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Comment by eastWestMath | Hacker News Reader

Uh, I mean, I’m a graduate student at a pretty good Canadian school and this hasn’t been my experience with the Chinese undergrads I teach or grad students I’ve worked with. I’m not saying they’re weak or anything, I just haven’t really seen anything to suggest they’ve been through a much more rigorous education program.

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Have you considered the possibility that ones who study overseas are there because their exam scores simply made them ineligible to attend a university back home?

If anything I'd expect the opposite. US universities are more prestigious, you'd expect stronger students to be the ones who end up there (at least at better schools), because they'd have a much better chance of being admitted.

Prestigious they may be, but their entry requirements are laughable by Chinese standard, and, most importantly, most are fine just taking money.

There still is a reactionary part of Chinese society that is super obsessed with matters of class and status, or at least they are much more than Americans for sure.

Not having your child getting into a university can be seen as a social stigma, and parent of such child will be socially ostracised.

For such, having a child getting a place in US college for money with 100% certainty, is better than him/her taking risks with state exam back home.

You realize it takes substantial money to bypass admissions, right? And it's not easy to pull off as a foreign student. If you feel like donating $100k+ you can probably get your way in China too.

The few standardized tests that do help in admissions like the SAT are just glorified IQ tests. Very hard to practice for beyond a certain point. Not that there isn't a whole industry of people cramming for SATs for nothing...

In most of mainland Europe you can easily pay peanuts to get into the absolute "top" schools. Yet few want to. American education is that much more valued.

While it's true that many are eager to accept foreign students willing to pay more, the more prestigious schools still require good grades and test scores.

Yes, and American tests are silly in comparison to even a regular term exam in Chinese high school.

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