Different Admission Systems

By Richard Thompson

At places like the University of California at Berkeley or MIT, all of the Ph.D. students in the science and engineering programs receive tuition waivers.

How incredible it would be if every high school student in the world received such waivers.

Meanwhile, the salary for researchers and teaching assistants who pay tuition in American Ph.D. programs is not contemptible. Some fellowships like the Hertz Fellowships are munificent.

Yet, typically, students in the various master's programs at American institutions pay full tuition; and thus, receive a very expensive post-graduate education.

Still, the aggregate endowments of tertiary educational institutions in the United States ― is on a whole other scale of magnitude ― 100 times as large or larger than that of South Korean institutions overall (although they have been hard hit lately).

Engineering programs at places like KAIST and Kyung Hee University are very good to excellent, and the degree programs at all levels are bargains.

Moreover, an undergraduate degree in engineering is a sufficient professional qualification worldwide.

In the last U.S. census, one third of immigrants from Korea to the United States were sponsored by their employers; and, apparently, a significant portion of such immigrants were engineers. From the class of 2008 at Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, Hwang Ji-hye and Kwon Bok-young were admitted to Harvard College, Ban Hwi-min was admitted to Princeton, while Lim Soo-hyun was admitted to MIT.

Out of the four students, none applied early action to Harvard, MIT or Princeton, simply because Koreans aren't eligible at MIT (while the other two schools no longer have it).

Only citizens and permanent United States residents can apply to MIT's Early Action program for undergraduate applicants. A middle school student applying for admission to Minjok Leadership Academy said that he did so under the early action program but there was a twist: rejected applicants must attend a regular high school.

Minjok Leadership Academy now examines the applicants' resumes beforehand, he says, and a decision is made whether or not the student will be admitted (this method is extended to only half of the students admitted, roughly 75, he says.) The remainder must run the gauntlet. It's as if you're a knight who gets one chance to win the princess. If you fail, you're beheaded.

Given the competition of places like Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, it may lead to a negative result for schools adopting such a policy. Punahou School is the prestigious private boarding school in Hawaii from which President Barack Obama graduated.

Punahou is located far from New England, where MIT and most Ivy League colleges are located. Punahou graduates over the past few years have attended the following colleges: University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Southern California, University of Washington at Seattle, Santa Clara University, Loyola Marymount University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Boston University and UCLA.

Phillip's Academy in Andover is a private boarding school near Boston, which graduated 78 students who went on to Harvard College over the past five years. One recent graduating class at Andover sent 52 out of 327 graduates to the Ivy League.

Yet, no U.S. prep school with a graduating class as large as that of the Minjok Leadership Academy sends more than 15 to 20 percent of its graduates to the Ivy League in any one year. Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire sent 47 to the Ivy League, out of a class of 317.

As early as middle school, your career path may have been set. More graduates of University of California at Berkeley go on to earn Ph.D.s than from any other place. This is not to say that if you are admitted to Oberlin College, a small liberal arts school in Ohio, you won't go on to earn a Ph.D. (In fact, a higher percentage of Oberlin graduates do so than their Berkeley counterparts.)

The Korean government has concluded that universities in Korea should instruct admissions professionals to select students who may not have very good grades, but excel in specific fields or have great potential for future growth.

In addition to teaching English at Kyung Hee University, Incheon Science High School and Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, I also taught English at Qingdao University, Shandong Province. Throughout China, the People's Liberation Army cadres, who were recruited during Mao's era on the basis of political loyalty and class backgrounds, are now recruited through standardized examinations.

An applicant to the English education department of Jeonju University was accepted under the new policy thanks to her experience as a student reporter for a newspaper, a student volunteer for crime prevention at the Justice Ministry and a staff member of a nationwide high school student association.

This ``exemplary case" for all the potential students at Korean universities ― it was reported at a national conference ― was a student who had average grades in high school English. Moreover, she might not have been fluent in any other foreign language.

Did she participate in Model United Nations debate tournaments? Did she correspond with pen pals in New Zealand? The whole point seems that she had not experienced ― nor would she ― any foreign travel. Six admissions officials and 12 professors will evaluate applicants through verbal interviews in math and science to determine whether the applicant has the ability to study at POSTECH.

Yet, will these admission officers understand post-adolescent psychology and that of early adulthood? I mention psychology because the head of the English Department at the Daewon Foreign Language High School, a major feeder school for Ewha Womans University, Seoul National University, KAIST, POSTECH, Yonsei University and Korea University, had written previously for a publication about the chagrin and pity he and everyone else felt about a suicide there.

Students applying to POSTECH won't need to take the nation's annual SAT. Nor will written tests be used; POSTECH will select all of its 300 freshmen through the use of admission officers.

Are the admissions officers fluent in English themselves? After all, it is the language in which the scientific discoveries of today are being presented. Are they equally fluent in Mat Lab, Eclipse, MathCAD, and SPSS? We can only hope.

The writer has taught English language and literature at Qingdao University and other Chinese and Korean educational institutions. He can be reached at richard.thompson@alumni.ucsd.edu

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