Overachieving Koreans Have No Life But Excel at Ivy Admissions
At certain moments in my month-long stay in Seoul, say when I was navigating about its immaculately clean subway system or gorging myself on endless supplies of Korean short ribs, it occurred to me that it wouldn't have been half bad if I had been born and raised there. But then I'd watch my seven-year-old cousin race off to his test-prep center after class every day, see uniformed high-schoolers trudge back to their apartments past midnight, and I'd silently thank my parents for immigrating to America.
Given the madness I observed in Korea firsthand, I was hardly surprised to see Newsweek write an article on two of Korea's top high schools, focusing particularly on their success at sending students to elite colleges in America. At Minjok Leadership Academy, for example, 25 of its 77 graduates who applied to American colleges were accepted to Ivy League schools. Daewon Foreign Language High School, which is similarly competitive, had 36 students get into the Ivy League last year.
All of this has its price - assuming, of course, that one manages to do well enough in middle school to get in:
Typically, students study well past midnight, sleeping four to five hours a night. The coed Korean schools also have tough rules on dating and other behaviors deemed distracting. Hand-holding is banned.
More insanity after the jump:




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Infected by the unbridled ambition rampant at Penn's Wharton School of Business, senior admissions officer
Lee Stetson, Penn's Dean of Admissions and a 29-year veteran at the University, announced in July his plans to resign at the end of the current school year. He was going out on a high note as Penn had just admitted its most selective class ever.
*[Ed. note: Nick here. IvyGate ticks off the subjects of its coverage fairly regularly. Usually, it's easy to parry their take-this-down demands and libel threats because they act like bullies and jerks. In 12 months, there's been one exception: Steven Roy Goodman, who says our characterization below is unfair. And after the exceedingly polite, rational and productive conversation we just had, I have to agree. He seems like a stand-up guy, and, thinking back to my own miserable college application days, it would've been good to have someone like Goodman around to make the process sane and bearable.
Daniyar Nazarbayev had a dream. During those lonely nights on the plains of Kazakhstan, he would look into the stars and pray for admission into America's Ivy League. And then, according to a suit he filed Monday against a high-profile New York college admissions consultant,
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