CCHS in China - Day 4

This was our longest work day in Beijing, the captial city of China, a city of 21 million. The work day started with more meetings and tours in classrooms filled with Chinese students learning Enhglish, prepping for the GMAT, SSAT, TOEFL in New Oriental's educational facilities. Many classrooms with 50 or more were filled with students on a Saturday with hopes of coming to the US for college, grad schools and high school. The Chinese students and parents are convinced that the only path to success in life is to achieve top scores on high stakes tests. As a result. memorization and regular drill are the techniques used in China's educational system. Whether students are happy with their school expereince or are well-rounded takes a back seat to numbers. Only test results matter. getting into top high schools, elite colleges and grad schools, they believe gurantees a worthwhile life. One can undertstand this obsession in light of the fact that in China unless one has graduated from a "big name" or elite university, whether in China or abroad, Chinese companies or institutions will not give serious consideration to a candidate for employment. Wihtout a top grade and top college, an aspiring young person will be relegated to low paying, menial jobs in China It was clear to me from my conversations with students and parents that they were very impressed by the success of our students on AP Exams and the college placement resluts of our graduates.
10 million students in China graduate from high school each year, but Chinese universities can accommodate about 6 mliion students. Others are forced to go abroad, largely because of a test score, no matter what grades they've attained in school over the years.

Today CCHS participated in the Beijing high school fair with four other Mass. high schools. Despite having one week to promote this with the students of Beijing New Oriental School over 350 students and families attended. You can imagine that very few had heard of CCHS or the other Mass. schools. The fair was scheduled for 4 hours, but due to signficant initial interest in CCHS, students and parents remained to speak with me until 8:30 PM.

This is a first effort by CCHS and its partner placement companies, so many details need to be buttoned down in a short time frame by students and famiulies before acceptance and enrolling at CCHS can happen. Ideally this information and application process should have been scheduled four month ago. I have little idea right now how many will go through with the application process to CCHS. The next few weeks will shed light on this. I did meet with a handful of students who seemed very interested in CCHS for grades 9 and 10. A modest beginning of a few international Chinese studetns is our goal. Hopefully the most interested students will expediently complete the application process. Certainly I emphasized this with the candidates.

Tomorrow I fly to Shanghai to take part in another high school fair. Based on my experience today I might expect another signficant number of students exploring CCHS.