【大西洋月刊 20150106】中国学生眼中的美国大学入学考试

满仓

【中文标题】中国学生眼中的美国大学入学考试
【原文标题】What Students in China Have Taught Me About U.S. College Admissions
【登载媒体】大西洋月刊
【原文作者】TERRY CRAWFORD
【原文链接】http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/what-students-in-china-have-taught-me-about-us-college-admissions/384212/]

美国大学的政策往往会鼓励极端的备考行为，并曲解很多中国申请者的高中经历。


北京地铁里一家备考公司的广告：“一水名师，一水高分。”

和我交谈过的中国高中学生数量比和世界上任何人交谈过的都多。

至少我是这么认为的。我和我的妻子在中国有一家公司，专门为部分美国高校和寄宿学校面试中国学生。面试的过程不仅要进行标准的语言测试，而且学生还要与我们进行即兴的对话。我们把面谈的过程录像，原封不动地寄给录取办公室。美国的学校喜欢我们这样做，因为他们可以得到一个真实可信的、未经任何修饰的有关学生沟通技巧的了解。

这份工作令人着迷的一面是，我们有机会成为人类历史上最大规模的智力移民大潮的前排观众。在与学生进行的数千次交谈中，经常会出现这样的问题：“你为什么想去美国读书？”几乎所有的受访者都用以下的方式来回答：他们不喜欢高考，更不喜欢通过考高分数来确定他们未来的专业。

对于高考的沮丧心理是可以理解的。在大部分高中，最后的一两年都被用来专门为考试做准备。学生们不但放弃了课外活动，而且也放弃了他们个人的专业兴趣，把全部精力都用来关注高考中的几门学科。

粗看之下，中国对一项考试不顾一切的关注，似乎是给批判美国标准化测试制度的人敲响了一记警钟。但是，当听到中国高中学生对高考的第一手评价之后，很难想象美国的教育制度——想尽办法让高中学生发展自己的专业天赋——竟然在向中国这种残酷的、对每年参加高考的1000万名学生来说一考定终生的制度靠拢。

尽管高考的效果在中国广受争议，但是外人依然需要了解传统的力量是无比强大的。高考的诞生与耶稣的诞生时间差不多，远远超过美国的历史。用考试来选拔人才、分配稀缺的教育资源的做法早在公元650年就开始了，中华帝国开始用考试来筛选公务员。尽管高考的缺点广为人知，很多中国人认为这是一个令人疲惫不堪的过程，但它依然是一个相对公平的机制，让中国所有的学生都有机会接触高等教育，无论他们的社会经济地位如何。对很多家庭来说，子女高考成功是他们摆脱体力劳动，进入中国的中产阶级的唯一希望。

在这种背景下，越来越多的中国学生——尤其是那些有足够财力的家庭——现在转向了美国大学。依然是填鸭式的学习方法，只不过目标变成了SAT——中国学生说它是“美国高考”，托福还算是相对简单的考斯了。大批的中国备考公司，有大有小，承诺可以提供提高分数的方法和技巧，还能进入“排名前50位的”大学。

甚至有些备考公司帮助学生作弊。亚洲今年秋天的分数发布被推迟了两次，这对于焦急等待分数来申请学校的学生们来说无疑是灭顶之灾。很多学生在与我们面谈时，对着摄像头发表不满的意见。在私下里，他们往往会漠不关心地说哪家备考公司或许有参与。


我们办公室附件的一个高考考场，家长们在外面等待。

SAT作弊丑闻见诸报端，但是有关如何制止公然作弊行为的讨论，模糊了美国大学所存在的更高层面上的问题。录取人员会告诉你，标准测试分数并不是一切，他们要做“全面审查”，包括申请者的多方面情况。

可惜的是，美国海外的申请者很多情况都极易伪造。美国学生的大部分情况都通过高中成绩单和课外活动报告体现出来，当然也可能存在夸大的现象，但它们通常由社区指导员和大学中专门管理高中的机构所保管。在中国，人们很难相信成绩单的真伪，除了少数几所高中，目前尚不存在一个可以从学校领取固定薪水的指导员制度。

当这些因素与不会说英语的家长和对美国大学申请程序不了解的学生结合起来，就培养出各类代理，它们承诺可以用录取官员接受的方式来“包装”学生。大部分代理所收取的费用与入学成功与否挂钩，因此他们就有动力不惜一切手段来取得成功。代理替学生填写好所有的表格，编造论文和课外活动，处理与校方的往来通信（毕竟，为什么要让一个不熟悉流程的学生来做这些事情呢？）。反过来，这让学生们有更多的时间来准备SAT和托福考试（最好是在这家代理开办的备考培训班里上课）。

录取官员或许会说他们对中国申请者的审查相当全面，但是在私下的录取会议中，他们承认，没有可信资料的录取竞争过程，就像皇帝的新衣。学生们直到，在SAT和托福备考上花费的时间通常物有所值，无论面试官和他们讲全面的录取审核过程是怎样的。

这种行为导致了一个意料之外的受害者，就是真正想传授知识的高中教师。任何一所有“国际项目”的高中学校中的老师都会说，家长们强烈反对常规的课程占用学生们准备SAT和托福的时间。（这些所谓的“国际”项目都是由私人运作，通常是在高中名校内开办，专门为学生做出国前的准备。）面谈时，我们经常会问学生目前的课程安排，结果发现他们几乎都花费了两年时间来专门准备标准化考试。高中名校中计划参加高考的学生，会停止常规的课程，到专业备考的私立学校去上课，这些课程往往都是开办“国际项目”的同一家公司开设的。最近有一名学生在摄像头前说漏了嘴，她说自己根本没有上课，只是在参加备考的课程。之后，她面色苍白地承认这个回答不是她早先起草的内容。

我们猜测，中国学生提交虚假的申请材料，对于这里的教育工作者来说是个心知肚明的游戏。一位与很多中国著名高中学生有合作的代理告诉我，中国至少有一半学生的申请材料被优化过，看起来好像这些学生在艰难的课程中取得了优秀的成绩，而实际上他们仅仅是为了应试而死记硬背的机器。而且，中国的备考从业者恐怕会承认，实际数字比这个比例还要高很多。


合同条款显示，代理公司的收费与录取大学的排名相关。

有人或许以为，这些行为和那些中央政府正在集中整治的腐败行为如出一辙，但现实更加令人警醒：这些行为恰恰是由美国大学的录取要求所派生出来的。中国学生（和他们的父母）了解一个美国顶级高校学位的价值，他们愿意为此做巨额投资——很多美国人也是一样。唯一的区别是，中国没有一个值得信任，同时可以捍卫高中名誉——和他们自己名誉——的驻校指导员。

这些人在美国大学录取过程中所扮演的公开、正式的角色是，帮助缩小学生申请大学材料中的内容与他/她真实情况之间的差距。对于一个来自中国的申请者，一所大学或许因为申请材料中某些内容不可信而拒绝申请，但是这个学生有可能被另外一所学校所录取。学生和家长皆大欢喜，在背后赚取大把佣金的代理更是乐不可支。

世界上最大的“囚徒困境”所带来的结果就是，中国的学生愿意坦诚相见，真实描述个人信息，自己动手准备所有的申请材料。但是大部分人都觉得，不充分利用代理的“专业”会让他们面对掌握信息更充分的同学时，不具备竞争优势。每个人都能举出聪明孩子自己动手搞定一切却被拒绝的例子，他们可不想冒险成为下一个。所以，中国人普遍认为那些诚实的申请者都是傻瓜。

自从开始做这个生意以来，我变得既多疑又多愁善感。带有欺骗性的极端备考行为远远超乎大多数高校录取官员的想象，但与此同时，我越来越理解中国学生所面临的困境。很多美国人把汹涌而入的中国学生看作中国经济实力崛起的标志，但是它同样代表美国高校所彰显的不可思议的软实力，其影响力甚至深入到外国高中的课程中。

当然，这种软实力是美国用来获取国际人才竞争优势的王牌，但是，用一句超级英雄的台词来说，同样也带来了巨大的责任。有录取官员告诉我，他们对于中国这种有害的备考环境无能为力。这种姿态等于承认，录取官无法承担起搭建让所有人公平游戏的平台的责任。在外交政策问题上，美国经常因为采取单方行动、不顾及国内利益对其它国家所造成的影响而遭受批评。美国录取官员能当设法避免遭受同样的批评。而且，在目前录取甄选标准偏重于标准化考试成绩的情况下，美国大学不应当抱怨海外学生缺少求知欲和参与的意愿。

那么，一位国际录取官员该怎么做呢？这些人必然需要采取一些与国内录取官员所不同的手段，来配合他们的工作。国内录取官员有大量的历史数据，可以用来预测录取百分比、GPA和毕业率。而国际录取官员——为了把事情做对——必须心安理得地接受面对不完整的信息做决定，甚至臆断的做法。他们不得不看那些无法断定真伪的历史文件，他们不得不看标准考试的分数，尽管对分数的过分关注已经完全扭曲了学生们整个高中的学习经历。所以他们必须要亲自去到中国和其它国家，利用各种现代通讯技术了解每个学生的具体情况。简而言之，他们需要进行真正的全面考察。

这样做的结果可以更高地彰显美国高等教育的价值观，捍卫它之所以成为学术自由、开放和透明的灯塔的荣誉。这样的录取程序不仅可以让美国国内外的录取标准实现公平，还会为全世界的高中教育指明方向。





原文：

The policies of American universities often encourage extreme test-preparation strategies and distort the high school experience of many Chinese applicants.

A test-prep company ad in a Beijing subway: “First-rate famous teachers; first-rate high scores.”

I talk to more Chinese high school students than anyone else in the world.

At least I think I do: I operate — along with my wife — a company in China that interviews students on behalf of selective U.S. colleges and boarding schools. Instead of taking a standardized language test, a prospective student can participate in an unscripted conversation with one of our interviewers. We videotape the interview and then provide it “as-is” to admission officers. Admission officers like our interviews because they provide a trustworthy and unfiltered look at an applicant’s communication skills.

A fascinating aspect of this job is that we have a front-row seat to one of the greatest migrations of talent in history. Our thousands of conversations with students often include some variation of the question, “Why do you want to go to the U.S. for school?” Almost every interviewee responds with a version of the following: They don’t like the gaokao (the national college entrance exam), and even more they dislike the prospect of their major being determined by their gaokao score.

The pervasive disdain for the gaokao is understandable. In most high schools, the last year or two is reserved exclusively for cramming for the test. Not only do students forgo extracurricular activities, they also forgo their individual academic interests, focusing only on the few subjects tested by the gaokao.

At first glance, China’s almost maniacal focus on one test seems to be the ideal cautionary tale for American critics of standardized testing. However, when one hears first-hand from Chinese high school students about the gaokao, it is difficult to imagine the U.S. educational system—with all of the ways that high school students can develop their individual talents—ever approaching that of China’s harsh, one-test-means-all approach for the almost 10 million students who take the gaokao each year.

While the utility of the gaokao system is regularly debated in China, an outside observer needs to appreciate that old habits die hard: The origins of the gaokao are dated closer to the birth of Christ than the birth of the United States.  The practice of using exams to locate talent and distribute scarce educational opportunities began as early as 650 AD, when imperial China began to use tests to recruit civil officials. While the gaokao’s shortcomings are widely known, many in China see the exam as a grueling  yet quasi-fair process that provides students all over China with a chance to go to college, regardless of their socioeconomic status. For many families, a child’s success on the gaokao is the only hope they have of avoiding a future of manual labor and entering China’s middle class.

It is within this context that more and more Chinese students, particularly those with the financial means to do so, are now turning to U.S. colleges. Cramming is cramming, so the shift to preparing for the SAT — the “American gaokao,” as students in China call it — and the TOEFL is a relatively easy one to make. Plenty of test prep companies in China, some small and some very large, promise to provide the tools and tricks to increase scores and gain acceptance to a “Top 50” university.

Some test prep companies even assist with cheating. Scores have been postponed two, and potentially three, times in Asia this fall, delays that wreaked havoc with the applications of ambitious students awaiting their results so they could select their schools. Many students during their interviews with us have even made comments about this on camera. Off camera, they would often nonchalantly mention which test prep companies they thought were involved.

Parents waiting for students outside of a gaokao testing site near our offices

SAT cheating scams make the press, but discussions about how to fix blatant cheating obscure the larger issues with which U.S. universities should be concerned. Admission officers will tell you that it isn’t all about standardized tests: They undertake a “holistic review” and consider many factors in the application.

Unfortunately, outside of the U.S. many parts of an application are easy to forge. The bulk of a U.S. student’s high school learning is reflected in the high school transcript, and extracurricular activities, while they can be overstated, are usually kept in check by communal guidance counselors and colleges’ institutional memory of high schools. In China, the integrity of the transcript is rarely assured. With the exception of a few high schools, there is also no system of guidance counselors who receive a stable income from the school itself.

When these aspects are combined with parents who cannot speak English and are unfamiliar with the U.S. college application process, an opportunity arises for agents who promise to “package” the students in a way that admission officers will accept. Since most agents are paid at least partially on a success-fee basis, there is a strong incentive to succeed by any means necessary. Agents fill out all of the forms for the student, adding essays and extracurricular activities, and handle all correspondence with the schools (after all, why risk one’s fee to a high school student unfamiliar with the process?). This in turn frees up additional time for students to focus on the SAT and TOEFL (hopefully in classes also run by the agent’s company).

Admission officers might say they conduct a holistic review of China applicants, but in hushed tones at admission conferences they admit that a competitive admission process without dependable documentation is like an emperor without clothes. Students know that time spent cramming for the SAT and TOEFL is usually time well spent, regardless of how admission officers talk their about holistic admission process.

One uncounted casualty in all of this is the upright high school educator who wants to be a teacher for the right reasons. As any teacher in an “international” high school program will tell you, there is usually strong opposition from parents to any part of the curriculum that takes away from prep time for the SAT or TOEFL. (These “international” programs are privately run, typically sitting inside the gates of a reputable public high school, and specifically prepare Chinese students to go abroad.) In our interviews, we often ask a student about their current class schedule only to discover that they have spent two years of high school focused on cramming for standardized tests. Students in the gaokao track of prestigious high schools will simply stop going to their regular classes and instead enroll in private cram schools, which are often run by the same companies that run the “international” divisions. One student recently let it slip on camera that she wasn’t going to class and instead was just doing test prep, and then sat pale-faced afterwards as she admitted that her interview answers weren’t consistent with her transcript.

Guessing the percentage of fraudulent transcripts in applications from China is a popular parlor game among educators over here. Unscientific estimates abound: One prominent agent who works with students at some of the best high schools in China recently estimated to me that at least half of the transcripts in China are doctored to look like the students have done well in a robust high school curriculum, when the reality is one of almost constant memorization and practice tests. Unfortunately, no one in the college prep industry in China would be surprised if the actual percentage was significantly higher.

This contract shows that an agent's pay is often tied to a college's ranking. (Terry Crawford)

One might think these practices are cut from the same cloth as other types of corruption that the central Chinese government is trying to eradicate, but the reality is more sobering: Much of this behavior is incentivized by the very admission requirements put in place by U.S. colleges. Chinese students (and their parents) know the value of a degree from a top U.S. institution, and they are willing to pay top dollar for access to it — as are many Americans. The only difference is that China doesn’t have school-based guidance counselors who are entrusted with protecting the reputation of their high school—and of themselves—each time they sign off on an application.

The public and formal role that they play in the U.S. admission process helps reduce discrepancies between the content of a student’s college application and his or her real life. In the case of an applicant from China, one college might reject a student because of something fishy in the application, but the student will still likely be accepted by another school, to the delight of the student, the parents and particularly the agent who collects the fee behind the scenes.  

This dynamic results in the world’s largest prisoner’s dilemma: Students in China could endeavor to be honest, provide an accurate transcript, and take care of all aspects of the application process themselves, but most feel that not tapping into an agent’s “expertise” would leave them uncompetitive against their better-advised classmates. Everyone knows of the smart kid who decided to apply “DIY” and then wasn’t accepted—and they don’t want to risk being  the next one. Unfortunately, there’s a sense in China that the honest applicants are the chumps.

Since starting this business, I have become both more skeptical and more sympathetic. The fraud and extreme test prep is on a level greater than most admission officers realize, but at the same time I now better understand the plight of the Chinese student. Many in the U.S. view the influx of Chinese students as evidence of China’s increasing economic might; however, the trend is equally evidence of the incredible soft power of U.S. universities, influence which extends even to high school curricula in foreign countries.

While this soft power is a tremendous card for the U.S. to hold in international competition for talent, it also—to borrow a line from a great American superhero—comes with great responsibility. I’ve had admission officers tell me that they cannot do anything about the toxic test-prep environment in China. This stance fails to recognize that admission officers are the ones who created the rules of the sandbox in which everyone else plays. When it comes to foreign policy, America is often criticized for acting unilaterally, without regard for how its domestically driven actions affect other countries. U.S. admission offices should endeavor to avoid the same criticism. Even more so, universities shouldn’t complain about the lack of intellectual curiosity or engagement of international students when their selection process rewards those who focus on standardized tests.

So what’s an international admission officer to do? These individuals admittedly have their work cut out for them in a way that domestic admission officers do not. Domestic admission officers have mounds of historical data upon which they can project matriculation percentages, future GPA, and graduation rates. International admission officers—in order to do things the right way—must get comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and exercising their discretion. They have to look past documents, which can be easily falsified. They have to look past standardized test scores because the emphasis on these numbers distorts the entire high school experience. They have to spend time in China and other foreign countries, and employ all means of modern communication technology to try to get a sense of each student. In short, they have to practice true holistic admissions.

The result will be a process that better reflects the aspirations of U.S. higher education and honors the very reasons that it is a beacon of academic freedom, openness, and transparency. Not only will the admission process be seen as fair both inside and outside of the U.S., but it will also work for the good of high school students everywhere.