Category: U.S.edu

##drug risk4boy: specific strategies

Posted on by tiger40490

Beyond drugs, there are similar bad influences in the U.S. community. Here are my practical strategies, in no particular order:

  • choose strict schools. Pay the price, but see luxury/special edu: unaffordable4%%middle class
  • join a class as an older student
  • Choose Chinese neighborhood like Edison (Honglin’s suggestion). Accept the long commute.
  • protect the bond with kids, so they open up to me when needed. Jack Zhang pointed out I need time for kids.
  • wife stay home to keep an eye on him for a while. During the formative years, mother has more influence than father. (If he needs constant monitoring, then consider SG.)
  • focus on what we can control; recognize and accept the things beyond our control.

#1 Biggest strategy — the parachute. When needed, be decisive to relocate back to SG.
I would then have no doubt that I need to work in SG for several years, perhaps at lower salary.
Accept that both kids could be delayed by a year or two, or consider international schools.
Philosophically, Even though every decision has consequences, we are not permanently locked into the emigration decisions.

#1 safeguard — both parents staying together. “If both parents stay with the kid, things won’t go too bad.”

#9 safeguard — SG extraterritorial penalty on drug usage is a deterrent for my kids. Can be a valuable restraint and deterrent.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/cannabis-drug-laws-outside-singapore-hair-test-cna-explains-2916026

— friends’ tips on drug abuse

  • XR said he would show pictures to his kids and drive home the reality about drugs.
  • In the U.S., my son could attend a religious school or charter school with strict control.
  • Jack said church would be a positive “force”.
  • Jack said drugs are more widespread in college than high school but I don’t know.
  • Jack said early intervention is key. The earlier parents try to help their kids quit, the easier it would be.

chain@credibility #dating/bccy

Posted on by tiger40490

 

Trigger eg: [[MindOverBusiness]] author (Ken) is a high-school dropout without a degree. He pointed out that “master’s and PhD students are researching my work” but hey, what universities are these students in? Is the mention of Ken some one-liner in a 20-page research, along with 50 other entrepreneurs? So this author is trying to hint a chain of credibility. Some unproven “things” greatly benefit from or need a chain of credibility:

  • eg: new educational entity or product
  • eg: unfamiliar, unproven investment products
  • eg: bachelors on a dating market [1]
  • eg: candidates competing for a top-tier company or university [1]
  • eg: When applying for visa, PR, citizenship [1]

[1] Recurring theme: In general, the most important “product” in need of chain of credibility is the individual person. Branding, credentials/qualifications, quality-of-candidate,,, are the terms we use.

— eg: entrepreneurs [1] often badly want a reputable university affiliation. It can lend credibility in a crowded field.
Many start-up would try to recruit individuals with credibility, including graduates of world-renowned universities, and ex-employees of world-renowned organizations like WorldBank, BellLab, NASA, FBook

special case: a new bccy .. treated like a start-up .. See ##key players legitimizing bccy

— source_of_credibility: big reputable market player .. CapitaLand lending credibility to MIH
— source_of_credibility: government, but some governments lend more credibility, such as Japan, Canada, Germany
source_of_credibility: ambassadors… of Brazil invited at RitzG5 lavish dinner
— source_of_credibility: leading research institutions .. university branding (and national academies, but to a lesser extent) lend credibility to their researchers
— source_of_credibility: major newspapers (and news agencies) .. lend credibility to their journalists.
— source_of_credibility: international standardization committee
IEEE .. is an eg
— source_of_credibility: Swedish Nobel committee [1] over the decades.. Nobel committee lends credibility to the laureats… most commonly in Econs and bio-medical domains.
— source_of_credibility: top colleges … Note only top, reputable colleges can lend credibility
Their graduates [1] often stand out in the (forever crowded) dating “market”

When applying for visa, long-term pass, PR, citizenship, my top-college degree lent credibility in no small measure.

See also my email to Gary Guo [[branding of college]]

source_of_credibility: PhDs and professors [1] .. Most folks don’t question what domain, from which university

In some cases, the “professor” is just a short-term visitor or part-time teaching staff.

 

ivy league + peers #CalTech paradox

Posted on by tiger40490

https://blog.prepscholar.com/is-stanford-ivy-league-duke-mit is a 2021 blog on the ive-equivalents

Ivy League is one of many brandometers, but it only includes about a third of the top 25 American universities.

— Public perceptions: 3 tiers among the 8 ivies

In terms of prestige, “my” top tier U.S. colleges are Harvard^Princeton^Stanford^MIT. Presige is a single metric that each layman assigns to each college. As such, it is incomplete, prejudiced, unscientific, inconsistent, and not based on any critical evaluation of positive/negative evidence. The subjective evaluation of prestige is often refuted by powerful facts, but a layperson often brushes it aside without giving any justification.

One intriguing factor: Generally the ives with large graduate/professional schools [2] are more recognized in rankings and appear more in publications and more “prestigiou”, according to one writer.

The same writer went on to say that generally Harvard, Yale, Princeton are regarded above others, closely followed by Columbia, then UPenn and Brown, then Dartmouth and Cornell.

[2] HarvardBizSchool, HarvardMedSchgool, HarvardLawSchool

https://blog.prepscholar.com/ivy-league-rankings says Harvard, Princeton and Yale (the Big Three) are comparable to Stanford and MIT [1]. Columbia, UPenn and Brown are comparable to Duke and Caltech (UChicago too). Dartmouth and Cornell are comparable to Northwestern and Vanderbilt.

U.S.News, THE, QS rankings are volatile/unstable, not a reliable reflection of the 3 tiers.

Note NobelLaureateCount is low for Duke(2), Brown(2), UPenn(4)

— [1] UChicago and Yale have comparable rankings. So do Columbia and UCBerkeley. The other colleges on par with the big3:

  • Stanford
  • MIT

These 2 engineering schools (+Caltech) are without peers globally. Among them, Caltech is the least known to the lay public despite top-notch professional reputation..

— CalTech paradox

  1. very high Nobel Laureate count since it is strong in physics, chemistry (perhaps medicine)
  2. .. Rockfeller University is similar
  3. small student and faculty population .. lower than all other 60+ AAU members
  4. comp science .. ranked outside top 8 nationally. CompSci is by far the most prominent domain of all domains .. fewer IT entrepreneurs.
  5. no business school, No Exec MBA program .. fewer big company founders or CEOs
  6. no medical school or law school (no U.S. presidents) .. prominent domain
  7. Overall, few notable people in business, politics or media.

[17]emphasis@u.s. Secondary education

Posted on by tiger40490

I feel it’s less about piano-style rigorous practice, less about international standardized benchmark (though some u.s. students and schools become very very good at that too.)

I guess it’s more about “independent learning”. Lower stress and lower academic motivation. In theory, the students get to explore and decide what she wants to learn, but at that age can they make those decisions and find those directions? Does it really translate to anything meaningful in later life?

I think one keyword is “choice”. I guess in reality Singapore students have fewer choices in and outside/beyond the academic routes. The system, rather than the parents or students, decide (based on grades) to send you to one of a few streams.

U.S. also has top schools, but their competitive selection put less emphasis on grades.

AAU(^U.S.News): 60+ U.S.top research universities

Posted on by tiger40490

AAU membership is more _stable_ than college ranking tables. A college will not suddenly enter or exit the AAU due to some ranking criteria. Instead, it gets accepted in and stay in for decades [1]. To me AAU is the most reliable criteria for “top 60” reputable colleges. If my son gets into one of them, I would be grateful.

In 1900, on the backdrop of the proliferation of small, for-profit degree-granting colleges, I think the chiefs of venerable universities decided to form a “exclub” to distinguish themselves. This is my interpretation of the stated motivation of AAU’s founding.

— comparison with U.S.News etc .. Within the U.S. the most influential ranking table for undergrad is the U.S.News. I think it gives an idea of the undergrad acceptance rate of each college. I would say that U.S.News national ranking table is the most referenced “brandometer”. In contrast, AAU is arguable the most important academically-oriented brandometer.

SY.C pointed out that U.S.News national ranking table doesn’t focus on graduate-level research, and promotes many small colleges with limited graduate schools and limited research.

I would say academic reputation is what I tend to notice. For that, AAU is more useful than U.S.News ranking.

We should not rely exclusively on AAU… other rankings are also relevant.

The control of AAU membership is very different from U.S.News, or THE, or QS, or Shanghai ranking. [1]

— key observations on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Universities

  • 64 American private/public universities + only 2 Canadian universities.
  • At least 4 universities either left or were voted out.
  • [1] AAU membership is by invitation only, which requires an affirmative vote of three-fourths (75%) of current members. invitations to new members are rare, reflected in the joining years for each member.
  • “The largest attraction of the AAU for many schools, especially nonmembers, is prestige.”

It’s interesting to see the geographical concentration of member universities. Most in north-eastern quadrant. If you want to know the top universities in a given state, sort the table by state ! 14 states have a single AAU member  university, while dozens of states have zero. CA, NY, MA are the richest states.

You can also sort the table by joining year. The earlier, the more venerable, with rare exceptions.

— specific universities, sorted by name, with joining year

  • 1929 Austin
  • 2012 Boston University
  • 2010 Georgia Tech
  • NYU
  • 1916 OhioState
  • Rutgers
  • Rice
  • 2001 Stony Brook
  • 2021 Tufts
  • UIUC
  • 2019 Utah
  • 1950 UWashington
  • — outside the AAU:
  • trinity college
  • NorthEastern
  • UBC #BritishColumbia
  • UWaterloo
  • Pace university

 

public ives #

Posted on by tiger40490

See also AAU: 64 U.S. top colleges

In terms of reputation, some of the public ives (mainly Berkeley) are comparable to some original ives (but not the Big Three). Fees or acceptance rate can be much better. If brand value is not that important to me, then we should favor the public ives.

— https://oirap.rutgers.edu/AAUBigTenComparisons.html ranks public ivies by various criteria

  • international rankings — QS, ARWU, THE,,,
  • national rankings — U.S.news, Forbes, WSJ,,,

— the differences as compared to the original ives

  • selectivity .. While the undergraduate enrollment (snapshot across all matriculation /batches/) at the eight Ivies averages around 8,500 students, many Public Ivies boast far bigger undergraduate classes. The University of Michigan and UCLA, for example, each enroll over 31,000 undergrads, whereas the University of Texas at Austin enrolls over 40,000 undergrads.
  • .. eg: In terms of acceptance rate, I think UChicago is much tougher than NUS, and more exclusive.
  • endowments
  • price .. While every Ivy League school charges more than $50,000 in annual tuition and fees, many of the Public Ivies cost around just $10,000 per year for in-state students.

Jolt: Academic reputation of a college is correlated to the headcount and history. A large, less exclusive university are often related to more research grants, many award winners, published experts, mass-media featured researchers. Examples:

  1. UT Austin
  2. Berkeley?
  3. UCLA?
  4. Connell?
  5. U London

— “public ives” is a rather loose term, not extremely prestigious, and usually include

  • UC Berkeley
  • UT Austin
  • UIUC
  • UCLA
  • Rutgers
  • PennState
  • StonyBrooks
  • OhioState… Larry’s both kids … Long tradition, strong fraternity,
  • UWashington…

— Larry .. has higher income than me. He really likes OhioState for both his kids. Ken (manager of the RTS client-side dev team) .. also sent his kids to a state university, citing cost as one factor.

So why would an immigrant insist on the ivy league?

Larry can afford private colleges, but I feel he didn’t see the justification for the higher cost.

[19]U.S.edu system offers more options #Alan.C#w1r1

Posted on by tiger40490
  • option: Rely on parenting esp. if wife stays home. However, I think many working parents don’t have the time/energy to do that.
  • option: good public school district
  • option: Honors-class in a regular public middle- or high-school.
  • option: Private schools, charter schools
  • option: Private tutoring aka “after school”. I feel this feature is more effective in U.S. than in Singapore. Many Chinese parents in the U.S. choose it but I think most non-Chinese parents don’t choose it.
  • option: serious non-exam programs that my son may actually enjoy. Alan himself fell in love with robotics. In SG these are sidelined by the exams because exams are 100% (rather than 50%) of the admission criteria.
  • — tertiary
  • option: transfer from a community college to a 4Y university
  • option: transfer from an ordinary to a branded university
  • option: adult undergrad enrollment is more widespread in the U.S. than in NUS. I remember the conversation in the RTS pantry with the American colleague
  • option: apply to branded post-grad program, even if your undergrad grades are mediocre like in my case.

Alan said “A lot more options”. Now I think Alan hinted that in the U.S. system, the advantage of academic vs non-academic route is not so decisive.

— compare U.S. to Taiwan systems.. Some would say that at age 18 Taiwan students have fewer options beside college, even if the student doesn’t like academic studies.

— Singapore education system is not too bad and offers my kids some additional options ..
UK/Australia colleges accept  GCE A-levels and Singapore poly diplomas

myth: U.S.parent`culture=weaker #lower@bmark

Posted on by tiger40490

My view of U.S. vs Chinese parenting culture/practices is biased.

I tend to feel U.S. one is weaker, ineffective and failing, but look at the output of these two parenting cultures. Out of 10,000 comparable (mostly white-collar or middle-class) families, the number of “successful” (beyond grades) adult children is not higher among the Chinese. In fact, as soon as we look beyond standardized benchmarks, the comparative picture would be very very different between the two cultures.

U.S.edu=more encourag`less competitive #b4highSchool

Posted on by tiger40490

U.S. edu (and parenting) culture — more encouragement, more confidence building, less “rule-abiding” as I experienced first-hand in Singapore system.

I think many kids at 12 are not motivated by any keen interest in anything whatsoever. By my standard, perhaps half are unmotivated to study. Does the U.S. system give them too much freedom? I think so.

I was told at high school freshmen level, the competitiveness would emerge, at least in some good schools, but focus today is the earlier years.