UK and EU schools - Is your KID picking a UK or EU school over a US school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree. But the solution isn't to make ECs the decider, since many are BS and not particularly relevant to the future. The solution is to get rid of grade inflation and make the SAT harder. Add another 400 points or so of REALLY tricky questions and see what it tells you.

But given the massive numbers who apply to Stanford, they have to have some decision mechanism for selection and, given grade inflation and the relatively low difficulty of US standardized tests, they can't make that selection on academic criteria alone. I don't think the emphasis on non-academic accomplishments makes much sense, but it's probably as good as many.

The US already has very hard STEM tests, see above

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree. But the solution isn't to make ECs the decider, since many are BS and not particularly relevant to the future. The solution is to get rid of grade inflation and make the SAT harder. Add another 400 points or so of REALLY tricky questions and see what it tells you.

But given the massive numbers who apply to Stanford, they have to have some decision mechanism for selection and, given grade inflation and the relatively low difficulty of US standardized tests, they can't make that selection on academic criteria alone. I don't think the emphasis on non-academic accomplishments makes much sense, but it's probably as good as many.

The US already has very hard STEM tests, see above

Stanford and other US universities (or high schools, for that matter) do not require any of these tough STEM tests. In theory they could do so, but the attachment to holistic admissions is strong so I think it's highly unlikely.

Also, unlike the UK and most European countries, the US has no national curriculum. The AP or IB are the closest, but they are hardly universal (the best privates think they are too easy and mediocre publics don't have the resources to teach them). In the UK, universities are comparing GSCE/ A-Level/ MAT/ TSA scores; in the US, they are comparing apples to oranges. Each system has its strengths.