptional students who
may not have quite enough money to support international education for more
than four years will be overlooked because they attend a Chinese national
school. I have known students like this. All this leads me to ask these
questions:
Are we being fair to individual students or are we making
assumptions about groups and schools and letting that affect our decisions? What this means is that
in effect, colleges and universities are just not sure about so many parts of
the application from students applying within China that they are not taking
any risks. Should they, or are there ways to reduce the risks?
Recommendations
Most selective schools in
the US require recommendations, sometimes as many as 3. In China, teachers who
are Chinese nationals rarely write recommendations. Many do not speak English
and this adds an additional layer to getting a letter. More importantly,
Selection to a university there consists, as I have mentioned, of a single
score on a single test, the Gaokao, so they do not see it as
their job to write recommendations for US schools. In addition, many of the
teachers do not want their top students to go abroad. It isn’t that they are
anti American (although there may be some that are). Instead, secondary schools
are ranked in China based upon their placement of students to top universities
in China. (It is not that much different at secondary schools around the
world.) If a number of top students from the school opt out of applying to top
schools in China in order to go instead to the US or other destinations, then
it can then hurt the school’s ranking. This will have a ripple effect on
salaries, job security etc.). Suffice it to say, that Chinese nationals who are
teachers do not often write recommendations.
So what is a student to do? In some cases, the student writes
the recommendation and gets the teacher to sign it. At least in this case the
teacher has seen the recommendation. Is a recommendation like this a fraudulent document? If the teacher agrees with what the student has written why would it
be fraud? In other cases the student has someone else write the
recommendation and send it, sometimes with the school’s tacit approval and sometimes
not.
Agents
For those not familiar
with what goes on with students around the world the term agent may sound a bit
like Hollywood. In some ways this is not all that far off the mark as some
agents help students play a role that has little or nothing to do with who they
really are. Terry Crawford thinks that as many as 90% of students applying to
schools in China use agents. He has lots of stories about how they try to
“help’ students get accepted to great school but he is far from alone. Agents
are endemic to the process in China but they play an increasingly important
role in many other countries too. Whether it is India, Korea, Panama, or the UK
there are agents everywhere. In the US there are agents too, but they go under
a different name—private counselors. What these people do is to help students through
the application process. How they do this varies tremendously in part based on
where they are and in part based on the expertise and ethical approach of the
agent. The number of stories of unethical agents in some parts of the world is
nearly endless. These agents that manufacture recommendations, create false
transcripts and write essays are the ones who give the whole profession a bad
name. While there may be a higher percentage of agents like this in some parts
of the world there are people like this everywhere. Some charge huge amounts of
money others just a few hundred dollars, but all of them represent an obstacle
to admission officers trying to discover the real student. Because of their
egregious actions they are the ones who give people the impression that the
whole system is corrupt.
I know a number of people
who help students around the world who are ethical and committed to helping
students find great choices. Many of these people are former admission officers
or former secondary school counselors. They bring with them experience but also
a firm adherence to the rules and regulations outlined by NACAC and IECA. Families
hear some that of the agents guarantee admission to certain schools (the agents
charge an up front fee and then get a bonus if the student gets into to certain
‘guaranteed’ schools that are often highly selective). Many of the disreputable
agents are not all that good at what they do and that is why they end up being
outed by the schools and the press. Many of the best professionals keep a low
profile and guide students well but don’t even think about guaranteeing
admission or creating contracts with bonuses. I do not think anyone really
knows how many students work with bad agents and how many work with good ones
but the fact is that in certain parts of the world agents are simply a part of
the admission process, whether schools like it or not. The ones who do things
right are not often given the press they deserve nor are they given much
outward support from colleges and universities. Since they charge money for
their services they are seen as contributing to the inequality of access
between those families that can pay for help from those that can’t. I think if
more outward support was given to these professionals, then some of the issues
that go on with those who will do anything to get a student accepted would
decrease, at least a bit.
In China many high
schools do not have college counselors so it is not surprising that families
are searching for people to help them through the complicated maze of applying
to schools in the US and elsewhere. In a country that is exam driven the idea
of holistic admission in which essays, activities, and other non-quantifiable
factors play a role is ‘foreign’ in every sense of the word. To condemn
families for seeking help seems shortsighted and culturally unaware. Terry has
some great things to say about how US schools, wittingly or unwittingly, drive
some of the things that happen across the world:
First, almost all students work with agents. It is the air that
the educational prep community in China breathes. Some agents are ethical. Some
care about the students. There are some great schools with educators who care.
But everyone should know that the incentives set up by the U.S. admission
system encourage unethical—or at least unsavory--behavior. At a minimum, it has
created a high school system that offers “international” programs that are
essentially test prep factories. Students cram for the tests, and the agents
take care of all of the other details.
 |
| students in China taking a test |
If stories about unsavory
agents appear frequently in the media, they pale in comparison to the number of
stories about cheating going on by students on the SAT in Asia. I won’t
rehearse in any depth all the people to point at to blame for the cheating but
the list in pretty comprehensive: the testing prep companies that use
sophisticated techniques to let students know what questions from prior tests
will be on the current test, the families and students that pay for people to help
them get access to answers, and even the College Board for its decision to
recycle old tests through a part of the world that has every old question
catalogued.
These stories have
encouraged many around the world to categorize the majority of students from
China as cheaters and while there is cheating going on, those who really know
the students and the education systems there understand that the stories have
blown this out of proportion and in doing so have hurt all the students
applying to selective schools outside of China. For students who have lived and
breathed a testing culture from birth, doing well on standardized tests that
are, by the standards of the Gaokao and other national exams, is no great feat.
I say this having data to back it up. I did a great deal to make sure every
student I admitted to the university I worked for had not done anything
ethically problematic. The students who enrolled at my university from China
had, as a group, the highest GPAs of any group of students who enrolled. The
average GPA at their university was over 3.8, far above the typical student GPA
of 3.1. These students are among the most impressive students I have met in over
30 years in education. The median SAT Math SAT II score for enrolling students
from China was 800. I have known many students from China who feel that
anything but an 800 on the Math test is a failure. In a system that accelerates
students in math far past what is typical in the US this should not be shock.
Try this thought experiment:
Start with a smart student who is used to preparing for tests and then put them
in a summer program to prep for the SAT for 8 weeks in which they do nothing
but work on the test for up to 12 hours a day. It should not come as a surprise
they would do well on every portion of the test. Terry Crawford says much the
same thing:
“There may be a significant amount of fraud with regard to standardized
tests, but I think it is more likely that students in China do well simply
because of the emphasis upon cramming for the tests”.
Both Terry and I agree
that the top students in China do not need to cheat on the SAT. For thousands
of these students putting in endless hours of prep in addition to being highly motivated
and smart means they don’t need to in order to score well above 2000 without
using anything remotely close to cheating. Unfortunately, those who read the
popular press don’t hear this part of the story. The students who are cheating
are, frequently, not the top students, but those who need to get “good” scores
in order to appear like a strong student.
I have to add that I believe that there are
some colleges and universities that do not do enough investigation of their
applicants to determine if they are manufactured by agents, given answers to
the SATs and have transcripts that are doctored. The students they enroll, by
the stats at any rate, are good, and this helps the school's profile. In
addition, they also pay full fees. The expectation that students have to submit
things like recommendations when some countries or schools do not have the
capacity to generate these documents places families and students in a
difficult ethical position. In other words, the schools in the US are not
without some blame for some of the problems.
Summary
If transcripts, recommendations,
essays, test scores are all subject to question, then this creates what many
would call a justifiable doubt in the minds of admission officers and those who
read the popular press about the students. The question is then whether every
student from these places should, in effect, be looked at as guilty until
proven innocent. And there are some who believe that the answer to this
question is yes.
Terry Crawford puts it
this way:
“In fact, I think admission officers should begin their assessment
thinking that a lot of the applications are not accurate. Absent some outside
verification—by a guidance counselor they trust.”
Does this mean I believe
that admission officers are colluding behind closed doors to exclude students
from China? There are some who believe this. I actually don’t but I still believe
that there is discrimination going on. This may seems like a contradiction but
it isn’t. The science to back up unconscious bias is, to me, persuasive. https://www.gv.com/lib/unconscious-bias-at-work
There are many documented
cases of people treating people of different races or backgrounds unfairly
without being aware of it. Rather than get into a long scientific defense of
this (I leave it to the published research to prove this) I will instead simply
ask what seems a couple of pretty simple questions.
Do you think you could be objective about a student when you
have been told that most of the information you have been given is false or at
the very least misleading or inaccurate?
If you have been told that you should approach these students
with suspicion from the outset do you think you could be objective about their applications?
Perhaps there are people who think they can do
this, but the science is there to say that this in not possible. We all have cognitive
biases of many sorts. We may believe we are being objective when making many
decisions, but the evidence is there from neuroscience and psychology to
demonstrate we make most decisions with a mix of emotion, previous experience, and
what the scientists call priming. http://onlyconnectparke.blogspot.com/2014/07/you-think-you-are-smart-so-did-i.html
My contention is that
most who have read about what is going on in some parts of the world are primed
to believe that any student who applies from these places is suspect and as
such may have to be even better than everyone else in order to stand out to be
offered admission to a highly selective
university or college.
If I am right about this,
then this means that there are thousands of students applying to schools who
are being judged more harshly than others. What this also means that students
who have done everything right may be negatively assessed because they have
been grouped in with those who are not doing everything right.
Since I have already
given my own personal experiences with students from China I want to end this
examination of the worst aspects of international admission by letting a
student make his case.
Jerry applied to highly
selective schools in the US this past admission season. Jordon Dotson brought
him to my attention as he has said in no uncertain terms he is one of the top 5
students he has ever known. Given that Jordan's former students populate places
like Stanford, Oxford, Harvard etc. this is high praise indeed, and given that
I know and trust Jordan, I believe him. Jordan put me in touch with Jerry and I
asked him a few questions about cheating before admission decision were
released. Instead of giving a few short answers he wrote a compelling essay. I
cannot quote it all but these words are
ones that should be a part of any discussion about how to treat students from China:
Objectively, I didn’t cheat on any of my tests. I prepared on my
own without the help of any training centers or tutors, and certainly didn't
have any leaked question sets. Materials that helped me, like Princeton Review
and previously released problems sets, were my own choices. I can say that I
deserve the scores I got. Whether or not I get an offer from my dream school, I
earned my score…
Subjectively, however, I can’t guarantee that the cheating
didn’t affect me. After all, admissions is competitive. Spots are already
limited for international students. On the one hand, if Admission Officers and
schools ignore the leaking and cheating, and continue basing decisions on the
premise that SAT scores accurately assess students’ English and logical
abilities, my competitors with irregularly high scores would take my spots.
On the other hand, if the AOs take the leaking seriously, especially
in how they consider Chinese students, then I’m suddenly a member of the
cheating group. It lowers my chance to get into all schools. In this way it
doesn't matter if I cheated or not, because other people's cheating harms my
own application…
Every individual is
different; everyone can make her own choice regardless of her nationality. I
choose not to cheat so don’t call me a cheater. If what Mr. Muth says is true,
that AOs are “primed...to interpret students from these countries as
dishonest,” then I'm primed to picture these officials as racists.
Do you question Jerry’s logic? If so, in what way? Has he
‘earned” what he says in his last sentence? Why or why not?
Some students feel they get hurt by playing by the rules.
And I believe they are right. I ask these questions not just to be provocative
but also to underscore that all too often I hear people lump all students from
China applying to schools into simplistic categories: cheaters, test taking
machines, rich etc. If you think Jerry is an outlier I do not think this is
accurate either. In preparation for this story I have talked, mostly in person,
to over 50 students from China about these issues. I know them well and they
too have done things ethically. All of them believe that there is discrimination
against Chinese students and Asians as a group, at least in part due to
people’s belief that they are less than ethical and prone to cheat. Clearly I
am not saying that a lot of cheating and use of unsavory agents does not go on.
What I am saying is that some of the best students who are not involved in
doing things the wrong way are being hurt and that there needs to be more of an
effort on the part of colleges to distinguish individuals in the admission
process.
And Jerry? He was turned down at his top choice school even
though he has great grades, a top recommendation from a US citizen who knows
him, a wonderful essay (I have read it) and outstanding activities that he genuinely
did. His SAT score was not above 2250 but it was quite strong. His top choice
admits well above 25% of the applicants…
Solutions
I don’t pretend to
have solutions to solve what is a huge set of problems. I will, however, offer
some advice from the experts I have already quoted and then add a few of my own
that I hope will at least encourage
discussion among educators, families and students.
I began this
article by quoting Karin Fischer’s NY Times article that raised many of the
issues I have addressed. I thought it would be helpful to get an update from
her about what she thinks has changed and what people can do to improve the
situation. She said many things during out talk but here are a few I want to
highlight:
Things
have changed since the New York Times piece. Back then many people did not know
about many of the things going on in China. Now it is a big issue and it may be
that the pendulum has started to swing back. Back then many in admission were
naïve about the practices, in some cases willfully so. Now there are many who
may have reacted too strongly in the other direction thinking that Chinese
students are by and large paying for agents who write essays and alter
transcripts.
I
doubt that many in admission would want to
believe that they have a form of confirmation bias when it comes to
evaluating students. It is hard. They do not want to be naive but they do not
want to go too far in the other direction.
As
for solutions, admission people need to spend more time on the ground
developing relationships with schools and counselors. Admission officers can
learn to trust the school, the counselors and the students, but this may hurt a
student in a third tier city who goes to a school that won’t get visited and
wont get looked at in the same way.
Jordan echoes in a somewhat different
way what Karin has said schools can do:
Teaching
colleges that don't come over here are missing the boat. I can't tell you how
many times a school like Wheaton College has sent a quirky, talkative, happy
person to a college fair and I've had two dozen students tell me within hours
how much they love that school and now want to apply there early. The kids are
starving for real, tangible, emotional experience with individual schools.
Terry also underscores the importance
of admission officers:
The
international admission officer has a unique opportunity to craft a process
that is not only fair but that also impacts high school curricula in China and
elsewhere. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are witnessing one of the
greatest migrations in history, where hundreds of thousands of top students in
the world’s second richest country are voting with their feet (and dollars) to
enjoy the benefits of a western education. The college prep process in China
will reflect whatever admission officers value, and as a result the admission
requirements for international students will reverberate deep into the high
schools of China and other countries. I think it is safe to say that change and
social advancement via the admission process for U.S. students is more
incremental. In contrast, just a handful of international admission officers at
a few top schools can make decisions which benefit secondary students in
countries all around the world.
All three underscore the importance of
those in admission as having a significant role to play in making things
better. All of them encourage greater communication between the colleges and
the schools. This may sound like common sense in the world of admission but I
am not so sure. A number of schools have cut back travel to China because they
receive so many applications they have diverted resources and staff to other
parts of the world. At one level this makes sense, but if admission people
really want to effect positive change then they should travel to schools,
develop relationships with the counselors and officials, sit in on classes and
talk with the students-- not just in a formal information session-- but one to
one if possible. What I propose is that schools increase their budgets to
recruit in China, to spend more time in more cities and to make the time work
to the benefit of the school, the students and the education system as a whole.
My other suggestion is based on my
personal experience working with students coming from China since the time the
first undergraduates began to apply to US schools. Overall, I have interviewed many hundreds of
students from China. I can say that these interviews made a huge difference in
my ability to assess the ‘soft skills’ of students and made it easy to
determine a student who had conversational fluency in English rather than just
a high SAT or TEOFL score.
At present, very few colleges and
universities in the US use interviews to help make admission decisions. I would
encourage them to consider instituting interviews as a part of the evaluation
process --at least in certain parts of the world. It will help admission people
get to know individual students but it will also help to improve the quality of
the students the schools enroll. In addition, it will keep the agents who are
unscrupulous out of the this part of the process and send a message to officials,
parents and students that schools are looking for more than test scores and
full payers. Generating trust among all stakeholders will improve things-- of
this I am sure.
There are many schools that cannot do
interviews for budget reasons. They do
not have the staff to interview all the applicants who would want an interview.
Given this, I would propose that schools use the services that businesses like Initial View and Vericant provide. These businesses conduct the interviews and sent
both the video of the interview and an assessment to the schools themselves. Some
may think I am suggesting this because Terry runs Intial View. I know Terry well
and know how committed he is to giving students a chance to present themselves
as they really are. I also know the leadership at Vericant too and I fully support
their ethical mission. They will help schools enroll students who will graduate
and do well not just in the classroom but as a contributing member of the
community. They will help find students who ‘fit’.
Before either of these businesses
existed I instituted an interview program at the university I worked for. I
actually used current students from China to do the interviews after giving
them intensive training. This accomplished two things. The enrolled students
spent far more time talking with the prospective students than an admission
officer has time for. The enrolled students evaluated not just the
prospective students. English abilities but also their overall profile. Some of
the student interviewers wrote up 3 pages of remarks. They did far more than most
in admission could ever do. In addition, the student interviewers served as ambassadors
for the school. They helped recruit students, not in an overt way, but by simply
being a resource. Zinch wrote a white paper on my effort at about the time they
did the research on agents. I mention this, as I have been supportive of
interviews long before I met anyone from Vericant or IntialView. I see how
their model can be a low cost alternative for schools and families and believe
that anything that adds the human touch to each applicant will demonstrate what
schools say is their mission: to give each individual student a chance to make
a case for themselves that extends beyond numbers, gets beyond stereotypes and
biases, and looks to create a vibrant class of unique men and women.
School use
the term ‘fit’ all the time, but I am not sure how many schools determine how
well a student from China will fit by looking mostly (or almost completely) at
a set of scores a transcript and some recommendations that may or may not be
accurate. The schools who take the time to get to know the students who are
applying will also diminish the importance and power of unscrupulous agents
too. Trust will be established and relationships will flourish. None of what
has been proposed here is asking schools to invest huge sums of money. Instead,
most of the things that will help reduce fraud and mismatches have far more to
do with time and interest rather than money. Looking at each student for what
he or she can bring is what many went into education to promote. I hope that
some will push the leadership of their offices and schools to permit a more personalized
approach to admission in China and in other locations around the globe too.
********************************************************************************
A much shorter version of this piece was first published in Nacac's Journal of College Admission.
I would like to thank Nacac for asking me to write the article and for giving me permission to post the longer version here.
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