Not that different from the US, outside the hacker news bubble. I have a high schooler and let’s just say there’s a lot of attention to three numbers right now - GPA, SAT, and ACT. Those numbers will have an outsized impact on my kid’s life. Granted though, that there are still paths to a happy life, but just a little more “alternative”.

I would agree. The west had a chance to reform their education systems to become different with the new information age, but most countries choose not to. In fact they have been going the other way. Today in most countries things like housing, grades, connections and insurance are even more important than it used to be. Turns out people really do not want to compete on similar terms in the open market.

You nailed it. I continue to be shocked by the naivete of the West in all things Asia--work practices, education, rule of law, protection of IP, role of women in society. This after having lived and worked in Eastern China for 3 years. Those abroad just don't get it. And with such a behemoth as a world partner, they aren't changing fast nor need to.

FWIW: this was true even 15-20 years ago. I can't really speak comparatively, but I certainly was put in multiple years of SAT/ACT practice+drilling at home, and occasionally full summer courses. And despite coming out of that with nearly perfect scores my having a 3.3 GPA was considered so low as to preclude me from most of the top schools I applied to. (My admission rate was 3 schools out of 13, if I'm remembering right) This not to mention APs, extracurriculars, resume padding (although not on the same order of magnitude as OP)

I'd be curious to when this trend started, but it was certainly well in motion when I squeezed through the system.

16 years ago, I went to community college, transfered to a 4 year, worked internships, graduated without debt, landed a job at Big Tech Co due to my internship experience.

I never took the SAT.

Now days? Possibly more important, depends on the major. I'd say for a lot of software roles, practical experience counts more than school. I've managed teams where I hired based on experience and personal drive, another manager hired based on university credentials. I had much better luck, my team easily out performed other teams that were better credentialed.

Not to say the better universities don't do a better job at teaching. The fresh out of CMU grad who wrote a huge chunk of our OS, and who right after went to Google to work on their OS team, is a great example of the top students from the top universities being better.

But I'll pit an average student from a top university against a "driven to succeed" student from any other schooling program.

That said the one bootcamp grad (on another team) was super motivated, wrote code fast, got us shipping, but wow that code had to be replaced ASAP. :D

Best dev I had was fresh out of school, maintained multiple community software projects outside of work, and learned something new about his profession every day.

Not just right now.

In 80s, a perfect score on ACT resulted in full scholarships plus living stipend most anywhere you’d be interested in, offering a straightforward step up from rural America to the 1% track.

That said, I don’t recall teaching to the test or test prep being a big thing then. Maybe what’s changing is the 1% working out how to keep that track in the family?

The 1% has always had a different track to get their children into the best schools and careers. College admissions are tougher now because there are more people going to college but there aren't any new top universities.

If you're looking at Parental Plus loans, those scores will have a big impact on your life as well. =(

Do you mean that the Parent PLUS loans are directly dependent on test scores or something like lower standardized test scores → less scholarships going into school → more loans?

The latter. The amount of academic scholarship money a few points on the ACT makes is huge when you multiply by 4 (or more) years.

That makes sense but my personal experience is that I was able to obtain substantially more scholarship dollars post-starting college vs anything offered off of high school credentials. I graduated high school at the top of my class (< 1%) and had strong but not super competitive test scores. I went to a public state school so perhaps different for others.

> In China’s test-dominated system, exam scores determine where students go to college and what careers they can pursue.

This is only true for the masses. The children of political and business elite have special privileges and greater options ( such as studying at harvard, yale, oxford, etc ).

> It's easy to forget how different other education systems can be.

It isn't so different. The education system in the US is dominated by test scores as well. The quality of jobs and career are dependent on the quality of colleges you attend and your scores.

Of course in china ( and much of asia ), they have a large population for limited opportunities and resources so the situation can get extreme.

China has the same landmass as the US but they have 1.1 billion more people.

For the elite, the same applies in the US. You can generally buy your way into the Ivys if your parents have enough money, or if your parents were students (which the could have been because their parents had been). Coupled with the general problem of high paying jobs in many fields favoring the school on your degree over actual ability you get a self reinforcing cycle.

Where do you find ball park estimates on amount of donation to secure a spot in an ivy ? Asking for a friend :)

It depends on the Ivy. Somewhere like Harvard I've heard the minimum is about $1M.

> It isn't so different. The education system in the US is dominated by test scores as well. The quality of jobs and career are dependent on the quality of colleges you attend and your scores.

They're very different in degree. The US uses test scores in a much looser way, and they're usually one factor among many in admissions. Extracurriculars can be extremely helpful to get into a good US school, but I understand in China they'd be a waste of time and a distraction from what a student should really be focusing on: the college entrance exam.

yeah and it's then easy to believe in that a 5yo could read 10,000 books, cause the "educational system is different". i am quite amazed that some people buy that with serious face.

there's limit to lies

10,000 in Chinese often means a big number.

It is the equivalent to myriad in English.

A myriad literally (literally literally, not figuratively) is 10000 in English...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriad

I think the 10,000 figure from BBC was possibly hyperbole or a mistake. The NYT article says 400 books this year… which is still a ton, but less so if you consider books that can be read in an hour or less.

That’s only 5.4 books per day since birth totally possible

Kids' books also have a lot of pictures

They’re also read to them and not by them up until a certain age.

It is entirely possible for a kid to learn to read by 3 or 3.5 years old, if parents are obsessive about it. In the long run life isn’t a race, and the kids who don’t learn to read until they are 6 catch up fine. But small children are quite capable if you push them.

I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you got your kid reading picture books all day for three years from ages 3–5, you could plausibly get to 10,000. Picture books are pretty short.

However, it sounds like this isn’t a literal 10,000 books. The New York Times story says the kid’s “CV” lists the 408 books he has read this year. So probably <1000 as a lifetime total.

It isn't that different. If you want to go into management consulting or investment banking (the most "elite" career paths out of college if you want to pursue business) then to even have a chance to apply you have to go to a school with on-site interviews to those companies, which is basically limited to Ivy league + MIT + Stanford + a select few top public schools and liberal arts colleges.