The Best are not Good Enough

At the end of the most recent school year, China's College Entrance Exam Board released the scores of the top students. This might seem weird to some people because in America, people respect each others privacy and nobody's scores would ever be publicly announced. But in China, it is a common practice to announce the top student of the school, school district, province, and country. This year's top student, Mr. Li, graduated at the top of his class; he was class president, Chairman of the Model UN, and had won numerous math competitions across China. Predictably, Mr. Li applied to all the top schools of the U.S., such as the Ivy Leagues, but less predictably, was rejected from all of them.

The reasoning for this was that while colleges in China rely largely on scores and titles, colleges in the U.S. look for passion and devotion to one's interests. They very likely saw Mr. Li as a tool of the Chinese school system with little independence or defining character. People around the world say that the American school system is declining, and that Chinese, Indian, and certain European students are the new #1, but American students possess the diversity, well-roundedness, confidence that is hard to find in Asian countries. But if the Chinese school system's best produce is a student like Mr. Li, by rejecting him, is the U.S. rejecting almost all mainland Chinese students? Even if a diverse, well-rounded, American-college-ready student were to appear in the Chinese school system, to be #1 would mean to end up like Mr. Li, and to not be #1 would mean to not rise to prominence nor get noticed by the American school system. Perhaps it will take much longer for the Western and Eastern school systems to come to the same level and make stronger connections.

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