Anonymous wrote:
I went to a selective high school in Europe where all high schoolers prepared really hard for their end of high school exams (Bac, IB, etc). None of us "enjoyed" that time. There's nothing to enjoy. It's just hard work. Then if you go to a challenging undergrad program with exams that only select for a small number of students each year, and shed the rest, it's also a lot of stressful work. You can start enjoying yourself again in grad school.
My cousins in Japan had it even harder. Everyone goes to prep school when high school lets out, and you work far into the night to get into a good university.
This concept of having a fun and relaxing time in high school is new to me, and I've only encountered it since coming here to the US. But then, it seems US college students have a lot of free time as well... perhaps it comes from 4 year undergrads, instead of the European 3 year? Which makes for an expensive way to get the same diploma.
Lots of European universities confer BA equivalents in four years, PP. University of Edinburgh, where I graduated, was four years.
Aside from AP exams, we don’t have end of senior year exams in the US. So the students really have nothing to prepare for.