When you ask for inspirations of writing college application essays, you can be really amazed. I had one such experience. It’s due to the essays written by a senior, a very outstanding one who went to Yale. Outstanding though he was, he made such exaggeration and boasting that he really made me gape. Then someone told me, that’s the way of writing essays~ Yeah, I know that one should glorify things by writing from a special perspectives and angles, but I don’t know that one can make aggrandizement by twisting facts. Innocuous, but dishonest nonetheless. Haha, of course you can. The admission office is not going to verify whatever you say, as long you don’t go all the way out to fabricate far-fetched achievements such as clinching gold in International Olympiad. Oh well, impressive. I’m not going to be cynical. This is what the norm is, I am not really offended. But it really cast doubt on how effective the admission officers are in judging applicants. Imagine going through hundreds of essays per day, with each one depicting a genius. When everybody shines, no one does. Picking up one that really is outstanding requires discerning power. Most of the time those officers just pick people on a whim. That too, is what everyone told me – it’s sheer luck. One MIT student Elizabeth Shin burnt herself in 2000. After the suicide, dean of admissions looked back at Shin’s application but could detect no trace of the problems the girl had reportedly struggled with since high school. Who could tell? And one must bear in mind that US secondary education is in a mess. Standards vary, and many teachers do no even have a major or even minor in the subjects they teach. An A in one school can be a far cry from an A in another, a B under one teacher is most likely not equal to a B under another. Now I understand why US practice can never be applied in China, as it will inevitably cause corruption and inequity.

I had always imagined top US universities to be a place of geniuses. At least the students should look extremely smart. I had the same imagination before I came to Raffles Institution, which is allegedly the top. Then I found that students in RI are just human. Many of them don’t even look smart at all. I wonder whether it will be the same in US. So many US universities, not just the likes of Harvard and Stanford, rank among the best in the whole world, while the best students in China only get to study in ones that are ranked over 100^th. The bulk of the US uni population is still American. Think about it, where on earth can they find so many geniuses to buttress their high standard?

Then I realized that my assumptions and preconceptions are wrong, or at least partially wrong. I always thought of education as Kong Fu practicing. In Kong Fu, or any other similar arts, there are distinct levels, and you climb up the skills ladder step by step, until you finally become the master, and possess the power any other layman can never have. However, education is not that simple.

First of all, really how ‘bright’ are those so-called ‘brightest minds’? Most of us have heard of the concepts such as ‘IQ’ and ‘ability’, yet I bet that none of us can really tell what they are, what they consist of. I, for one, do not believe in ‘IQ’, not only in a sense that ‘IQ is not the sole determinant of success’, but the concept itself. ‘IQ’ is in fact a primitive concept coined at the early stage of the study of mind. It is too simplistic and inaccurate. Recent refinements include dividing IQ into many branches such as sports IQ, music IQ, reasoning IQ, and interpersonal skills IQ. That’s better, but in my opinion none of these really grasped the true essence of human intelligence. It is simply too complicated to be gauged and converted into a number. It cannot be compared. That’s why I turn silent whenever people start to discuss who is really smarter, and got vexed when people show too much faith in such thing (try hitting the head of a really smart student, I bet he/she will get angry – ‘my brain is my most precious resource, what if something goes wrong!’ – if you got what I mean…). Well, I guess the discussion is a little outdated, because few take IQ tests today when entering schools. Then what really defines ‘bright’? Ability? But then what is ability? What is it made of? How does it work? People normally just take this concept for granted, but in fact it is still not fully established. Understanding it in technical detail is beyond the capacity of current science. How can you tell what one can do? Such predictions cannot be made with certitude even by someone who knows him well, let alone the admission officers. Just accept one fact: humans are complicated, any assessment is just an approximation and simplification, and is never accurate. In the realm of math and science, the understanding of concepts can still be tested, but the overall ability is much harder to be judged. The best thing we can refer to is still past performance, yet the past only offers limited prediction for the future. (Often we see that those who did well in the past are accorded confidence and chance, therefore continue to excel. But we cannot tell whether those who performed less well in the past can excel in the future if they are given the same opportunity, for they seldom were.) The whole problem just gets more knotty when the performances are similar.

In light of this piece of insight, many of our Chinese ways and conventional wisdom are just absurd. For one thing, promotion and school admission depends only on academic results. And not only that, even for academics, stipulating a clear-cut lowest score for admission is cruel. What difference can a few marks possibly make? But there are no better ways. The public always perceives students from certain universities to be better than those from others. The deep-seated instinct is that students from Tsinghua are better than those from Fudan, and those from Shenzhen University. How much better, in what ways better? Don’t know, but somehow they are just better. While it may still be acceptable to say that Fudan students are as good as Tsinghua’s, the claim that Shenzhen Uni students can create equal value as those in Tsinghua will most likely be met with disbelief. Everybody told me that universities do matter – it affects your salary, your promotion, your success, and everything. But really how much will it impact your life? What grand things do you wanna do in the first place? With everybody longing for ‘success’ and trying to enter the few prestigious universities, the only fair way is to be absolute and unequivocal. So it’s hard to tell whether the absurdity lies in the society at large or the education system itself. US university admission process, rough and random as it is, recognizes one fact at least: high-performing ones and not-so-high-scoring ones may not be so different after all, and you can hardly fathom their potentials with precision. Since everybody is similarly good, they don’t really make a fuss about which one to pick. (Of course they do stratification.) What really matters is what they do after they got admitted. So how are the standards of Harvard different from that of Princeton, or Stanford? No, no difference at all. Since the public needs a clear first, we designate Harvard to be the epitome of first class education. So those back home always say: Harvard is the best. Incredibly there actually are people who are simple-minded enough to take it literally.

Then what is so good about those US universities? Generally, students there are hard working. Extreme examples include: ‘the sleeping time in MIT is 5 am, campus wide’; ‘MIT students describe their courses as “drinking from the fire hose”’. My friend in U of Chicago describes life there as ‘study, sleep, party, choose two’; MIT version is similar: ‘work, friends, sleep: pick two’. They are really learning stuff. And that is only the basics. What really set them apart is the dynamic and vibrant school culture. Students are entrepreneurial and enthusiastic. They not only equip themselves with knowledge and skills, they also try to do real things. They initiate programs and activities; they immerge themselves in the real world. Science students get to do cutting-edge researches with leading professors; business students get to do real projects for big companies. More importantly, you will be working with the ‘best’. Your peers are would-be elites of the society, people who are likely to hold influence and power in every field. Very quickly you will be brought to the forefront of the society, and there will be plenty of opportunities for you to do great things. I guess that’s what people call ‘success’. Therefore the essence of university education is not only about gaining knowledge and skills, it’s more about access, about finding good ways to make use of you power. It’s no longer about whether you’ve ‘got it’, but about whether you ‘flaunt it’. In this kind of environment, anyone who is not stupid can become capable and prolific.

All of these did not become clear to me before I learnt about a practice of many US universities – legacy preference, a program that puts the siblings and offspring of alumni in a better position in getting into the college. Americans deeply believe in this. There is already much criticism on the increasing social immobility of the US society. One main problem is that the children of the rich generally get better education and enter good universities, while the poor gets poor education and little opportunity, thus perpetuating the social division. One comment on the legacy preference practice is ‘as if privileged children were not already doing well enough out of the education system!’ It is not so different from the bureaucratic culture in China – if you have someone related to you in power, you will be more easily promoted. It’s unfair and corrupt, but nevertheless it elevated some with political acumen and foresight into power, into a better position to actualize their vision. But sometimes you cannot tell whether Hu Jintao is intrinsically a better politician than, say, a commissioner. It also reminds me of the honey bees – the larva that is fed with royal jelly becomes a queen while others become worker bees. The royal jelly those privileged universities can offer may not be advanced knowledge and culture, it may just be a chance, an opportunity. So think about it again: what is university? In a sense, it is only another manifestation of social hierarchy, a doorway to the upper class, a key to better commanding positions, status, wealth, and opportunities to do more influential things.

One does not need to know US universities well to develop a yearning to study there. They are simply good, very good. The reputation is there. Studying there is kind of a fashion, a common dream. People around me are already fervently applying for US. Some go for the education; others go for the sake of going. It’s not only about education, but about realizing an erstwhile dream. Going to US can be a value itself. I see in them the spirit of pilgrims. The Chinese today had lost faiths in many things; faith in US universities is among the few surviving. I myself had also dreamed of the exciting adventure there. I made a pact with my best friend to meet in Stanford when I paid it a visit a few years ago. (Though I would like to defer it for some other considerations) No matter who or what had cultivated such love for US uni, I can totally understand. It is the craving for an embodiment of something we perceive as beautiful. Many girls who have fallen in love with those handsome Korean or Japanese stars want so badly to go to Korea or Japan, as if the place is magical in the presence of their idols. Yeah, common human psychology…

But still, who knows if we are all fallen victims of illusions……