

Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/world/asia/27seoul.html?ex=1366948800&en=99c8a3d39476256c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

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hugh
It would be interesting to know what happens to these students once they
actually get to Havard/Yale/Princeton. Do they find themselves able to cope in
an environment where they have to learn on their own, without anybody to hold
their hand? Do they run amok once they get out of that strictly controlled
environment, and turn into drunken party animals? Do they become disillusioned
when they realize that everyone around them is getting by just fine by putting
in one tenth the effort? Or do they keep up the habit of insanely hard work,
shoot to the head of their classes and go on to have stellar careers?

No doubt it's some combination of all of the above, but it'd be nice to know.

~~~
antiform
Having known graduates of both Daewon and KMLA at several elite colleges, I
can say that their performance is comparable to most of the other students at
their respective colleges. There are those who continue in their study habits
and graduate at the top of the class, those that relax a little to explore
their options and enjoy more of their college experience, and those that put
more emphasis on socializing than studying. There's no real stereotype of a
typical graduate from one of these schools, other than being smart, Korean,
and communicating in fluent English. Most of them seem to be happy to be going
to college in the U.S.

The craziest thing about most of this is that it takes just as much (if not
more) effort for kids in high school to get to one of the top 3 Korean
colleges (Seoul, Yonsei, Korea). In fact, both KMLA and Daewon also have a
track for students who want to attend Korean universities that is just as
intense.

It's hard to say whether this is the best way for a person to spend their high
school years, but in places like Korea and Japan, this is the way that any
college-bound student spends their youth. Everybody who wants to go to college
either attends a college prep school or a private prep program from about
middle school, because that's the way it has always been.

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ardit33
I worked with Koreans for a big project for a device manufactured by one of
the big Koreans OEMs, where my company was providing some of the applications.

it was a problematic project, as the Korean wa having lots of bugs. The Korean
guys worked everyday from 9:30 am, to 3:00 am! I am not making this up. And
saturday, was only a half aday (8hrs) work. These guys were not getting enough
sleep, and you would see often colapsed and taking naps in front of their
computers. They were like walking zombies.

This was a important project, and I guess it is a cultural thing to work so
much. Needless to say that their long hours were very counterproductive. They
would fix something in the morning, and break something at night.

~~~
silencio
YES!

I absolutely do not understand why parents make their kids go through this
torture. Thankfully I have very open minded Korean parents and grew up in the
US, but right now I am in such a better position than half my parents' friends
kids that it's not funny. I slacked off, did just the bare minimum until the
subject interested me, I go to parties, I go to events, I have fun. I don't
study until 5 in the morning unless it's a final I'm screwed for, or if I
procrastinated way too much. In fact, if I ever stay up that late it's almost
always because I've been spending too much time talking to the people on the
opposite side of Earth on IRC while idly doing work or playing a game.

And well, I'm going to a better university than most of them, studying what I
want to, earning well more than pocket change doing some coding work, and
still having fun (and yes, a relationship! with premarital sex!). What did
they do in the same 10 years? Study their asses off until they get burnt out
constantly, and then go to some university studying what their parents wanted
(half the time) or something socially acceptable (the rest of the time) where
they still study their asses off, and then do the SAME thing at whatever job
they get post-graduation.

I'm not being entirely fair here, but I'm not that far off. :\ It's quite
depressing.

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swombat
As Bush has shown very clearly, Ivy League skills have nothing to do with
intelligence or even studying.

I think as long as asian universities and school focus on work so much and
completely omit inter-personal skills, they will fail to to anything other
than produce very smart people with no life.

Daniel

~~~
shard
"Very smart people with no life"? Sounds a lot like working on a startup.

I grew up in the States, and I don't recall any university or school
curriculum focusing on interpersonal skills.

~~~
swombat
You guys get show and tell sessions throughout school, don't you? In all of
school until university I gave a grand total of 1 presentation to my peers.
Then one more at university.

Daniel

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ilamont
I don't agree with the methods and values described in the article, but these
kids deserve a lot of respect for being able to master the English writing
requirements. They are not native English speakers and are growing up in
Korean society.

~~~
silencio
I disagree. Korean society idolizes the English language to the point that
it's usually taught as a main secondary language starting from elementary
school, and you pretty much can't get into any half decent Korean university
if your English sucks. Of course, if you don't get into a nice university, you
don't get a nice job because no big company paying the big bucks wants to hire
you.

It's like the equivalent of saying "if you don't know English AND
Spanish/French you're not getting into any university but the local shitty
state/community college, which means low paying jobs for you!" in the US. And
the society overall is so obsessed with English that they're using it as the
main language in a lot of places (works great when half the audience doesn't
know the language well, right?). I heard a broadcast of one commencement
speech at some Korean university where some guy just talked in this horrible
broken English that even I couldn't understand beyond a word or two (and I'm a
native speaker and can usually understand people with heavy accents). Way to
go! Isn't the point of a language to um, like, communicate? Not to alienate
your non-English speaking but all fluent-in-Korean audience for the sake of
attempting to look trendy by speaking English (but making a fool of yourself
in the process..).

Of course, unless they get a job requiring English, or move to an English-
speaking country, most people forget all they learned about English.

To top that off, given that I'm Korean, I get to deal with these (mostly)
twats with no lives with a horrible command of English waay too often. Too
many times I've been asked by friends of my mom who want me to tutor their
poor kid cause I was in gifted programs since forever and have spectacular SAT
verbal/writing scores. And I don't see anyone making any comments like yours
about my excellent command of the Korean language (complete with slang)
despite having been born and raised in the US. Or conversational French and
Spanish. And Java. And Ruby. And C++. :p I respect any and all polyglots,
regardless of where they were raised and what they know. But I just really
felt the need to point out a couple of things.

Honestly, I should quit my job and give up coding to go teach English to the
kids of the rich overseas. A couple hundred bucks an hour? Sheeeeesh. I
already had to teach English to a couple of my cousins that came over last
summer...the older one was considered to be one of the best English speakers
in her expensive and elite private middle school but I honestly couldn't call
it anything more than broken English at best.

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dangoldin
I suppose it's a little bit better than StarCraft,

They really need to start teaching kids something other than book smarts
though.

How much would you value creativity vs book smarts vs diligence when hiring
people?

~~~
jrockway
Not everyone is artistic. There is a market for people to come in to work, do
something moderately intelligent for 8 hours, and then go home. I think this
sort of school system prepares people for this sort of job pretty well. (I
went to school in Japan for a year. I would much rather send my kids to school
there than a random school in the US.)

Besides, creativity can't be taught. So you might as well focus on teaching
things that _can_ be taught :) Eventually the creative people will realize
that they should do something creative.

That said, a 15 hour school day is definitely excessive. You can pretend to
learn for 15 hours a day, but you can't actually do it. I think 8 hours a day
is the maximum amount of time you can focus on something that is not
"interesting", hence the 8 hour workday that most people keep.

~~~
dangoldin
I wonder what would happen if instead of a steady 8 hour workday or school day
it was broken down into four 2 hour periods. I tend to work better that way
personally.

~~~
jrockway
Well, 4 hours, lunch, 4 more hours :)

But if you mean more separation than that... it might be interesting, but most
people don't want to commute 4 times a day.

Personally, I usually work for 6 hours, then I watch TV, relax, take a nap,
etc. and then do some more work before really going to sleep. Very relaxing
and productive. (Working at home is nice.)

~~~
dangoldin
Yea. Well at one point most of the non-facetime work should be done from home.
I'm trying to ease myself into that now.

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abless
Insane. Education is really, really, really important, but there's more to
life than studying. Much more. Besides, the value of Ivy-League schools is
overrated.

~~~
mrtron
I doubt you will find many people that disagree there is more to live.

However, this is a short term sacrifice to achieve a goal. Many people would
laugh at someone wanting to start a company on the side while working full
time too. So let's not be too judgmental of their ambition.

~~~
abless
But what's the goal? Getting into Harvard, Princeton, etc.? Because once they
actually get in and reach their goal, they'll notice it's yet a long, long
road to go.

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budu3
Looks like they gamed the system.

~~~
tomjen
Studying 15 hours a day is not cheating - it is insane.

~~~
budu3
Well, it's not a permanent thing. It's a short term sacrifice for a specific
goal. They are like athletes preparing for the Olympics.

