Saturday night we met up for dinner followed by a stroll around a night market with the group who came to DS last year. It was really great to get to see Swan, Kevin, SR and Wang Fei again and to hear what they’re all up to now. Here in Hangzhou we’re all being hosted by sophomores so it’s hard to compare their classes to ours but having an opportunity to talk to seniors really got me thinking about the two school systems in a way that’s more relevant to our lives as seniors. So here’s a warning to any seniors who are reading this if you’re sick of hearing about the college process stop reading this blog now (but I think this could be a new spin that might make the whole thing seem more manageable!).
While in the states we enjoy second semester senior year as a time to finally relax a little bit, the seniors here only increase the intensity of their studies. For a senior at Hangzhou high school with the university entrance exam looming on the horizon the school day starts at 7:30 AM and doesn’t end until 9:30 PM. The students have a full day of classes, grab a quick dinner, then stay on campus studying and doing homework with their teachers and classmates nearby. In the Chinese system of schooling everything that a student is required to learn in high school he/she finishes learning by the end of junior year; senior year is strictly for reviewing all of high school to prepare for one exam. Coming from the American system, it seems unfairly unforgiving to have the entire issue of college acceptance relying on one test. After the students take the exam in early June they will wait two or three weeks to receive their scores. Depending on what range their scores fall into the students will then be able to apply to certain universities. Even if your score is in the right range though it does not mean the school will automatically accept you, they also look at scores on other sets of standardized tests. So here the seniors won’t know what school they’re attending until the middle of the summer.
Some students (SR included) chose to go to school abroad (usually in the US) and thereby skip the whole stressful ordeal of a 14 hour school day. In fact, all of the students who are going to school in the US are not required to go to school at all at this point because they’re not taking the Chinese university entrance exam so they don’t need to be in school preparing for it.
While I’m definitely glad that our system puts an emphasis on the importance of students doing other things besides just studying it’s clear that Chinese seniors get more sleep than we do. By staying at school until 9:30 they tend to get all or at least the vast majority of their work done by the time they go home- and they don’t have applications to work on until the summer.
In the end, the level of competition is also a lot higher in China. In a country of about 1.3 billion there are a lot more students trying to get spots in the universities. But getting into many schools in the US is no easy task either.
Overall, I think I’m glad I’m a high school senior in the US but that might also just be because it’s what I’m used to (or because for us the worst is over by midyears). Regardless, it was very interesting to hear about a topic that I thought had been completely exhausted in such a new way.
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