Western European culture in particular appears to have encouraged a degree of reward for individualism and self-advancement which Eastern cultures (for whatever

Western European culture in particular appears to have encouraged a degree of reward for individualism and self-advancement which Eastern cultures (for whatever reason) have not been able to sustain. Corruption and favoritism are also more commonly accepted, in part I suspect due to the influence of Confucianism and Buddhism. This tends to result in societies with less-democratic structures which ultimately entrench social status. Most of us have probably had a college class or two with foreign students from Asia who somehow passed the very tough English component of the GMAT or other standardized test, yet barely spoke English. I certainly had a few such folks in mine. My intuition would be that test scores matter quite a bit, but honestly achieving them may not matter as much. Social mobility is higher here in the U.S. than most Asian cultures, but we put a greater emphasis on honestly achieving it (or did in the past anyway). Combine that with an Asian cultural emphasis around testing/studying and I think you get an interesting dynamic. Just my perspective.