The New York Times reports on the surge in applicants from China to U.S. colleges, which have actively recruited in the country:
Consider, for example, that half of Grinnell’s applicants from China this year have perfect scores of 800 on the math portion of the SAT, making the performance of one largely indistinguishable from another.
But the most accomplished applicants will have grades in the 70s or 80s, because Chinese schools tend to grade on a far less generous curve than American high schools. Few will have had the opportunity to take honors or Advanced Placement courses to demonstrate their ability to do college work, since such courses are rare in China.
Then there is the challenge of assessing an applicant’s command of English, since some Chinese families have been known to hire “agents” to write the application essay. These are the same advisers who counsel families to spend money on the fancy brochures. “They should save their money,” Seth Allen, the dean of admission and financial aid at Grinnell, said as he glanced at the full-color brag sheets stacked on a nearby desk.
Mr. Allen said that few would actually be read by the overworked admissions officers as they plowed through nearly 3,000 applications over all. In fact, the next stop for the brochures, said Jonathan C. Edwards, Grinnell’s coordinator of international admission, would be the recycling bin.
Mr. Allen, Mr. Edwards and their colleagues said they spend most of their time on Chinese applications trying to parse the essays — paying particular attention, as they might with an American candidate, to whether they detect the authentic voice and sensibility.
See examples of applicants’ “brag books” via the New York Times.
