Excerpts from "The Road to University"

Yesterday I finished reading the first volume of Teacher Wu Jun’s book "The Road to College - Accompanying My Daughter in Choosing a College in the United States". It feels very important! In the first volume, Mr. Wu Jun introduces the basic concepts and history of universities as well as general principles and suggestions for school selection. In the second volume, he introduces the characteristics and application suggestions of major prestigious schools. I have no experience in this area, so I can only study it seriously from scratch. Therefore, this week can only be called a book summary. I hope it can help parents and students who have the intention to study in the United States!

The definition of a good university

?A good university should play four roles. First, it is a place to cultivate talents, training young people with potential and ambition to contribute to future society; second, it is a research center, leading the development of world science and technology, and having a great impact on a country, A region has a positive impact; third, it is the birthplace of new ideas and new culture, which can promote social progress; fourth, it is the home of young people and the place where they spend the best time of their lives. Whether a university can make students' lives happy and thus stimulate students' lifelong passion for learning is an important criterion for measuring a university. From a student's perspective, it is not necessary to measure and evaluate whether a university is world-class, because it is more meaningful for them to find a good university that suits them based on their own needs. ?

University Education Philosophy

There are many ways to classify universities, and excellent universities actually fall into two categories. The first type is universities that practice Newman's educational philosophy, and the second type of universities is universities that practice Humboldt's educational philosophy.

1. Newman-style university? John Newman is the archbishop and educationist of Oxford, England. Newman's educational thoughts are a summary of the essence of running schools at Oxford University, which represents the highest level of British higher education for hundreds of years. Specifically: 1. Emphasize that in addition to learning knowledge, students in college also communicate with each other, learn from each other, and become friends with each other, which is an essential life experience for them. Without these, college life is incomplete. The ultimate purpose of education is to cultivate people with the ability to serve society, not to issue diplomas. 2. Universities are places where popular ideas are spread, not trivial skills, and this is regarded as a basic requirement of universities. Newman is a bit like the seeker in Go. He pursues the ultimate ideal of education and requires students to have a high level of consciousness. Newman believes that a college student's knowledge must be broad and cannot be limited to a small number of courses in a major. To achieve this, universities should be inclusive and teach a variety of courses. Students must be given sufficient freedom to choose courses and change majors. Such conditions are basically not available in China’s current universities.

2. Humboldt System Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian diplomat, established a complete education system that served industrial society. Humboldt proposed the school-running spirit of "integration of research and teaching": students must have a relatively in-depth understanding of a major when they graduate. Before 2000, the styles of Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, and University of Science and Technology of China were very similar. These universities indirectly adopted the Humboldt system.

It is difficult for us to evaluate whether Newman's general education or Humboldt's specialist education is better. In terms of the ease of finding a job and the speed of results, the latter is sometimes better. However, the problem with the Humboldt education system is that although it can cultivate very good executive-level talents, it is difficult to cultivate leaders and industrialists with a broad vision. It is almost impossible to complete general education and specialized education at the same time in four years. Any university and research institution must make a choice, whether to concentrate manpower and material resources to develop one or a few high-level subjects, or to have a large number of For subjects that are small in scale but cover a wide range of subjects, even very costly subjects are sacrificed to concentrate on teaching. Different educational philosophies and different choices will, over a period of time, form universities with different characteristics. At present, there are only two universities in the world that have basically achieved a completely balanced development of various disciplines, a nearly perfect balance of specialized education and general education, and at the same time fully blossomed in scientific research. They are Harvard University and Stanford University.

Any first-class university needs to provide students with good curriculum education. The curriculum must be reasonable and the teaching quality must be high enough. First-class universities have obvious advantages in setting up professional courses. They not only have a large number of courses, but they are also very "new". This is because professors at first-tier universities are of higher quality and can absorb new knowledge more quickly, while many professors at second-tier universities have taught a course for decades without any change. Second, first-rate universities that focus on teaching will continue to introduce new talents and bring new knowledge with them, while second-rate universities are often a carrot and a pit. The existing professors will not leave, new people will not be able to enter, and the disciplines will be updated. slow.

In the United States, most of the top universities are private universities. Private universities in the United States are independent academic and research groups. From admissions, teaching, to scientific research and building professor teams, they are not affected by the government in many aspects, but act according to their own educational philosophy. As a result, they are more flexible and competitive than public universities. Undergraduate students in the United States lack professional education. After graduation, especially from second- and third-rate universities, many jobs are still unavailable and require continued professional training.

Many young international students from China rely on a little money from their families and go abroad in order to study abroad. They find a third-rate university in the United States to complete their undergraduate studies. After graduation, they not only cannot find a job in the United States, but also cannot find an ideal position when they return home. Among them An important reason is that students receive very little professional training as undergraduates in the United States. Most American undergraduate graduates either study on the job (of course, the salary in the first few years is very low) or enter graduate school for further study. In private research universities in the United States, the number of graduate students even exceeds that of undergraduates. In the United States, it is very easy to open a private university that can issue undergraduate diplomas and issue I-20 forms to international students, as long as three universities recognize its credits and allow students to transfer. Many private universities in the United States are actually making money from foreigners through low-quality vocational education.

? Application and admission to prestigious private schools in the United States are unfair!

Undergraduate admissions to prestigious private schools is definitely a very unfair and completely opaque process: first of all, it is much more difficult for Asian students to enter good universities than for white, Latino and African-American students; secondly, and The chances of children from families who are not related to the university to enter a prestigious school are much lower than those of children who are alumni, especially families where many generations of the family have been connected to the school. Of course, it is lower than that of children of university professors; finally, children from families with special influence have a very high probability of entering prestigious private schools, and they occupy many places. These three points are facts recognized by all major mainstream media in the United States. Since the 1960s, the number of Asian immigrants in the United States has increased dramatically. Since Asians generally value education, the proportion of their children in prestigious private schools in the United States continues to increase. When it affects the admissions of students from other ethnic groups, prestigious private universities have begun to quietly restrict the admission proportion of Asian students. The simplest and most insidious way is to reduce the importance of academic performance!

There are two main reasons why the admission rate of Asian children to prestigious schools is low: First, Asians basically only use American universities but do not build them. It has done a poor job in donating gifts to prestigious private schools. In terms of consumption, people have the impression that they are wealthy, but in terms of donations, they are lackluster. Among well-educated ethnic groups, Asians have the lowest proportion of donors, even lower than African Americans. The second reason is political reasons. Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the United States and are the Democratic Party's vote base. In order to please the ethnic groups with the largest number of votes, politicians are unwilling to sacrifice the interests of the white ethnic group and often make a fuss about issues such as education and higher education.

? In the United States, those who apply for better universities generally have three requirements in terms of courses and grades:

1. High school average GAP This is a measure of the academic performance of a high school student The most important indicator? Students who get perfect GAP scores are also called straight A students. Nowadays, it is no longer difficult to get straight A's on your high school transcript. But a high GAP doesn't mean anything. He doesn't even meet one-third of the requirements to enter a prestigious private school.

2. Standard test scores, that is, SAT or ACT (Academic Ability Assessment Test). The questions in the SAT or ACT test are not difficult. As long as students make a little effort and prepare, they can get good scores. Therefore, The gold content is very low. Even if you get perfect scores, 90% of them will still be rejected by Harvard and other prestigious schools every year. Many Asian students spend a lot of time improving their SAT scores, which is a waste of time. Standardized test scores are a necessary condition for applying to a good college. Without it, you will definitely not be able to do it. However, don’t be complacent if you get good scores. You still need to continue working hard.

3. AP courses? General high school courses in the United States are simple, but courses in prestigious high schools are no easier than any high school in China. Most excellent high schools in the United States will offer AP courses, which move college courses into high school classrooms. The AP class exam is a unified exam, and the scoring is very rough. The full score is 6 points, and everyone can basically get full marks. Therefore, when private schools examine student performance, they mainly look at the number and difficulty of AP courses students choose, even more than GAP.

4. Specialties Most prestigious private schools require abilities that have nothing to do with academics or are outside of the curriculum. The easiest thing for universities to accept is sports special admissions, and team projects are more useful than individual projects. Every child has his or her own characteristics, so they also need to have their own strengths, rather than mechanically copying others' strengths. When a specialty is possessed by the majority of applicants, it is no longer special.

5. Written application materials? Most private universities in the United States require a lot of application materials. In order to simplify the application process, each university has agreed that some basic information that does not need to be repeated is only required to be filled out once by the applicant. Each university enjoys: GAP, transcripts, AP, SAT, family situation, contact information, etc. The proposition essay is the most important of the application materials and also has the most room for development. For recommendation letters, it is important to choose two suitable recommenders. It is best to have one as a math, physics and chemistry teacher and one as a humanities teacher.

Efforts that Asian students and parents can make

1. It is necessary to change from purely pursuing majors such as engineering and medicine to being interested in various majors. Asian students and parents are often eager for quick success and rush to majors where it is easy to find a job and make a lot of money. It is very difficult to get admitted. If you make it clear that you are willing to study some unpopular majors, it may be relatively easy and you can wait until you enter university to change majors.

2. The second effort that Asian students can make is to reduce some unnecessary competitions, spend time on finding the "hook" between themselves and the school, and create their own unique image through various activities. , in order to stand out from many applicants.

3. The third effort to do is to have the courage to express yourself in school and on various occasions. Actively participate in or even organize various activities and run for various positions in school. Don’t just compete for scores. You must have the mentality of a future leader and meet the standards for training students in top universities in the United States.

4. Actively participate in various activities of the university, help the university cooperate with industries and governments around the world, and actively donate to the university.

Next week we will continue "Road to College" - Accompanying my daughter to choose a college in the United States. Share the next volume!