KiasuParents - Parenting in Singapore

doodbug wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 26, 2022 9:12 am

...
For most Singaporean students, I would say the cultural adjustment is more stark moving to the US than to the UK - there are many, many Singaporeans and other Southeast Asian students in the UK (some would argue, too many).

SG_KP1 wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 26, 2022 9:58 am

The US Tier 1 universities will be overweight (relative to the population) Asian students (could be 25%+ of the cohort at some schools), so school life may not be so bad. It will also be easier to fit in if attending school in some of the larger coastal areas.

floppy wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 26, 2022 10:01 am

I think it's difficult to generalise.

There are over 5,000 universities and colleges in the US. If you are going to choose one of the ulu ones, chances are, you will be the minority of the minorities. However, bigger and more established universities are likely to see the same number of Singaporeans / Southeast Asian students compared to their counterparts in the UK.

lee_yl wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 26, 2022 8:55 am

I think NCB was the first to send scholars to the US. LKY also pushed PSC to send scholars to the US. Currently, GovTech also sends scholars to US for technology-related areas (Comp Sc, AI, Big data).

Thinking aloud, looking at how toxic the cultural and political environment in US has become, it may be prudent for PSC to diversify the countries where the scholars are sent to. Time to revive scholarships to France, Germany or Japan and start new initiatives to India? If vast majority of grads here are from US, we may see culture wars erupting in our midst or more anon conspiracies circulating?

doodbug wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 26, 2022 10:07 am

They are American-born Asians.
If you look at the student profile statistics of Ivy League institutions - the proportion of international students is low.
https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/ ... statistics
For example, at Harvard, only 15.6% of the admitted undergrads this year are international.
The top UK universities will have a larger proportion of international students at the undergraduate level.

For US state universities, it varies more. Some state universities also cannot set a racial/ethnic quota for in-state students as they have to go by merit. Hence, the top state universities in say, California, will have a significant proportion of ethnic Asian students.

ChiefKiasu wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 25, 2022 2:39 pm

Well, it was one of the top schools for CS during my time, but that was like 40 years ago and much has changed. I don't know what is its status now. I was blessed to have the privilege to go there. Staying there was fun, but it does have its own challenges. Most Americans are open and friendly, but some weird ones can be pretty racial. I do get some rare cat-calls sometimes as I'm walking down the street and cars go by with some drunk kids, but otherwise, things are pretty quiet there.
The lower level classes (freshmen and sophomore) were pretty well conducted and regimented. Classes are ok, but some can be really boring. Fortunately, the professors will make their lecture notes available to "Kinkos", a photo copy shop, where we can buy it before the lecture. So sometimes, I would buy the notes and then go home Easier to self-study.
The senior classes are really mostly electives, and I still remember taking one, but I can't remember what the course was about at all! At the start of the classes, the professor came in a wheel chair, and told us (through a throat microphone) that this was the last time we will see him and that the course will be taught mostly by his teaching assistants (TAs), and promptly made his way out.
We were stunned, but kind of grateful, as we could hardly understand him with his throat microphone. Then the TAs jumped up and told us how fun the class is going to be, because we are all going to select a project and then take turns to present it to the class! So the next time I went for the lesson was when I had to present my project . I was only present in that class twice.
I guess that course was bad... but it showed me the "good" side of things. Apparently, the professor was a major contributor to the university during his earlier years, wrote several valuable papers and is well known in his field. So the university kept him on his tenure even though he could hardly talk right now.
Besides that experience, everything else was right on the dot. The only negative thing is that the Americans think poorly of us Asians being able to speak English, and we had to take some basic rhetoric classes, which we, of course aced. But I did enjoy taking a theatre class where we watched some plays and then wrote our thoughts on them.