High Expectations on Famous American Private Universities
10-A1
10107
Yea, So Yeon
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Public Interest towards
Private American Universities
3. Preference of
Private American Universities
4. Special Features of Famous American Universities
5. High Tuition Fee
6. Conclusion
1. Introduction
In the modern world, education is considered as an important part that determines one¡¯s future life. Especially, the Korean society is regarded as an academic background-oriented society. Throughout the Korean society there is a fixed idea that, in order to succeed in life, a person must graduate a famous university. Thus, in the Korean society, an assessment towards a person is mostly made by which university one has graduated. It is no exaggeration to say that one¡¯s career, marriage, and livelihood is chosen by one¡¯s scholarly attainments. Because of the present state, many Korean students are indeed frustrated and high school seniors that are preparing the College Scholastic Ability Test are considered as people who are in the most pitiful period throughout their life. It can be inferred from these notions that education is considered an important matter in our lives. Therefore many students wish to receive highly respected education from famous and highly ranked universities. There are indeed several universities that are widely known throughout the world, and many people praise those famous private universities of America as the best. Thus, it is true that those certain universities are highly competitive and students over the world have high expectations on them.
In order to be admitted in these universities, students have to maintain top grades and study hard. Some people even express the harsh situations in entering those universities as ¡®passing a pinhole¡¯. Students expect highly advanced education and desperately wish to be admitted to the school. There are indeed certain advantages that those schools have over other normal schools which are why so many students apply for admission. However, American universities demand of higher tuition fees than domestic universities in Korea. It is indeed necessary to consider whether it is worth for students to receive education from these schools while paying high tuition fees and spending time.
2. Public Interest towards Private American Universities
The public interest and popularity towards famous American universities are constantly increasing over the years. The Financial Times reported that the competition between students in the admission into famous universities of America this year, were the most heated in history. The admission office of the Harvard University and other Ivy League colleges were the subject of this research, and from the result it can be inferred that as students that have qualifications rapidly increased overseas, the admission percentage has dropped. For example, Harvard University has decided to accept only 9% of the 22955 applicants and established a record of the lowest admission percentage in history. The admission percentage of the Dartmouth University and the Pennsylvania University, and even colleges has also decreased.
The special features of this year¡¯s admission of famous American universities are that the student¡¯s level is higher than ever. Those students not only have good grades, but also aggressively participate in extramural activities. An aspect that makes the admission more competitive, is that students study hard and also participate in big projects such as web business, foreign voluntary services, and the foundation of literature magazines.
The main reason of the increasing heat of the competition among students for the admission in universities, is that foreign applicants are rapidly growing. The decline of foreign students studying abroad after the 9.11 terror, is again increasing as the American universities give effort in collecting foreign students. Experts say that foreign students are attracted to the quality of education experience in American schools, and this is one of the reasons why many foreigners apply to American schools.
Various kinds of scholarship benefits are another reason why foreign students choose to study in famous American private universities. American public schools almost don¡¯t give financial assistant for the tuition fee to foreign students at the level of educational institutions. It had been researched that 70% of the students studying abroad in the Dartmouth University, are receiving scholarship from the school. Moreover, the ¡®common application¡¯, a policy that simplified the application process, contributed to the increase of the number of applicants.
As the popularity of these schools increase, the tuition fee grows together. According to a university entrance consultant, Michael Hernandaz, the school fee of Harvard reached 46,000 dollars. The tuition fee of public universities and colleges, is about 6,000 dollars per year (Lee ).
3. Preference of Private American Universities
Ranks Students Parents
1 NYU Stanford
2 Harvard Princeton
3 Stanford Harvard
4 Princeton Brown
5 Columbia Notre Dame
6 Yale Boston College
7 UCLA MIT
8 Brown Northwestern
9 Georgetown Yale
10 Pennsylvania Georgetown
A survey has been done by the American students that are with the entrance exams for universities this year, New York University is the most desirable school among students. Nevertheless, parents wish to send their children to the Stanford University the most. This survey¡¯s subject of investigation was 4594 students preparing for the university and 1260 parents. The topic of this survey was ¡®If admission to the school and the school fees doesn¡¯t affect as a problem, which dream school do you wish to enter?¡¯.
According to the ¡®dream college¡¯ raking list, students preparing for the entrance exam of universities, wishes most to enter the New York University located in Greenwich, New York. This school has been chosen as the most desirable university among students for 3 years continuously.
An interesting fact is that, in the survey of the parents, NYU wasn¡¯t included in the TOP10 universities(Kim, Sue).
4. Special Features of Famous American Universities
(Characteristics of Each University)
Many private American universities are winning its way to popularity among students. The main reason of why these conditions emerge, is that increasing numbers of foreign students prefer and choose to enter these schools. These students are attracted to the quality of education experience in American schools, and various kinds of scholarship benefits are another reason why foreign students choose to study in famous American private universities.
Then, what are the special features of those universities student prefer to go, and what is it, that other general schools fail to achieve, compared to these special schools?
(¥¡) Harvard University
The Harvard University is considered the best American university officially recognized. Every year, numerous numbers of students over the world, wish to enter Harvard University, however the actual percentage of the students admitted, are only 12~13%. In order to become a student of the Harvard University, extracurricular works are important as well as the grades. After entering the school, students are able to take lectures amongst about 3000 subjects, and decide their major at the end of the 1st grade. There are indeed programs that give chances for students to study subjects other than their major, so students have to be able to make full use of more than one foreign language until their graduation. Students of Harvard are considered as greasy grinds. If other Ivy students think school work and study of human life are both important, Harvard students consider school work as a prior. The campus of Harvard University is somewhat crowded because it is united with a city, Cambridge. Another aspect of this school is that the Grade Inflation is prevalent. This can be shown frankly that once, more than 90% of the students had honors graduated.(Kwun)
(¥¢) Yale University
The Yale University has 10 graduate schools(medical school, law school, drama school, etc.) other than the educational institution courses. One feature that this school takes pride in, is their library that has approximately 10 million books. Numerous numbers of old classics and the manuscripts of them, data hard to obtain, are kept in this great library under a special equipment that controls the temperature, humidity, sunlight, and protects those precious documents. Between those, there is even the oldest bible in the world. Another characteristic of the Yale University is that they have a period of term called ¡®subject shopping¡¯. This is, unlike other universities, Yale makes students decide the certain lectures they¡¯re planning to take, for 2 weeks, before the semester.(Kwun)
(¥£) Princeton University
The Princeton University is located on the southwestern part of New Jersey. The Princeton city is a small but relatively rich village with almost no crimes committed. The Princeton University is located in this peaceful garden city. This school attaches special importance to the lecture courses of the students of faculties, among the Ivy League schools. The school considers the university course relatively important compared to the graduate school courses. Nonetheless, they have far fewer graduate school students compared to Harvard or Yale. In addition, the ratio of professors and students are one to five, so the opportunity of students to receive individual help from the professors, are greater than other schools.(Kwun)
(¥€) Brown University
The school that has the most free atmosphere among the Ivy League Universities. The students of the Brown University receive their credits as promotion or fail. If the student wishes to be assessed by points, A, B, C are the only grades marked, and the grades lower than D aren¡¯t marked. In other universities they mark cultural studies as promotion or fail, however Brown University is the first to mark as this also in their majors. The students that are admitted to Brown University are free from an obligation in taking lectures other than their major. This is a concern made of the school, to let students study subjects they really need. Nevertheless, some students have to worry what to choose for their lectures because they are supposed to choose those on themselves. So the school also offers a counseling program to help the students choose their lectures. Thanks to the thoughtful concern of the school, Brown University produces many men of distinguished talent every year. Another special feature of this school is that the students of Brown University communicate in many ways with each other through various extracurricular works. Unfortunately, the school fees of Brown University are rather expensive among the Ivy League Universities.(Kwun)
5. High Tuition Fee
In this survey 65% of the students also answered that they feel great stress throughout the process of entrance, and 32% said they feel heavy burden about the tuition fees of the university education. 70% of the students replied that they expect they would pay more than 75000 dollars until graduation for the school fees, and 78% thought there should be financial support on school fees. Thus, it can be inferred that many parents and students are under a heavy burden because of the tuition fee(Jun).
There are fierce controversies over the high tuition fee of universities.
In the students¡¯ point of view the tuition fee are indeed expensive and has a great deal of weight on the housekeeping expenses. Because of this, students even carried out a demonstration for the reduction of the school fee. Recently the U.S. Congress was criticized because they suggested the tuition fee to be interlocked with the price fluctuation. Then, is it really necessary to administer the university tuition fee?
Recently, the university tuition fee has much controversy over it. On one side, some claim that high tuition fee are necessary in order to become a top university, and the level of the tuition fee should fit with the national income. Nevertheless, on the other side they claim that the reduction of the university school fee is surely needed, and they are preparing to legislate the reduction of the law into half the cost. At first, the latter seems rather interesting, however more serious consideration is necessary.
The average cost of the tuition fee of Korean private universities, are about 6,600,000 won per year, and the medical school is about 8,800,000 won. Considering that this is only the pure school fee, so the middle class households feel heavy burden about this financial matter. Nonetheless, this is a lot cheaper price compared to the American private universities.
There are some differences between schools, but it costs about 30000 dollars a year for the tuition fee of American private universities. State universities, that required relatively cheaper school fee, also raised the cost of it recently. In 2002, American state universities increased their tuition fee to about 33% for inhabitants, and 27.6% for students from different parts of the country. This is, students that live in the following state, pay a rather cheaper cost of 8000 dollars a year, but students from other places have to stand the expenses of about 20000 dollars a year for school fee.
The key core of this problem is the two opposing point of views about this matter. Broadly, one side is claiming that in order to increase their competitive power, they have to raise the school fee, and the other side claims that it isn¡¯t right to keep piling up money, and trying to raise the fee continuously(Kim, Hoon Jae).
6. Conclusion(whether those universities are worth to go)
The modern society, we are living is often expressed as a society that equality among people exists. Nonetheless, in reality this society is a hierarchical society that has no classes between people apparently. This is, the modern society assesses people by their scholarly attainments, financial circumstances, job, and social position. This kind of society can be called a mammonistic society, materialistic society, and an academic background-oriented society.
Especially the academic background-oriented society is a society that judges a person almost totally by their scholarly attainments. Many students fiercely compete in order to survive in this academic background-oriented society. This kind of importance in education is especially significant in the Korean society, which people can innumerably witness scenes of people getting judged only by their university graduation certificates.
Owing to this feature of the modern society, there are several problems emerging. Some students are naturally forced to go to universities irrelevant with their own will and fake graduation certificates are becoming a social problem. Much effort is done to eliminate this fixed notion about the graduation of universities. Despite of these struggles, the flood tide of this notion in this society isn¡¯t disappearing.
The fact that the popularity and applicants of private American universities are increasing, can be connected with this academic background-oriented society. Some students may choose to go to these schools for pure study, but there are indeed many students that attend these schools to get good jobs in the future and receive good assessment in the society.
Some people think that without a university graduation certificate, a person isn¡¯t able to live a successful life. Nevertheless, there are several people who became successful leaders of the society despite of their low scholarly attainments. Some representative examples of these great men are Bill Gates, Rho Moo Hyun, and Jackie Chan.
Bill Gates is the chairman of Microsoft, the world¡¯s greatest software company in the world, one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution, and is widely admired for his business tactics. Some people may assume Gates as a person that graduated a highly advanced university, but he didn¡¯t. He was a drop-out student of Harvard University so his final scholarship was his high-school graduation. Thus, Bill Gates serves as a good model of a great man that has low scholarly attainments.
Another example is Rho Moo Hyun, the 16th president of South Korea, also didn¡¯t have high scholarly attainments. He had only graduated high school, however he became the president and is governing the South Korea at the present time. Jackie Chan, the Hong Kong world star, had dropped out of elementary school. Nonetheless, he is now indeed the most significant world star in the modern society, who almost everyone knows. He had even given a short speech when years ago at a famous Hong Kong university, and he said that he had dropped out from elementary school grandly. Although he didn¡¯t have the opportunity to receive advanced education he showed the world that he could succeed.
The examples of Bill Gates, President Rho, and Jackie Chan shows the academic background-oriented thoughts aren¡¯t right. This fixed notion has many faulty points and isn¡¯t an accurate concept. Thus, we should make up some counterplans for this and settle the problems that are brought about from this.
The increasing concern and public interest upon the private American universities, shows the increasing importance of education and how much the public are becoming aware about the fact that it is considered an important matter. In my case, I also am considering to enter those private American universities, because I believe they are the schools that could present the highly advanced education and help me make my future dream come true.
Through this research, I learned about special features of those universities and found out that there are some problems blocking my dream of entering those schools. The high tuition fee is one, and the academic background-oriented society was the other. It is necessary to carefully think about the advantages and disadvantages that one can achieve through the educations of universities. It would be wise to decide entering those schools when the benefits overwhelm the detriments of it. In addition, one surely shouldn¡¯t be forced to enter these institutes because of the fixed notions of the academic background-oriented society. Nevertheless, in my case I think that the merits are tremendous and the education experiences I can receive from these schools would be precious enough to spend high tuition fee and my time.
Works Cited
Internet Sites
Kwun, Se Jung. Bu San UNL. 30 December 2006, 22:46
"Ivy League." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 12 May 2007, 03:06 UTC.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 May 2007
Newspaper Articles
Lee, Moon Hwan reporter. ¡°Entrance to famous American school most difficult this year¡± Herald Media. 29 March 2007
Kim, Hoon Jae reporter. ¡°American universities¡¯ tuition fee, is it expensive?¡± Daily Jo Sun. 24 September 2006
Books
Jun, Chang Hoon. ¡°Let¡¯s Know Properly About Famous American Universities¡±
Namu Saengkak. 2003
Kim, Sue. ¡°The Dream of Top Class Students isn¡¯t Ivy League¡± Hanun
Publishing Company. 2006
Links to other sites on the Web
