Why So Many Chinese Students Come to America 

The Chinese come to America because they don't have access to 2 months of free Skillshare.

To sum up and save you 13 min, 1st reason, kids in china want a less competitive way to get good education, 2nd reason: US schools after 2008 need make more $$$

My brother spent 6 years learning to be a Dentist. He told me once that the first 4 years was all theory and the Chinese and Indian students were always at the top off the class. The last 2 years was all focused on practical work on real patients. Most of the Chinese/Indian students struggled and lost confidence, the other students excelled.

I was 17 when I moved to the US from South America. Where I'm from people taunt the education system in the US by saying things like "it's too easy" or "Americans are dumb." I'm ashamed to say I was one of them. When I started my studies my grades plummeted. The system is different by placing less emphasis on heavy testing and more on homework, participation and projects. Americans value creativity, not simply memorizing facts or equations. Now that I'm accustomed my grades stabilized and feel that I am more independent and able to think outside the box. I value the ability to use my knowledge and look down on memorization. Now that I've seen both sides, I believe the education system in the US far better than my home country. I would love, however, to hear if someone's experience was the opposite, spending years in both systems and coming out believing the education system in the US is worse, and why that is.

"Good grades = good university = good job = good life" says every Chinese parent ever

"all the sudden, chinese students in america suddenly EXPLODED" me in my lecture sitting next to chinese student: *eyes nervously*

We had this kid from Africa who came into our school as a freshman, the same year he was bumped up to a sophomore, which was the grade I was in at the time. He graduated with us as well, he was the smartest kid I ever met and really down to earth.

Rip chinese students who have it so hard overseas. Makes me grateful that school is much easier and allows me to have lots of personal time. At my highschool even in all advanced classes it isnt very hard, im not even really smart, just decent at paying attention and a decent work ethic.

The Indian, the Vietnamese, the Philippine students also want to study in the US too not just the Chinese but the difference is they don't have money.

I swear a third of my high school is chinese exchange students. They all drive 200,000 dollar cars

On a somewhat unrelated note, a moderately wealthy familiy that sends a child or more to a foreign university provides a them with a good education, but also an opportunity to quietly move some of their wealth out of China. The family is thus able to spread out its eggs in multiple baskets. Money in the US can easily be invested and out of the reach of the Chinese government.

Imagine showing up at your dorm as a freshman and your roommate is Xi Jinping's daughter

I teach English in China, and frankly I feel sorry for these kids and their stressful environment. Their childhoods are sacrificed to squeeze in an extra two hours a day of extracurricular classes, all so they can compete with each other for a somewhat decent salary at a job they have little/no passion for. While they take care of their aging parents, spouse, and young children they barely have time to see.

When I was 17 I always failed my maths tests in China high school.. when I went to the UK, I even got to top 2 in my second year university maths exam. I was so surprised.

Until very recently I was a math professor at a community college that has a lot of Chinese students (Santa Barbara City College). I asked a few of them how they ended up at a community college in the US, even a very good one like SBCC. They had a few answers for me. I have no idea if these are true or not, but it's what they told me. It's also possible that these are only true in some places and not others, as I had students from Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and several other places _(some of them couldn't even understand each others' Chinese)._ (a) It's very hard to get into a good Chinese college, and the 2nd tier colleges don't lead to good jobs. (b) Once you get into college, the education isn't actually that good. Everybody passes and you don't learn much. Their high schools are stronger than ours but their colleges are not. (c) If you're not from a family in high standing you're probably screwed. You're better off moving somewhere else, like the US. (d) The Chinese government has agreements with some colleges that the government will pay their tuition. I imagine it's mostly universities, but apparently even a high-end junior college like SBCC could qualify. If you're from Beijing and you don't like the cold, coming to SBCC is probably like attending college in Hawaii. You can even see the marina from the building I taught in. I also found a surprisingly huge amount of cheating among my Chinese students. I always assumed that the Chinese reverence for education would make that unlikely, but a really high proportion of my Chinese students cheated in a variety of ways, some of them quite creative. It was almost always the students who were reluctant to talk to me, too. This is just a guess, but it seemed like many of my Chinese students were intimidated and unwilling to ask questions or ask for help, but they felt like they had to pass so they would resort to cheating. A lot of them also came from very rich families, so the pressure to succeed might have been quite high, especially in a math class. Also their student visa gets revoked if their grades slip too far _(and the threshold is pretty high - more than one student told me their visa would be revoked if they got a C in my class)._ It probably didn't help that I taught a lot of statistics, which includes quite a bit of reading paragraph-long problems and absolutely no solving for x. If you are bad at English statistics can be quite hard, and a lot of my Chinese students _(and East Asian students in general)_ had pretty weak English skills _(not the Singaporeans though; I only had 4 Singaporean students I can recall but they all had perfect English. Like, better than most Americans perfect and almost no accent)._ I should also note that some of my absolute best _(and favorite)_ students were from China. My Chinese students who took their educations seriously were awesome - disciplined, hard working, insightful - everything a teacher could ever want in a student. But that was true of my students from Mozambique, South Korea, Mexico, The Netherlands, Ukraine, the USA, and every other country*. Nothing will get rid of preconceptions about people from a particular country faster than meeting a bunch of people from that country and finding out they're pretty much like people from other countries with a few differences in upbringing and language. *: I now realize that I wish I had made a map of all the places my students came from. I taught there for 15 years and it's a very international school; I probably taught students from at least 50 different countries, including Kazakhstan _(only one student in 15 years, but she was awesome),_ Congo _(a brother and sister fleeing civil war. Two of the nicest people I've ever met),_ Zimbabwe _(she wanted to be an economist so she could help her country prevent future monetary disasters),_ Azerbaijan _(I think she was a model; she certainly looked the part and would show up to school every day in a very tight cocktail dress with full makeup, a glitzy handbag, and high heels. For a midday class. She was a super hard worker and very intense),_ Myanmar _(in April 2020 she had to move back home and take my 5 - 7 pm class at 2 - 4 am her time, but she handled it well; she just got up in the middle of the night and came to Zoom class in PJs, then went back to bed)_ and lots of others. It would have been a nice way to remember more of them.

Having taught English and a few courses in American History, Culture, etc. in China for several years, i found that it was impossible to avoid conflict with the regular teachers for trying to be innovative in class or to expect students to do more original work. The idea of the student doing about two thirds of the work and the teacher acting mostly as facilitator and adviser was strange to them. Foreign teachers were not allowed to establish their own grading standards or to design their course content around the skill levels or abilities of individual students or classes. Chinese teachers would ask for our suggestions, finally ignoring our recommendations, and then turn around at the end of semester and make demands for "passing" almost every student, even the ones who never did any work at all in class. i spent most of my free time with a few serious students who were preparing for the Big Exam, and i would test them for comprehension in their subject area and give them pointers and tips about how to "read" the exam, or encourage them to strike out on their own and try new things. The Chinese classrooms really are nothing but long, boring lectures and quiet students taking notes. The saddest thing to see were students who were afraid to ask questions in class, or who would "lose face" by not always having the right answers. It made me want to cry on a few occasions. The better students wanted more than anything to experience the sort of unpredictable, project-oriented, and creative classroom that many foreign teachers wished to give to them. I loved most of it, though.

Imagine smurfing in real-life schools lmao

I'm really glad western countries are more chill when it comes to the pace of education. You know, actually let kids be kids.

Hard subjects, hard maths, hard science DO NOT equal success in life. A lot of Asian kids struggled with networking, communication, conveying ideas and being creative because of the way their education has forced them to become machines. I always thought Asian kids were superior but I was wrong on so many levels when I came to the UK. Sure, I excelled at school (I was excelled at work back home too) but yet I always felt so behind other western students when it comes to being active, being creative, being mature. They were excellent at it, and was NOT bad at schoolwork either. So all in all, I am the one who's less educated while my peers are much more well-rounded! Real-life works require collaboration and we Asian kids didn't get taught that, and so we suck at it. There's nothing to be proud of that.

12:03 America's so good it has 181 universities in the top 100 🇱🇷God bless the USA🇲🇾

They go to America Because they don't have to always use a VPN to access RU-vid.

To flex their Gucci sneakers and park their Maseratis on the street between a prius and civic

I went to school in Thailand till I was 9 and then I came to US. When I got here, I was ahead of other students (in math at least) , they were still doing the multiplication test every week and I was always the first one to finish first. Which was surprising cause I was one of the last person to memorize the multiplication table in Thailand. Anyways, I just wanted to say that sometimes I wish I still live in Asia so I’m pressured to study hard. I just want to be smart 😭

Very main difference is Asian education system: Theory Theory and Theory (make them memorize), European Education system: Treat them as human not as robots.

In Australia, New Zealand and the UK , Chinese students are the overwhelming majority of international students

12:05 Did that chart just say the U.S. has 181 universities in the top 100 universities list?

Dude, your vids are really good man … Keep it up !

This makes me very thankful to live in America where I don’t even have to take a standardized test to get into a college. I always complain about school but watching videos like this makes me appreciate my school more.

181 of the top 100 Universities?.... I GUESS THEY'RE JUST THAT GOOD

LOL. “The most important 9 hours of your life”. In my opinion, the function of Gao Kao was overestimated and gradually lose its popularity. However, it's still "The most important 9 hours of the life of poor families" in the foreseeable future.

I’m from the UK and a lot of foreign Chinese students attend our universities as well.

Great video. Really well informed.

As a Chinese student come to study in US. The main reason I think for most Chinese students to come are: 1> Affordable: Middle class is growing fast, average $35,000/year cost in US univerisities is not a problem for many Chinese families 2> Competition: In China, to get into top 100 universities, your GAOKAO score has to be at top 3%. Or you can say acceptance rate for top 100 universities is 3%, while in US, top 100 university acceptance rate is 66%, and the international ranking is much higher. 3> Reputation: 10 years ago, not many Chinese students studied abroad, overall those students are more welcomed in big companies and are paid higher. Now it's a different story unless you graduated from top famous universities.

This is the true problem of standardized testing. If the test can be learned or gamed, money and wealth will always have an advantage.

another day to be thankful for being Cantonese ig from the vids ive seen about school in china, it still shocks me how many exams the kids over there have, i studied at a private international school and never had any exams until secondary school, there's 1 end-of-year exam in form 1 and a mid-year and end-of-year in form 2 - 6, the teachers are mostly from either the UK or US so they're pretty chill, though the Cantonese and Chinese teachers can be scary sometimes (we have scary and chill korean teachers who i know are sisters lol), mostly it's just the class messing with them and us joking around for the laughs, they don't mind and usually join in on the fun what i find strange is that there's never any mentions of Gao Kao here, it's just "if y'all locals don't wanna go to HKDSE stream, get good grades and go to GCE" some of us locals are shit at chinese and since there's only 49% of the students who can study GCE and most of that is reserved for non-locals, the competition is still quite intense lmao

Interesting video. FYI, you have the South Korean flag rotated 180 degrees along the y-axis (the 3 solid line trigram belongs in the top-left; the 6 broken line trigram on the bottom right).

They come to flex on us broke students with their Mercedes, Audis and Beamers

thank god I moved over seas when I was young. My cousins all have white hairs from the stress in their 20's (no JOKE!)

One of my best friends was a Chinese foreign exchange student and all of this said seemed true. At the end, i think the university really screwed my friend with high debt and at the end the job prospects did not seem great.

2:13 The books in girl and boy hands is the [Chemistry textbook], when i was in senior high school,I also used this version book.

as a mom with 2 boys, we consider international study as a way to eacape the heavy learning for my boys. as it is too much competitive, not necessary at all. but we have too many people, resources are limited. and we have money . so it is not a problem.

So true, I came to Australia for elite private high school because I only scored 380/780 in my middle school exam. Lol

my past school used to hold classes from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. for some reason there are also night classes from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. when me and my family moved to the US one thing that surprised me was how limited their class time was, it felt like heaven to me.

I'm a Software Engineer, born in South America. I lead a team of engineers in a U.S. based company. In our team we have American, Chinese, Mexican, and Australian nationals. I love working with Chinese people because they do everything I tell them just like I tell them, nice and fast! They work on weekends without being asked. They are very smart. Americans have advanced social skills. They will tell you when they disagree with you. They are easy to exchange ideas with.They have really good organizational skills. They are also very smart. I know you cannot generalize. This is simply a recount of my experience. I think we greatly benefit from this diversity.

Nobody noticed that in China you will need to have a freaking library on your desk during class lol

Most of Chinese students , or all Chinese parents just want their children learning the advanced knowleage and provided their children High-quality learning environment， just for the work for better life.

It is very important that people from both countries to learn from each other. That builds understanding and easier negotiation. These two cultures really need to influence each other.

I"m surprised by the fact that the jump was in 2008. When I went to a public university grad school in 2004 (Wayne State in Detroit), the place was absolutely swarming with Chinese, although I suppose it really just had a lot of different international students, and since China has a lot of people, it had more people in the program. There were very few American students in my classes compared to when I was an undergrad in a private school.

Polymatter and China, still a better love story than Twilight!

China population is 1.4 billion, they're everywhere in the world not only US.

Bruh I had Chinese foreign exchange students as my group project teammates and let me tell ya, every single one had on the Balenci Balenci & Goyard drip everywhere they went. They treated their $2,000 shoes, bags, & purses like scraps lmao but overall very chill people to talk to even though it was difficult for them to speak English. I miss college :(

Thank you for providing the sources

It’s simple don’t be smart in a smart place Be smart in a dumb place

For me, the reason I came to study in the United States is that I took the postgraduate qualification exam twice, but I didn't pass the English test, so I had to go abroad to get a master's degree

English in America is very difficult, especially on standarized testing.

Can we appreciate that Singapore is top on all these lists

I was on a plane from Boston to LA and it was full of Chinese kids all wearing Harvard sweatshirts. They had just toured the university and were flying back to China. There were a couple of MIT shirts.

The truth is that for the rich Chinese families it is easier to get into a good universities here in US than in China via the tough Gaokao (Chinese college entrance exam), which you can only take once a year and have to study very hard for years in high school. But if you choose to study at a US college/university, then you will have a much easier time in high school as you are off the hook.

Back in school, many Chinese classmates have cheating and plagiarism problems. Someone got kicked out of school because of cheating in the final exam.

very insightful, also it’s worth to mention that most Asian countries are overcrowded which makes education + early stages of career highly competitive. Korea, Japan are equally stressful but only less population

My school's emphasis on globalization really showed by just how many foreign students we had. Unforunately, the Chinese students seems to exlusively hang out with one another and it would be obivous who was from hongkong bc they would walk in big groups through campus on the left side of the sidewalk haha

Personnally speaking, I came to Canada for univercity because I will not be qualified for Chinese univercities.

I grew up in one of the worst performing school districts in my state and can confirm when I was in a class I was bad at (math, chemistry, physics) the teachers would just pass me so I didn't develop those skills well at all. just lucked out that the career I wanted didn't require much of that🤷‍♀️

I am Chinese and I come to the US to study because I love American culture and environment.And I want to experience different things and meet more diverse interesting people, and I have an American dream.❤

*Narrator:* SAT, AP, or IB. *ACT:* Huh?

Same in Korea, students are coming to US due to non availability of the schools.🗽💕💕you all

I was just an average student who only scored around110/150 in my high school math in China, while I came to U.S. my calculaus was NEVER below 90...Many American and Chinese students want to team up with me each time we doing labs. I helped TA explained class materials on reciation period when students asked her questions that she can't answer more than onces...

Some of the issues that you raise about Chinese international students are also applicable to Australia and New Zealand. A lot of them tend to go to the STEM and commerce subjects.

As a person who took 9 years of education in China, and 7 years outside China, I always criticise GaoKao in terms of its structure and the ways Chinese schools prepare the students for it. The three years of high school can be a torment for most of Chinese students, but on the other hand, GaoKao is definitely a fair and efficient system. China is big, the size of population is crazy, and it is still developing, so it is hard for China to allocate resources equally, including education. But under the system of GaoKao, people from remote and impoverished areas have the opportunity to take high quality of tertiary education in big cities. The government recognises their hard-work by taking special consideration even though their grades are relatively lower than other kids from those big cities, and also help them financially. Their lives will be definitely changed!!! Imagine, if China also adopts the same uni enrolment system as US, it will take them a long long time to find “the right” students from 1.4B people. And those from less-developed areas will suffer from disadvantages of having not so much experiences and co-curriculum activities.

China: exists PolyMatter: _It’s free real estate_ But honestly tho, keep it up! I’m enjoying it:)

I’m China, my math teacher was constantly complaining about how slow and stupid I was at math. When I came to North America (in grade 2), I was way ahead of everyone else in my class and the math was similar to the kindergarten level in China.

Asking questions is favored and encouraging.

“Ask questions is disrespectful to the teacher” I went to a school where kids would beat up the teachers.

It's the same story in India. JEE is the exam, and IIT is the chain of colleges with 10,000 seats (including reservations). So, thousands of students emigrate to Canada and Australia for College. US is less favourable, as they don't easily provide citizenships.

Note that many US colleges are making SAT/ACT optional, while Chinese colleges use only their exam

In Canada we don't have uni entrance exams and every province runs k-12 slightly differently but growing up i remember finding grade 12 'diploma' exams very stressful. I dont know of other provinces having them. In grade 12 our final exams for academic subjects were from the government and the same across the province. Its since been lowered to 30% but when i went through these tests were worth 50% of your grade. When your grade 12 marks are all that matter for uni admission this was a lot of pressure.

US thought those Chinese Student will take democracy with them back to China. But most of them ended up staying.

I agree to this, every Chinese exchange student my school ever had were filthy rich, and academically jaded.

I love how the sponsorship with skillshare is always brought up in a smooth and unexpected way.

I remember coming to the US when I was 5 and attending kindergarden. The school taught 1+1 in math while I could already add three digit numbers.

I can imagine the insurance call: 'Hi, I'd like to insure myself against not having enough Chinese people around.'

"whereas in american college, students start getting serious" LMAOO alright bud

Tbh, every country has lots of students come from china because of their huge population? I'm a university student in Japan and my university has many overseas students especially china and india.

cause getting into university of toronto (where I am now) is the same difficulty as getting into a community college in china

Not just USA some universities in the UK have like 30% Chinese students

This reminded me of how students do the same in India. They prepare themselves a lot for the entrance exam to IIT but only few gets selected.

8:24 I saw this same thing at my Trade school. I was training to be a A&P mechanic 🤦‍♂️ (I wanted to be a pilot, more on that later), my roommate was in the pilot program. The international student's (Mostly for chine & the meddle east) would get first dibs on training hour's in the planes. In order to graduate you had to acquire a certain number of "Flight hour's". The international student's always got the flight time first, causing the domestic students to languish in the wing's. It's really quit cleaver 😈, you keep the domestic student's in your way overpriced student housing. They would fit four students in a tiny two bed room apartment each paying $750 a month for the privilege. Then you push the international students through your program as fast as you can, because you get a premium on them. And keep the domestic kid's around to fill in spots, & keep the lights on. I may be wrong on the price for on campus apartment's (it was more then I paid). You see there wasn't enough room in the on grounds housing, so I was sent to a regular apartment complex 10 miles! away. I still shared a two bedroom (normal sized) apartment with 3 other guy's. And we payed $600 a month, with rented furniture. I talked to the apartment complex manager & asked how much it cost to rent this apartment on my own. She told me it was $600 a month 🙄. This "school" went after 'Out of State Students', you have to be in school provide house if your out of state for your first year. Well after the "shooting" at this off site complex, we were moved to another off site apartment complex. It was one mile closer to the school, because that made it safer 🤷‍♂️. It was cheaper tho, the complex manager said it was only $500 a month at this place. This "school" also played a bait and switch, were they would bring you in for the Pilot program and say "Do you have $10,000 dollars?" on check in day. Did I mention how this "school' focused on recruiting out of state student's. The next line is "Oh well if you don't have $10,000 right now. That's ok, go into the A&P mechanic program. after completing the A&P program, then you can enter the Pilot program, no money down needed." 🙃 I was 18 and out on my own for the first time. I had no idea what I was doing, and they took me for all they could. I did not go into the pilot program... It's been 18 year's, I'm still paying on my loans.

Some of the descriptions are just partially true. Not all teachers discourage their students from asking questions in class. I graduated from a high school in China and attended GAOKAO. All of my teachers pretty encouraging in terms of asking questions. There was a group of students including me, who always cut off the teachers' talking and shouted out our questions in class without raising our hands. I missed that time very much. Maybe there are teachers who are discouraging but it's not the complete picture.

Reason 1: US has much more and much better educational resource over China; Reason 2: Chinese families are getting rich at rocket speed and still value education over other properties; Reason 3: Chinese people have a extremely good impression on US. The three reasons are sufficient and necessary conditions. And the conclusion doesn’t hold water if missing any of the three.

How important is China? Polymater - *YES*

I haven't watched the video yet but I moved to America from China when I was 7 and wanted to go back for the first year or so cuz my English wasn't good and all my family and friends were in china except for my mom and I, and when the people in China asked if I preferred school in china or America when I went back to China for summer break when I was like 7.5 years old, I still preferred being in china but I just never wanted to go back to school in china after coming back from summer break lol, my mom still talks about how much she regrets brining me to the US because i wont feel the tension and competition of grades and studying, but the homework after elementary still kind of kills me here too- sry I was kind of in rush when when writing this

It’s the same with Australia, since many people from Vietnam migrate here including my family, or is that just me?

When I went to China on exchange to Fudan Uni (a C9 university), there were Chinese students who were completing a degree in a Western country and doing an exchange program in China to "attend" a pretigious university like Fudan

I get the impression that for richer Chinese families, having a kid study and work overseas is a way to establish a foothold to build up offshore wealth that can't be taxed or seized by the Chinese government for whatever reason. I've also heard that it's pretty hard for average citizens in China to invest private wealth, so the relative openness of Western markets is attractive aside from the tax issue.

"Everyone's favorite-TAXES!" In the words of CalebCity: "I gotta calm down-I almost hit him"

A well done video that leaves out one important dimension to the discussion --- American, British, etc universities opening campuses in Mainland China.

There are many Chinese students here in Germany aswell.

Polymatter: "how do universities make money?" Every Student Ever: *Those Damn Textbooks!!*

Some university students from China that I spoke to and an Economist article also mentions that upward mobility is very limited for people that aren’t well connected and a work culture that demand a level of subservience that could chafe certain personalities... especially if those students have experienced the Western education that have a lot more back and forth with their instructors, something that was more unthinkable in Chinese or Korean classrooms. In the 2000s, over 95% of Chinese Ph.D.s that earned their degree in the US decided to remain and work in the US. Many citing poor political connections and collisions with Chinese work culture and mobility as a reason for remaining in the US.

It’s like starting the game on hard difficulty and after beating it, you make a new playthrough on easy mode.