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Q: Going to Beida - same as going to Harvard?
I remember once I was visiting a slightly remote place of Shenzhen when I was there on vacation, in the Yantian district, and I passed by a high school, and all around the place, in the streets neighboring it, they had huge red banners everywhere.
I asked one of my Chinese friends what they were for, and he told me it was because one of their students who'd just passed the gaokao had been accepted in Peking University. It kinda blew my mind.
How much of an achievement is it for someone to get into Qinghua or Beida? Is it comparable to someone getting into Harvard, or even harder?
14 years 32 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
now ,most of china top highschool students want go to HONG KONG universitys or abroad colleges instead of BeiDa and Qinghua.
It is definitely hard to get into Beida for a Chinese student, in fact very hard. But it is obviously not on the level of a university like Harvard.
If it gets more funding and better facilities and a more open academic environment it will probably be able to rise in the world rankings in the future.
But as of now Beida still suffers from the same problems that many universities in China suffer from..namely outdated educational practices like the college entrance exam and lax educational standards to students that are admitted.
I've had locals try to convince me Beida is in fact "really" better but western Universities are simply better known... Yah...
Actually, it's 'relatively' easy to get into Beida if you live in Beijing to start with...it becomes incredibly difficult if you live in the outer provinces.
I would be tempted to say it's harder to get into Beida than Harvard, just because of competition, but honestly, I have a few friends in Beida, and they tell me all the time the level of the teachers in there is actually quite bad
The smartest Chinese students go to... Harvard... as well as the smartest students from every other country in the world, so it's a tough comparison.
the pride that it generates may be but certainly not everything else.
As for foreign students, getting into Beida is not anything they should be proud of. The worst student (he) in my high school graduating class got in while one of the best students (she) did not (note that this is an international high school). What happened after that? He dropped out midway because he couldn't handle the grades and credits and instead opted to transfer to a less than prestigous community college. While the girl went to attend Stanford.
Foreign students got into Beida by luck of lotery drawing or money, only a small portion actually got in because of high grades.
