Every time I travel to China I am asked the following by Chinese parents I meet, “As you are an educator what advice do you have for us to get our kid into a good  US private high school or boarding school and/or university?” (Emphasis mine.)  

This is a complex question, to which there are no easy answers, mainly because every student’s file and situation really is different.  The problems of American education at all levels notwithstanding (and I concede there are many), most that know education well and have actually spent meaningful time in classrooms around the world observing what is taking place still see the US as the Swiss watch of brands in the education industry.  Hence, the intense desire I see in mainland China to get their kid over here/to the US for an education.

So one of the first things I tell them is, “Start to prepare well in advance, and by the way how is your kid’s TOEFL or IELTS scores and their SSAT or ISEE scores (if applying for a private high school or a boarding school) and SAT scores (if applying for university?”  

Usually the answer is, “Not so good.”  

These entrance exams are significant admission hurdles for kids from China to overcome (including understanding that YOU, the kid, are supposed to write your own essay - not your parent, uncle, the education agent your family hired), even for the little emperors/ess from the rich families with good opportunities and resources.  

The Chinese know this, and I have just learned that one of the things they (including a group of profs from Tsinghau U) have done to make an end-run around this challenge is what I call the “Lenovo solution”.  To wit, if you don’t want to take the time to build a brand, buy one, or in the case of education, buy the US school.  

Click HERE and HERE to read more about this development.  In short, the Chinese have purchased an old Verizon training campus (mainly a hotel) in Massachusetts and plan to it into a one year boarding school program (focusing mainly on ESL and culture adaptation for 60 to 100 students year) that will in turn feed the student into UMass under what I assume is an MOU between the Chinese and UMass.

UMass is in turn, I suspect, salivating over the out-of-state tuition (high!) most of these students will pay when they shift over to UMass given the especially sorry state of the Massachusetts economy right now.

Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures, and only time will tell if this experiment will result in a win for the families, kids, the boarding school, AND UMass.  

In my view, private US high schools, boarding schools and universities would be wise to closely monitor this development, as if this experiment is successful and more Chinese and/or other countries and universities follow this model, said change will result in some new winners and losers.

Oh, and my own advice to the wealthy Chinese parents asking me about the above option in Massachusetts?  

I would tell them the following:  ”Look, if your kid has some decent talent and work ethic, do this the right way … believe in yourself and earn it … and that means you timely apply to a regular quality private high school or boarding school in the US where they will get the initial support they need to succeed and pointed in the right direction (yes, you will have to pay for it and it won’t be cheap but you own factories and businesses and have lots more money than I ever will so no sympathy here!).  And let them go and start them in the 9th grade, not the 11th.  If you do this I am fully confident your kid has a very bright future in front of him/her and that he/she will in turn get into an excellent US university (in part because in doing 9th through the 12th grade in the US their English skills and college TOEFL scores will be excellent).  And the way, there are 2,000 to 3,000 universities in the US, not 10, and hundreds and hundreds of them, maybe more, are quite good.  Please pick the one that is a good fit for your kid and will engage his/her mind, which means your family will have to do your homework, work hard to learn about those differences and I recommend he/she visit the campus.  Just because it’s an Ivy (one of the 10 you and your neighbors told you about) does not mean your kid should go there, will like it there, will succeed there, and/or that they will actually learn anything there.  I beg you to stop listening to the bad and misinformed advice of your friends, neighbors, the Internet and/or the hack educational agent you hired for your kid that takes commissions from poor quality Western schools and ‘guaranteed’ you a Harvard admission yet said agent has never even been to the US, and who don’t know jack about education in the USA, and instead listen to those who know US education and how kids learn here and what it takes for them to succeed.”