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The Other Side of College Campus Tour 2
The Other Side of College Campus Tour 2
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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Continued from: The Other Side of College Campus Tour 1
5. Students pick what college they want to go to based on what they hear about the school — before ever seeing it.
From what I’ve seen, most students know what college they want to attend not because they visited or saw it, but because of the college’s reputation and the word of mouth from those around them. In other words, if a high-reputation and respected college accepts a student, he or she wouldn’t care if the dorm looked like a dump. That student would go. That student would be grateful that to be able to go.
6. Campus tour to choose the right college? Will you have a choice?
The premise of taking many college campus tours is that your student will get to choose the one at which he or she would like to study. The key word here is “choice” — but will your student have a choice?
For most students, they would be lucky if they got accepted by one dream college; it is highly unlikely that any one student would be accepted by two dream colleges and have to make a “choice.” Of course, such cases exist. I advised one student who had to choose between — get this — Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. But he/she was a rare case. Most students will gratefully study at the campus of the best school that accepted them. Even if they get to choose, it will be most likely among the college they never toured.
7. Information sessions are positively unhelpful.
Perhaps the most important part of the campus tour is supposed to be the information session. Every guided campus tour has an information session, which is a forum where admissions officers and sometimes current undergraduates talk to visitors and answer your and your student’s questions. This is also the part most students least look forward to. Most wouldn’t mind skipping the information session altogether to get to that gift shop faster. On every tour, I had a student whispering to me “Can we skip the information session and go to the gift shop instead?”
But the talk itself is a sight to behold: Even competitive colleges such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton talk during these sessions as if they are trying to sell themselves. For instance, Harvard’s information session devotes about half the time to current Harvard students who explain their campus life, how great it is, what kind of activities they enjoy. Details about Harvard’s club activities, sports, and all these other plain things leave students believing Harvard is a wonderful vacation spot! You can easily miss the acknowledgement that the academics are competitive, which is mentioned only in passing.
How pointless! All students I’ve ever taken to the Harvard information sessions would choose Harvard even if its campus were like a prison! Despite this well known fact, the information session dedicates so much on promoting Harvard as if they the speaker was facing an skeptical or downright hostile audience. Interestingly, there is hardly any mention on what it takes to be accepted to Harvard. Those who entered the information session seeking specific information on the admissions requirements always leave empty handed.
8. Information-session speakers relentlessly positive, even when they shouldn’t.
Here’s a question that gets asked all the time at information sessions:
Student: “Can I apply without knowing my specific major?”
Admissions officer: “Sure! College is all about finding yourself, experimenting, and realizing what your potential is.”
The above might be the single-most asked question in all information sessions and illustrates the large number of students who are unsure what they want to study in college. Many go simply because this is their time to go. Our society’s clock is pushing them into college, not because they want to go or are ready to go. Nonetheless, every college’s answer to the above question is a resounding, “Sure!”
Harvard released statistics regarding how many students are admitted under an “undecided major.” For the class of 2016 admissions, that number is 0.7 percent. That’s right, less than a percent. However, a much larger percentage applies as “undecided,” I was told unofficially. Applying and accepted as an undecided major is likely to lower your chances drastically. I asked about this to a Harvard admissions officer, and her reply was: “Undecided major is a someone who will excel at any major.” In other words, “undecided” is not for those who are not sure what they are good at. It is for those who are too good in too many fields. You would not have noticed from that cheerful “yes” reply.
No matter what outlandish questions you ask, the admissions officer’s response is usually positive and ends in “you should apply.” You need to recognize that the main point of the college information sessions is to get your student to apply. The more of them apply, the lower the admissions rate. The lower the admissions rate, the higher the ranking. If you ever walked out of an information session full of hope, then you know the information session was a success.
Continued: The Other Side of College Campus Tour 3
The Other Side of College Campus Tour 1
The Other Side of College Campus Tour 1
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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Dear Sabio Parents,
If your budget doesn’t allow you to take your student on college campus visits, don’t worry.
Your child will not be at any disadvantage. The upsides of college campus tours are well-known, endlessly repeated by those in the tour business and those who want to bring students to the college by impressing a future applicant (i.e. your student). But these people have nothing to gain by mentioning the downsides of the tours.
So nobody has mentioned them — until now. Please allow me to count the ways.
1. The college campus tour does not work as a way to motivate older students.
If a student is old enough to realize that he/she does want to go to college (i.e. a junior or senior in high school), then it is too late. Top American college/university admissions require notoriously long term planning — starting at 6th grade. What these juniors and seniors realize on the tour is how lacking they are. Therefore the college visit results in a feeling of despair and regret and perhaps a depressive “down” feeling.
Sure, some of them are already prepared and these tours would help them select the campus they like the most. However, these students will get in anyway without the tour, and impression they get from these tours would not reveal much about what they will actually face once they are enrolled. I will not mention these “will get in anyway” types of students for the rest of this article.
2.The college campus tour does not work as a way to motivate younger students to study harder.
Now, if a younger students (i.e. someone in 6th or 7th grade) visit those campuses, that is an ideal age because there is still time to do everything to qualify them for these elite universities. But here is another problem: These students are too young to care. They probably care only about the campus gift shops. For these students, college campus tour is only an sub-optimal, pointless, boring vacation destination. It is an unreasonable to expect a child disinterested in books to be impressed by massive volumes of books in singularly hushed air of a university library.
3. A student is rarely the right age for a college campus tour.
To work, a college campus tour must be taken when students are at the right age —such an age is a balance between having the right number of years left in high school and the right maturity to appreciate the opportunity — but overlap is very thin, thin to the point that it does not exist. Even in the unlikely case that the students get motivated to study harder to get into a particular college, you have to ask yourself about their motivation:
First, “What did the student see that they liked so much?” At the campus, students see only one season out of the four. If the students are impressed with the summer scene, they could be depressed with the winter scene, and vice versa.
Second, “What did the students actually see?” Buildings! Is there a building so impressive that you would bet your life (or your student’s life) on being inside for four+ years? If so, should they choose their career also based on buildings?
4. People, not campus buildings, shape students at college.
The actual influences colleges exert on students is done by the people there, not the buildings at all. Yet the only people you meet on a college campus tour are admissions officers, or current students selected by admissions office — people who are chosen to make good impressions on potential applicants, people you and your student will never see again.
The famous professors and Nobel-prize winners of illustrious universities? You will not see them during your college campus visit; in fact, your student will not see them during his or her first college years. (They are busy doing research. Who has time to speak with college undergraduates?)
On a college campus tour, the representative will guide students along the facilities and might poke their heads into some classrooms or take a tour of the dorm, but these are — or should be — minor points in deciding one’s university. The most important factors — how students will actually gain academic knowledge (e.g. teachers and curriculum) — is completely omitted from a campus tour.
Continued (how to get free passwords)
The Other Side of College Campus Tour 2
The Other Side of College Campus Tour 3
Carwash as a Place for Character Judgment
Carwash as a Place for Character Judgment
By James H. Choi
http://column.SabioAcademy.com
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Car washes are popular fundraising activity. Every summer, I run into students, usually girls, holding roadside “CAR WASH” signs with a group of students washing cars somewhere in the field of view.
Every time I take up on the offer, I witness something interesting. I see each student’s true character in full display, along with Pareto’s 20-80 Rule in action. The rule in this case would state that 20% of workers will do 80% of the job.
The leader who organize the division of labor and resources, and a few hard working members who perform the work form the 20%.
The remaining 80% of the members do 20% of the work at a leisurely pace. I will refer to them as 20%-ers and 80%-ers in this article.
These 80%-ers do not refuse to work, but they drag their foot in all activities except to engage in chatting.
The 20%-ers typically stay on the job until the car is spotless. The 80%-ers are more focused on their talk, and display a high level of transcendental tolerance toward spot/stains/dirt. Rain would do a better job than these slackers. Would you believe me if I told you these 80%-ers are more likely to complain than 20%-ers? Keep the question in mind and observe as you live through your life.
In a job interview, every single person claims to be a diligent worker, quick learner, and other cliche attributes. In other words, 100% claims to be 20%. You can say that the whole purpose of interviewing is to select the 20%-ers while avoiding the 80%-ers. As you will discover once you rise to that decision making position, this differentiation is amazingly difficult. You can see into many feet of water, but you cannot seen even in inch into human mind.
However, on these car washes, their defenses are down and they are displaying their true character. Observe them while they are transparent like clear water. And get to know who are the 20%-ers to choose as your future business partner, or employee. And who are the 80%-er that you need to send away.
By sending away, I do not mean to physically keep distance. They are your friends, and friendship is important. When the time comes, recommend them highly to your competitions, the company that is threatening yours. Hopefully, your friends will make a good living there, happily talking all day, dutifully collecting paycheck every other week, all the while dragging down their employer’s business to the ground.
As soon as the rival company goes down, show your unwavering friendship again. Recommend your car-washing-days’ buddies highly to the next rival company. And so on. There are so many of them, 80%, you will never run out of highly recommendable candidates. Certainly, you will never run out competitions. This eternal win-win solution will keep your friendship strong and your business prosperous.
However, be aware of the other side of the same coin. Our success in life is largely determined by the people we meet and the opportunities they give us. Always work hard and accomplish your duties at these car washes, and in all other circumstances. Someone may be observing how you work, and deciding your future. Work like a 20%-er at all times.
2013 AMC 10A, AMC 12A Solutions & Answer Key
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Should You Learn Chinese?
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Korean version: 중국어를 배워야 하는가?
Perhaps because I speak four languages and have lived in several countries, people often ask me for advice on languages. In the 1980s, the question was, “Should I learn Japanese?” And for a while there were some, “Should I learn Korean?” questions. Lately the question has been, “Should I learn Chinese?” My answer is always the same: “It depends.”
More specifically, it depends on the reason for learning the language. Of course there are many reasons to learn a language. Let’s count the ways.
First, this could be the language of your heritage — of your parents and ancestors. In that case you don’t choose a language; the language chooses you. Go ahead and please your grand parents.
Second, you could learn a language because of your interest in a certain culture. In that case, you know what culture interests you. No need for my advice in this case. Go ahead and open your mind’s window to the world. There is no telling what might fly in. Please note that most articles promoting “Americans should learn Chinese” are speaking at this level, for tourism and for exposure to another culture. I am all for it, but learning a language at this level can only serve as a ice-breaker in business settings.
But the third case is what I want to explain in detail. That’s when you want to learn a language for a calculated benefit — as an investment — with expectations of some later gain. In such cases, whether you should learn a language depends on whether it’s really going to pay off. Here, I am talking about learning Chinese equivalent to the level where foreigners learn English to work with Americans.
Bluntly put, it’s always advantageous to speak the language of a country that’s richer than yours. By “your country,” I mean the country that is currently feeding you, whether you were born there or not. In this regard, English is unquestionably the most dominant language of the world. The double-punch of the British empire and the decades of American economic supremacy add to the unquestionable place of the English language at the top. English is indeed the closest to a lingua franca Earth has ever seen. Most Americans know this and correctly don’t bother learning any foreign languages. It is not that Americans are dumb. It is that Americans don’t have to. Anything worth reading eventually shows up in English.
American economic dominance has been questioned only twice in my memory. Once was in 1980s by the Japanese. Back then, the Japanese was perceived as a real threat, and Japanese classes in college campuses were overflowing. Literally, introductory Japanese classes had standing room only. The “Japanese threat” turned out to be transient. Now we are having a déjà vu moment with China, which is on its way to become the highest-GDP nation on Earth. These Chinese language classes are filling up. And we hear the same ominous warning we heard in the 1980s all over again: “This time, it’s different.”
So should you learn Chinese with the expectation that you would gain something for your investment of learning the language?
Let me share with you an exchange I had with my cousin when I found out he was learning Japanese. I offered him a piece of unsolicited advice.
“Cousin, although I am fluent in Japanese, I don’t find much use in it,” I said. “Even when I am on business trips to Japan, I end up speaking in English with them without any detrimental effect.”
My cousin replied to me, “That’s because you’re coming from the United States. I’m coming from Korea. I cannot speak to them in English even if they are fluent in it. My situation is completely different from yours.”
In the business world of languages, there is a pecking order. Thus whether you should speak Chinese depends on where your economy’s pecking order is relative to China’s economy. If you are American, and you work in American economy, don’t learn Chinese.
It may seem odd I would advise against learning a language, considering that I speak four fluently, but I’m advising against it because I know something that most people don’t realize: the the cost of learning a language well. Indeed, the question is not whether you should learn Chinese, or not. The question is whether to master Chinese or become an MBA/MD/PhD/JD instead. Yes, it takes that much work to master Chinese. Chinese is no Spanish. It will take English speakers five to ten times more effort to reach a comparable level. Please see my note on Chinese characters at the bottom.
Even if you miraculously mastered Chinese while getting your MBA/MD/PhD/JD at the same time, (which means you paid the price in some other aspects because we all have 24 hours a day) the Chinese language may not be as useful to you because of the asymmetry of demands.
As an American, no matter what country’s language you study, you will find your counterpart in that country whose English almost rivals yours and his native language infinitely superior. That’s why, no matter how much you studied the country’s language, you will end up using English in any high-powered, high-level business or academic meeting because their English is far better than your command of their language. All you will get to say is some ice-breaking greetings, which can be learned in one afternoon. And, at the end of the day, whether you broke ice or not will make little difference. What will matter is how expertly you conducted your meeting (in English) with a firm competence in the area of discussion. At that point, you will wonder what all those years of studying was for, as I have felt in many meetings in Japan, Brazil and Korea. In those countries, I did use/mix local languages to conduct business meetings, and I received an instant honorary-insider status which entitled me to hear endless anecdotes about culturally-insensitive fat-ugly-Americans who were clueless to anything local, including the language. But I could have accomplished the same work using English, minus the chance to hear those stories. In China, I only used English because I never learned Chinese beyond ice-breaking pleasantries. Even though I was not considered good enough to be told “ugly American” stories, I accomplished my mission there nonetheless, all the while fighting a nagging suspicion that I am not told any stories because I am one of those “ugly American” this time.
Now look around you. Did you consider your competition within: the Chinese-Americans friends who are already bilingual, on top of being math/science wizards? What are your chances of out-Chinese-ing them?
Lastly, consider this scene I witness routinely. In any math competitions in the United States, the winners seem to be overwhelmingly students of Chinese heritage. In International-scale competitions such as HMMT or IRML, where teams from China also compete, the question is not:
“Who will be the winners?”
but rather:
“Will the winners be Chinese students, or Chinese-American students?”
It almost seems being somehow hyphenated to “Chinese” is what it takes to win. But in that Chinese-dominated scene, I want to bring your attention to the people who are not there: countless Chinese and Chinese-American students who didn’t even make it onto the teams, missing their first crucial step in moving up their career ladder. Why were they left out?
They weren’t lacking in Chinese-speaking skills — they were lacking in math.
In summary, learn Chinese if it is free. But, while at it, don’t forget to pick up a few MBA/PhD/MD degrees for the same price. You will find the latter more valuable.
P.S.
I have no regrets for having learned languages, and I have no intention of trading them for an MBA degree even if I could. That’s because I didn’t study them as an investment. I learned them either because I had to, or because I wanted to: never because I expected to have any financial gain. At this stage in my life, I have no desire to learn another language. It would only result in a dilettante dabbling that will provoke some patient smiles from polite people at best. Instead, I enjoy discovering more depth and beauty in languages that I already know, which does not even bring polite smiles from patient people because I do it on my own.
And that’s how I want to keep it.
Footnote: how difficult is it to learn Chinese characters?
The Chinese script is the most inefficient writing system there is. Essentially, each word is its own separate drawing. I have learned to write 1000~2000 Chinese as a learner of Korean and Japanese, and I tell you it is hard. Every time you learn a new Chinese word, it’s not an assembly of phonemes, such as alphabet letters. It is a drawing. Knowing the sound of the word doesn’t help you any, because you have to remember 10 or 20 or 30 strokes that are involved in painting it. Of course these drawings contain many clues for deciphering their meanings, such as pronunciation keys that help you infer the meaning from similarities of one drawing with those of another whose meaning you do know. But even reading a word based on the similarities of its shape with that of another word, you can never conclude the word’s full meaning by way of this inductive reasoning.
Learning the Chinese writing system is so hard that the Korean education system dropped it. This is significant because 40 percent of Korean words come from the Chinese language. Just as we speak in English many words containing Latin roots, many Korean words root themselves in Chinese. In fact, all Korean last names, and nearly every Korean first name is written in Chinese characters (but they are read in Korean pronunciation). Entire pre-modern era Korean history such as Jo Seon Shil Rok is written in pure Chinese as well. Despite this deep cultural connections, the Chinese characters were nonetheless dropped from the Korean education system because it was too much work to learn.
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