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Did You Read Your School’s Mission Statement?
Did You Read Your School’s Mission Statement?
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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Dear Sabio Parents,
Often parents complain a school didn’t prepare their children for college-entrance exams. The complaints are legitimate: the lack of preparation is the main cause students perform poorly on the ACT and SAT, even though they received — unjustifiably — high report-card scores on high school subjects.
Ironically, some of these parents left countries like Korea to escape the competitive nature of the mother land’s school system, only to find themselves complaining about the uncompetitive U.S. education system. We should be careful what we wish for, indeed. What these parents should have done first off was to read the mission statement of their children’s school. (If you haven’t done this already, I urge you to do so immediately.)
Mission statements of all organizations, including that of of high schools, are full of highly abstract hyperboles. I’ve written my department’s missions statements (and the vision statements) in my corporate days, and it was an exercise in word arrangement that must include “world-class,” “customer satisfaction,” “high-quality,” and “maximize shareholder value.” Without these words, the mission statement seems empty. The corporate mission statements are meaningless with them included as well, because it is like “eternal happiness”: an ideal that the organization would strive for, not a specification of the final product. In other words, if it is in the mission statement, it may happened. If it is not in it, then it won’t happen.
Please take a look at your student’s school’s mission statement. It may not even mention “high scores,” or “standardized tests.” It may not even mention “college.” Why? Because it is not their mission. That’s right. These schools do not care if your child goes to college or not, much less if they go to MIT/Harvard. Most high schools mission statements are geared toward “producing upstanding citizens ready to perform all civic duties.” A well-rounded upstanding-citizen doesn’t need to attend college. In addition, the production of well-rounded citizens is not a zero-sum-game; why not offer an environment where students can stop and smell the roses? That’s why the life of some American high school students seem less hurried, enjoying their lives more fully. Admit it, that’s why you move to the United States.
So now that you realized less competition leads to less competitive results, ask yourself, “Is this enough?”
Yes, becoming a civic minded citizen is indeed a necessary condition for all human beings, but that alone may not cut it for what you expect from your child. Do you also want to raise a high performer who becomes admitted to MIT/Harvard? Then don’t expect schools do the work that is not even in their mission or vision statement. Your child’s education has to be supplemented by teachers who share your goal.
P.S.
Sabio Academy still doesn’t have a mission or vision statement because I (one of the founders) never overcame the “mission/vision statement writing” trauma of my corporate days. Sabio Academy would rather be judged by its track record. Yes, our students are admitted to MIT/Harvard every year. Of course, track record is no guarantee of future performance, but it sure beats not having one, or having only a cliche-filled “mission/vision statement.”
Internship 1: The Absurdity of High-School Internships
If you think about it, high school student internship is absurd. What do these kids know to contribute anything?
Internship 1: The Absurdity of High-School Internships
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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To Sabio Parents,
We hear about high-school internships all the time. But once we set out to find such an opportunity for our kids, the elusive “high-school internship” becomes almost mythical: mentioned but never sighted.
If one thinks about it, it is rather absurd a high-school student would even aspire to hold an internship. At least college students have been preparing for internships for years. College students intern in the field they know they will enter as a career. But high-school students? What do they know? Not a lot.
It is important to understand the subtext of this absurdity — that high-school students seek college-level internships but know hardly anything — if you want your child to take fullest advantage of high-school internships.
First of all, let’s define “Internship.” Internships refers to a range of activities from simple, part-time jobs to paper-shuffling volunteer work. In these two cases, the term “internship” is an empty title. The positions are as easy or difficult to obtain as any other part-time job or volunteer work. There is little to be said about these.
Below, I’ll focus on a second type of internship: the research opportunity. Research opportunities give students an ultimate honor: a chance to co-author a research paper. There is no better proof of a student’s worthiness than performing real research for publication in an academic journal (he or she might be the last author listed). This is an honor even college students rarely achieve.
So how can your student get a high-school research opportunity? There are broadly two cases.
Case 1: Sponsored Research
Organizations such as NIH (National Institute of Health) and companies such as Motorola often run summer internship programs. These community-service programs focus on spreading good will and brand recognition of the organization or company. In other words, the interns are doing no real work. Even interns assigned research projects end up performing sand-box projects — inconsequential to the organizer. Of course, the work has to be inconsequential. Would you want your medical treatment to hinge on a high-school student’s summer discovery? But this type of opportunity should be grabbed anyway, with two hands whenever possible, because they are still far more valuable than one of those expensive summer programs, the names of which seem always to begin with “Global Leadership ….” But remember: This is not the type of internship that makes a college admissions officer sit up and read the application twice.
Case 2: Real Laboratory Research
A high-school student who finds him or herself in the middle of actual research is the product of some heavy arm-twisting behind the scenes. Thus, usually only students from academically connected families can find this type of internship. But it’s worth noting that getting a foot in the laboratory’s door does not necessarily open another door. These students often end up accomplishing nothing — in spite of being in the middle of action the whole time. So what’s the problem? This outcome is actually understandable, even logical, if you consider the research director’s two goals for high-school interns:
- Don’t let him or her disrupt the experiments and research or damage equipment.
- Make sure he or she is kept away from even the slightest dangers so as to return to the parents safely.
Because of these goals, the high-school student can hardly learn, let alone contribute, to the research during his or her internship.
Amazingly, those lucky students who have the arm-twisting parents seem to completely unaware of this reality. They walk into the laboratory totally unprepared. I’ve come up with only one logical interpretation of how this blase attitude and subsequent squandering of their lucky break happens. It can happen only students and parents think the following scenario will unfold upon the student’s arrival at the lab:
The research director sees the new intern’s potential right away. He cancels all his classes, meeting and trips so he can focus on teaching this new intern the fundamentals of science on which research at this lab is based. The intern understands everything, including the research’s implications and ramifications. The graduate students at the lab also see the potential of this high-potential high-school student, and they postpone their own work to aid the intellectual growth of this new intern. The intern catches up with the science by the end of the first week and starts leading the experiment by the second week. By the third week, the intern raises the level of the research so high that now the experiment has a shot at winning the Nobel Prize. On the day of departure, the intern has to tear himself away from the lab’s members, who are also unable to let him go, for the success of the experiment depends solely on the intern’s brilliance. The intern leaves with a parting word: “I am still a kid,” he says. They had forgotten this. “I need to go back home and finish high school. I will come help you again when I find some spare time.”
Actually, I don’t know what goes on in high-school students’ heads. But this scenario is the only way I can understand students who have the audacity to show up unprepared.
Needless to say, the intern will have much to say about his or her experience at the lab, how he or she “learned very much.” But, in this scenario, there can be no mention of the intern’s contribution and no chance he or she will become one of the authors of the research because the only thing the intern did was looking on the experiment from a safe distance, or cleaned the equipment after the experiment.
—–
It sounds bleak. It seem an unprepared high-school student has no way to score a knock-out internship experience or accomplishment. After all, these are high-school kids. We should be reasonable in what we expect and demand from them.
But I am not writing this to show you just the absurdity and bleakness of high-school internships. On the contrary, I want to show you how to make the most of your student’s opportunities through adequate preparation. Your students have a shot to get the highest academic honors and records by becoming published researchers — and they have this chance in high school only through careful preparation.
My next letters will explain one possible preparation procedure and a success story.
Sincerely,
James H. Choi
Mathematica Union and Subsets
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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View the videos at a higher resolution.
Union
2011 AMC 8 Solutions & Answer Key
2011 AMC 8 Solutions & Answer Key
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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The letters on the side of the problem is the official answer key from the MAA. Click the problem number to view full solutions.
Click the full screen button 
and set it at 720p HD 
to view the solutions in clear video.
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If you find any mistakes, please let me know by leaving a reply below.
See also: 2012 AMC 8 Solutions & Answer Key
AMC 8 2011 solutions 2011 AMC 8 solutions 2011
Recommendation letter for leaders and/or followers
Recommendation Letter for Leaders and/or Followers
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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To Sabio Students,
This is part 2 of my advice on how to get an ideal recommendation letter. Part 1 is here.
By definition, all recommendation letters are filled with praise. Otherwise, it would not be a recommendation letter; it would be a non-recommendation letter. But as the saying goes, it is possible to damn someone with faint praise (or wrong praise). It is also possible to inflict damage through silence (i.e., omission).
1. Take this praise-filled paragraph, for instance: “This student never missed a class. She always delivered her homework on time, and exactly the way I specified. She is someone I can always count of when I need to get a job done.” No doubt, this letter has great praise. But let’s hold our judgement until we read the next paragraph.
2. Now consider this paragraph: “This student is not swayed by prevailing opinion easily. He won’t join in a cause until he completely believes in the cause himself. For example, when we finished a report on How to conserve energy in our school, this student wouldn’t simply accept solar panels cannot produce enough energy for our school. So against my wishes (as supervising teacher) and the wishes of 11 other team members, this student insisted we compute the actual annual amount of sunshine, rather than using an average national value for the United States. We found out the “average” national value for the States was much higher than what we would actually get in northern Illinois. We therefore discovered that it wouldn’t make economical sense to install solar panels in our school. If not for this student insisting we compute actual values, we would have delivered a completely wrong report. I notice, incidentally, that his peers listen when he speaks.”
What is the difference between the two paragraphs, if they both praise the student? You know colleges want to select future “leaders.” These leaders are not those who want to have a steady job in a large company and two-car garage house in the suburbs. These leaders, by the colleges’ definition, are people who will create new industries, create new political movements, and do something that will appear in history books.
Which of the two recommendations above better fits this image of leader? The second, of course. If you think about it, (and read it again now) the first recommendation sounds like it was written for a secretary position or a delivery person’s job. It’s faint praise, weak praise, fluffy praise. And yes, you can be damaged by a faint praise or, in other words, by a complete omission of the facts that imply “leadership.”
You cannot tell the recommender to write like #2 for you. The recommender will write as he or she saw you. So the only way you can get a letter like the #2 recommendation letter is by acting like the student in #2. That is, you must spend much time with your future recommenders and display your leadership, integrity, decisiveness and analytical mind on proper occasions. You must also make sure they see you doing this.
Even when you volunteer, think of benefits for not only the recipients of your service, but also for yourself. That is, think about what work type will develop your character in your eyes, as well in the eyes of other people.
I wish you wise and successful choices.
James
Sabio Column 