I’ve pretty much have known for a while that China commits a
lot of fraud (i.e. bootleg dvds, fake Apple products, Samsang (vs Samsung) and
tons more) but I have never really truly realized how far deep the fraud
culture runs in China. After reading a white paper written by a Yale and
Harvard Business School grad titled “Busted: The top 5 ways that Chinese
students cheat on their undergraduate applications to American School” I am
truly appalled and disgusted. Below I am going to summarize the key points from
the white paper for you so you can join me in being appalled and I apologize
for adding my own little snippets, which I can already foresee as not being so
nice and understanding.
First and foremost, I want to state that the author of the
white paper, Tom Melcher, adds his own disclaimer in his writings to state that
although he understands why the Chinese cheat, but he doesn’t by any means
think that the ends justify the means. So as far as I am concerned, he is on my
side!
The paper starts off by listing some shocking statistics:
90% of recommendation letters are written by someone other than the teacher who
just signs and mails it in as if they wrote it, 70% of the applicants’ essays
are written by someone else, 50% of high school transcripts are falsified, 30%
of financial aid applications contain false information, 10% of achievements
and awards are fake!!! These numbers are simply outrageous! What is a college
application? Well it’s a compilation of your high school grades and
achievements along with essays that you spent months writing and are highly
thought out and written recommendations by some of your closest teachers. Throw
in an SAT or ACT score and you’re good to go. So I just named off 5 things that
are part of a complete application and now I am being told that the Chinese
falsify 4 of the 5 parts (maybe even all 5 if they have someone take the SAT
for them) and their only rebuttal as to why they do it is: Everybody cheats!
*Face palm*
So ok, why is it that they cheat? Well, first they face
extreme pressure from the parents. If you think helicopter parents in America
are bad, Chinese parents are twice as bad. These parents were around for
China’s Cultural Revolution and have grown up being told to focus on getting rich.
Furthermore, they have seen millions of people get rich by “bending or breaking
the rules, almost always with impunity” and therefore in the parent’s mind
“honesty and fairness are naïve dreams”. In other words, the PARENTS think (and
teach their kids) that cheating, or bending the rules as they call it, is
totally ok! Where is the logic in that! Moral compass….. down the toilet.
The second reason why they cheat is due to agents. Since the
college application process is complex, as we all know, the Chinese parents
hire agents to help them and their kid navigate this maze that is college
applications. These agents get paid around $6,000-$10,000 for a full year of
service that usually includes test prep amongst other things. These agents also
get a bonus of up to $10,000 if the child gets into a Top 30 or Top 10
University (Chinese care way too much about brand names in my opinion). As this
is a lot of money to a Chinese person when the majority of Chinese live for
under $2 a day, the agents will do anything in their power to make sure the
kids get into great universities, no matter the means. This is when the Chinese
actually get creative (first I’ve ever seen). The agents go as far as PhotoShop-ing
the transcripts to look better, or to make up awards that the student won,
writing essays and filling out all applications. At times, the student doesn’t
even have access to any communication with the universities they are applying
to because the agent set up an email account on behalf of the student and
checks it every day and responds on the students’ behalf as needed. Usually,
the agents do all these manipulations without pressure from the parents, but
per the article, every parent they interviewed mentioned that they spent
countless hours reviewing the agents work so it’s reasonable to assume that the
parents are aware of all the agent’s “adjustments”. Once again, point for parents
and their morality here (heavy on the sarcasm).
Lastly, the high school themselves add to cheating dilemma.
Some schools are too helpful, meaning they have no problem tweaking a
transcript here or there because they gain “face” and prestige by having a higher
percentage of their graduating class go to American schools. The going rate of
a tweaked transcript is about $15 which to a secretary that makes only $450 a
month is a lot and totally worth doing. The schools that are the opposite of
helpful just force the students to make up their own transcripts. If the school
won’t give them one because they know the student is applying to an American
school, what else are the parents and agents to do? As a side note, transcripts
in China are seen as flexible documents because of the way classes are
structured. This structure difference sometimes requires a “normalization”
process. So since normalization is common all over China, other requested adjustments
(i.e. higher grades and class rank to be sent to an American university),
“aren’t seen as dishonest, they are just seen as an attempt to make the
school’s students (and therefore the school) look good.” So what I basically
gather from what the Chinese do, is that we should go to the inner city schools
in Chicago and give all the students As. That way they all look good and all of
the inner city issues that we have will be solved. Sounds like a really easy
and great solution! So why don’t we do that!? Well, because we don’t lie like
that to make ourselves look better! It’s just simply not acceptable! O and the
kicker to this is that the Chinese only cheat on American university
applications. They don’t cheat on the Chinese ones because getting caught leads
to some serious ramifications. But since America is so far away, the Chinese
have no problem doing it since the perceived risk of getting caught is minimal.
So lesson learned kids, cheat when you won’t get caught. Can’t wait to teach my
future five year old that!
And just one last point from the white paper that really
just tickles my belly, then I’ll stop, I swear. So the Chinese students who
apply to American universities are almost always from wealthy families, meaning
they do not need financial aid. However, the Chinese perceive financial aid as
an “indicator of applicant’s attractiveness to the school, and not as a sign of
financial weakness.” What that basically means is that since all of the
applicant’s friends know that the family is wealthy, when they hear that the
student received a $10,000 scholarship, they think it’s a merit scholarship for
the student being so smart! In other words, stealing money from those students
who really need it is just another way for the Chinese to increase their face and
look better in the eyes of all of their friends. I’d insert a sarcastic comment here but I am
at a loss for words. I hope you can see why.
So to summarize, the Chinese lie their way into American
universities and they think it’s ok and justified. With the number of mainland
Chinese studying in America growing 20% annually, this is going to cause many
problems in the future. There are many students getting into quality
universities that don’t deserve it while American and other foreigners are
missing spots that they deserve. The Chinese might think it’s not fair to them
if they don’t cheat, but from my perspective, it’s not fair to every other
applicant from all over the world. Who’s right here? I know my answer, but what
is yours?
And last but not least, all the statistical and informative
data was taken from the white paper. O and any really sophisticated sounding
sentences were probably taken from there to. So to give full credit to the
author, please check out the link of the actual whitepaper here. Cheerio!
