Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Food for Thought: Forging College Admissions Information

I read an interesting article on Korea Times' website about how Korean students try to gain admissions to US universities.  It's part of a series on the different ways.  Today's article centered on Korean students forging documents in their application packets or falsifying information on the application itself. 

Getting into a good American university is difficult enough for many high school seniors in the US, but imagine being from a foreign country and trying to gain a spot in the freshman class!  You have to prove to be twice or three times as worthy as a US candidate to be considered by the admissions board.  It's no wonder that now, Korean students have taken to such drastic methods to achieve success.

According to the article, there are about 30 foreign language high schools in Korea, and they send around 500 students overseas for university education every year. 

It seems that the students aren't the only ones trying to squeeze on by, however.  A quote from the article goes as follows:
"Some Korean mothers buy school homework on behalf of their children from private institutes for better academic scores, causing complaints from foreign parents," said an official of the Seoul Foreign School, the largest of the kind in Seoul.
The sad part of it all is that students who are accepted to universities based on false information find it hard to adapt and fit in at their universities.  Is is a sense of guilt that keeps them from fitting into school?  It's hard to say.

It is impossible at times to determine how much assistance a potential candidate received on his/her application, but universities are enacting punishments for any guilty offender they find, which at the most can result in expulsion.  You can read the full article at the link above for more information.

2 comments:

  1. that's crazy. i can't imagine lying on an application, but i guess when the stakes are higher people will do most anything?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is crazy! I couldn't imagine it either, but in Korea, anything is possible with regards to education I suppose. People here are quite fanatic about it.

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