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Five-year-old boy's 15-page CV grabs China online attention
- iwiririwo 8y agotl;dr bullshit social media story picked up by other media
- thrwia22 8y agoindeed. skimmed through the article for 10 seconds, eyes picked "read over 10,000 books" - instantly called it bullshit and closed
- tedmiston 8y agoThe NYT article was more informative. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/world/asia/china-child-resume.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/world/asia/china-child-re... > Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the University of Kansas, said the debate reflected widespread anxiety among Chinese parents about getting their children into top schools. In China’s test-dominated system, exam scores determine where students go to college and what careers they can pursue. It's easy to forget how different other education systems can be.
- openIce 8y ago>It's easy to forget how different other education systems can be. Yeah isn't it weird how Europe and Asia care more about exam scores when applying to schools than how far you can kick a ball or how much money your parents have...
- thrwia22 8y agoyeah and it's then easy to believe in that a 5yo could read 10,000 books, cause the "educational system is different". i am quite amazed that some people buy that with serious face. there's limit to lies
- loungelover 8y agoThat’s only 5.4 books per day since birth totally possible
- ahussain 8y agoKids' books also have a lot of pictures
- village-idiot 8y agoThey’re also read to them and not by them up until a certain age.
- jacobolus 8y agoIt is entirely possible for a kid to learn to read by 3 or 3.5 years old, if parents are obsessive about it. In the long run life isn’t a race, and the kids who don’t learn to read until they are 6 catch up fine. But small children are quite capable if you push them. I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you got your kid reading picture books all day for three years from ages 3–5, you could plausibly get to 10,000. Picture books are pretty short. However, it sounds like this isn’t a literal 10,000 books. The New York Times story says the kid’s “CV” lists the 408 books he has read this year. So probably <1000 as a lifetime total.
- galuggus 8y ago10,000 in Chinese often means a big number. It is the equivalent to myriad in English.
- fhars 8y agoA myriad literally (literally literally, not figuratively) is 10000 in English... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriad
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- liftbigweights 8y ago> In China’s test-dominated system, exam scores determine where students go to college and what careers they can pursue. This is only true for the masses. The children of political and business elite have special privileges and greater options ( such as studying at harvard, yale, oxford, etc ). > It's easy to forget how different other education systems can be. It isn't so different. The education system in the US is dominated by test scores as well. The quality of jobs and career are dependent on the quality of colleges you attend and your scores. Of course in china ( and much of asia ), they have a large population for limited opportunities and resources so the situation can get extreme. China has the same landmass as the US but they have 1.1 billion more people.
- olliej 8y agoFor the elite, the same applies in the US. You can generally buy your way into the Ivys if your parents have enough money, or if your parents were students (which the could have been because their parents had been). Coupled with the general problem of high paying jobs in many fields favoring the school on your degree over actual ability you get a self reinforcing cycle.
- naveen99 8y agoWhere do you find ball park estimates on amount of donation to secure a spot in an ivy ? Asking for a friend :)
- why_only_15 8y agoIt depends on the Ivy. Somewhere like Harvard I've heard the minimum is about $1M.
- ardy42 8y ago> It isn't so different. The education system in the US is dominated by test scores as well. The quality of jobs and career are dependent on the quality of colleges you attend and your scores. They're very different in degree. The US uses test scores in a much looser way, and they're usually one factor among many in admissions. Extracurriculars can be extremely helpful to get into a good US school, but I understand in China they'd be a waste of time and a distraction from what a student should really be focusing on: the college entrance exam.
- ianmcgowan 8y agoNot that different from the US, outside the hacker news bubble. I have a high schooler and let’s just say there’s a lot of attention to three numbers right now - GPA, SAT, and ACT. Those numbers will have an outsized impact on my kid’s life. Granted though, that there are still paths to a happy life, but just a little more “alternative”.
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- ourmandave 8y agoIf you're looking at Parental Plus loans, those scores will have a big impact on your life as well. =(
- tedmiston 8y agoDo you mean that the Parent PLUS loans are directly dependent on test scores or something like lower standardized test scores → less scholarships going into school → more loans?
- ourmandave 8y agoThe latter. The amount of academic scholarship money a few points on the ACT makes is huge when you multiply by 4 (or more) years.
- tedmiston 8y agoThat makes sense but my personal experience is that I was able to obtain substantially more scholarship dollars post-starting college vs anything offered off of high school credentials. I graduated high school at the top of my class (< 1%) and had strong but not super competitive test scores. I went to a public state school so perhaps different for others.
- hoaw 8y agoI would agree. The west had a chance to reform their education systems to become different with the new information age, but most countries choose not to. In fact they have been going the other way. Today in most countries things like housing, grades, connections and insurance are even more important than it used to be. Turns out people really do not want to compete on similar terms in the open market.
- dawhizkid 8y agoIt isn't that different. If you want to go into management consulting or investment banking (the most "elite" career paths out of college if you want to pursue business) then to even have a chance to apply you have to go to a school with on-site interviews to those companies, which is basically limited to Ivy league + MIT + Stanford + a select few top public schools and liberal arts colleges.
- nixarian 8y agoI can't wait to bring china-like jobs to the united states. it will be good, honest!
- ashelmire 8y ago> The competition for seats at top schools in China is notoriously cutthroat. In some cities, the wealthy and well connected pay large sums of money, sometimes described as “donations,” to secure placements in top programs. So... exactly like the US then? This is how every top tier university operates. Ability to pay is something considered before acceptance for ALL students; and children of major donors are guaranteed entrance. It's not any different at earlier levels of education in the US either - it's pay to play.
- adventured 8y agoNo, not exactly like the US. Rather, it's similar for some schools. The US, fortunately, has a vast number of extraordinary universities. At MIT for example, tied for the third best US university [1], they rank #137 on the median family income level among universities. That places them behind such schools as the University of Dallas, Virginia Tech and the University of Charleston. Columbia is tied for the third best ranked US university. It ranks #89 on median family income. Those students are largely not elite rich families buying their way in. The University of Chicago is also tied for third best US university. They rank #138 on median family income. Behind the university of Scranton, UNC Chapel Hill, and Xavier. Cornell is ranked as the #16 US university, and comes in #87 in median family income. California Institute of Technology is ranked #12. They're #105 on the median family income metric. UCLA is ranked #19 in US universities, and ranks #353 on median family income among universities. UC Berkely is tied for being the 22nd best university in the US. It ranks #214 on median family income, behind Babson, Mountain Saint Mary's, Vermont, and Willamette. Carnegie Mellon is the #25 US university. They're ranked #81 for median family income. Emory is the #21 US university, and ranks #120 on median family income. The University of Florida is ranked #36 in US universities, and comes in #322 in median family income. You can go there for $6,000 per year in-state. There are two dozen other top 50 schools I can add to this list, that rank far below what you'd expect on median family income. [1] https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-unive...
- ashelmire 8y agoThis article (and I) wasn’t talking about median income. At any of the schools you just named, a significant donation means your child is attending. How do you think they afford to give scholarships to so many students?
- olliej 8y agoI read CVs all the time. 15 pages is far too long, he needs to condense it down to 2 pages max, and get a github account demonstrating his achievements. :)
- jimmaswell 8y agoIs a CV not supposed to be the long form, while a resume would be two pages max?
- village-idiot 8y agoYes, but I’m under the impression that CVs are a few pages and more common for academics with long publishing and speaking histories. I’ve never seen a CV in the business world, but resumes are of course very common.
- BrandoElFollito 8y agoI make sure mine is 1 page long, despite 25 years of international businesses, managing greenfield ops, R&D sites etc for huge companies and whatnot. I find it hard to belive that one needs to have more than one page, no matter the civilization changing things they did.