Chinese students seek US education, use agents to apply to IU

BEIJING — About 500 students wearing matching blue sweat suits stood in even rows, side by side, facing the instructor at the front of the football field.

They turned right, then left, perfectly synchronized, as the work-out instructions were spoken through a megaphone.

It was 10 a.m., the daily fitness hour for all students at the Beijing high school, The Second High School Attached to Beijing Normal University International School.

The international program, called the Project of Global Access (PGA), is a boarding school for students planning to attend universities in English-speaking countries, primarily the United States.

Tim Mei, a senior at the high school, will be a freshman at IU in the fall. It will be his first time in the U.S.

He discovered IU while researching business school rankings online. He visited the Kelley School of Business website, liked the look of the campus and decided to apply.

He has no connections to IU and has not spoken with anyone from the University.
Students like Mei often feel uncomfortable with the application process for American universities.

Although high school college counselors provide some seminars and assistance, 50 percent of students at the PGA program rely on third-party organizations to help them apply to U.S. universities, Paula Zhou, a college counselor at the high school, said.

These students will pay institutions thousands of dollars to translate their essays from Chinese to English and submit them directly to their “dream school,” Zhou said.

This trend has been apparent at IU, Director of IU International Admissions Matt Beatty said. He said the University recognizes international applicants will often rely on institutional consultants to help them submit their applications.

An IU policy created in February 2011 prohibits the use of commission-based agents “for the purpose of recruiting or enrolling international students.” IU is not allowed to make financial contracts with these agents for recruitment, but international students are allowed to pay institutional consultants for their services, according to the policy.

“We hold a neutral stance; we know students will do it,” Beatty said. “It’s difficult to monitor and enforce. Students living overseas might not have a college counselor. It’s a cultural component.”

Zhou said she wishes her students didn’t have to rely entirely on rankings, websites and third party organizations in their college search. She said these institutes might misrepresent their PGA program, grading or curriculum to universities.

“We can just give them the general information about the University, but students may trust people from universities more than us,” Zhou said. “We want to invite more universities to our school. Our students are desperate to know more.”

IU freshman Han Wu graduated from the same boarding school last spring. He came to IU hoping to gain admission to the Kelley School of Business and hired an agent to help him apply.

He paid the institution $5,000 for its services and said many of his friends paid agents up to $10,000 in the hopes of being admitted to a top-50-ranked university.

“Most students don’t know the process for how to apply and how to write the essays,” Wu said. “We wanted professional people to help.”

Wu said he regrets using a third-party organization to apply to college. He wasn’t admitted to his dream school, University of California-Santa Barbara, and he said he now realizes it is a process every student should complete.

“I think it is a way to know myself more,” Wu said. “It is a skill that we need to learn, not something someone else can do for us.”

Of his friends from China who chose to study abroad, Wu said about a fifth of them attended an international program in high school similar to the PGA program in Beijing.

Ten students from the PGA program applied and were admitted to IU this year, significantly more than last year, Zhou said. But IU has not recruited at this specific Beijing high school, which enrolls students from some of the wealthiest families in Beijing.

Beatty said the University has seen an increase in Chinese applicants who have studied in similar bilingual high school programs.

“A stronger number of those students complete the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and college preparation requirements to study overseas,” Beatty said.

The PGA program gives students a foundation in both the required Chinese courses and Global Assessment Certificate (GAC) courses, taught by foreign teachers from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia, Zhou said.

The GAC courses aim to model a Western-inspired curriculum, emphasizing verbal English skills and moving away from the traditional exam-based Chinese structure.
Students graduating from the program might take half the time to adapt to the U.S. classroom as students from regular Chinese high schools, Zhou said. The nature of the boarding school also helps prepare students for the adjustment.

“They have to learn how to share dormitories with other students,” Zhou said. “Their parents are overprotective so they have to learn how to take care of themselves.”

If more international students graduated from such programs, Wu said, they would be more prepared for the U.S. academic environment. His practical classes in English, such as business classes, helped prepare him for the culture of U.S. classrooms, he said.

But even for students from international high schools, the transition to college life in the U.S. isn’t easy.

In the first week of his Introduction to Business class, Wu struggled to keep up with his professor. He would use his phone to record lectures and listen to them later, translating unknown words and pausing when necessary.

After one particularly confusing lecture, Wu went to his class period a second time. He needed another chance to understand the material, he said.

The challenges are part of why he wanted to study abroad, Wu said.

“In China, all we do is answer questions,” Wu said. “That is not what I want. I want to experience more.”