Chinese Students in US - Application Fraud

NY Times reports:

Zinch China, a consulting company that advises American colleges and universities about China, last year published a report based on interviews with 250 Beijing high school students bound for the United States, their parents, and a dozen agents and admissions consultants. The company concluded that 90 percent of Chinese applicants submit false recommendations, 70 percent have other people write their personal essays, 50 percent have forged high school transcripts and 10 percent list academic awards and other achievements they did not receive. The “tide of application fraud,” the report predicted, will likely only worsen as more students go to America.

Tom Melcher, Zinch China’s chairman and the report’s author, says it’s simplistic to vilify agents who provide these services. They’re responding, he says, to the demands of students and parents.

Thanks to China’s one-child policy, today’s college students are part of a generation of singletons, and their newly affluent parents — and, in all likelihood, both sets of grandparents — are deeply invested in their success. At Aoji Education Group, a large college counseling company based in China, one of the most popular services is the guaranteed-placement package: apply to five colleges and get your money back if you’re not accepted at any of your choices. “If a student isn’t placed, we’ve got screaming, yelling parents in the lobby,” says Kathryn O’Hehir, who works in the company’s American admissions department in Beijing. “They don’t want their money back. They want their kid in an Ivy League school.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/the-china-conundrum.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

Comments

[Kathryn O'Hehir]

Out of a five page article, you chose to cite the discussion that Chinese students are not honest, they cheat, which is saying "they do not deserve those seats." I spoke at length with Karin Fisher and like you, condensed several hours of discussion and numerous emails into three "zippy" sentences. You are ading the stereotype that both agent and student are inherently dishonest, or flavor your words as such, and I say it's not true. It happens, but the xenophobic response to the numbers of students wanting to attend is what is driving these very public attitudes. China does not need U.S. universities. They are popular, but Canada is far less hassel, Australia has come around, and the U.K has always made it a business to recruit excellent graduate student candidates. A lot of them come from our school, AOji international, where we don't cheat. We have a reputation for providing good service and diligence in application requirements. That's why we suceed and the fakers will not.