A Korean recipe for admission to the Ivy League

Today's New York Times takes a look at the Daewon prep school and the Minjok Leadership Academy in South Korea. Both schools have perfected a system for admissions to Harvard, Yale, and top-tier colleges in the United States, which includes a regimen of non-stop cramming, instruction from foreign teachers in writing and other subjects, and an enormous amount of pressure from parents and administrators to succeed. Naturally, there is little time for personal interests, suggests the article:

Both schools suppress teenage romance as a waste of time.

“What are you doing holding hands?” a Daewon administrator scolded an adolescent couple recently, according to his aides. “You should be studying!”

But the administrators at the other school, Minjok, appear to be a little less heartless -- the school recently deactivated the dormitory surveillance cameras used to prevent students from dozing off in late-night study sessions.

According to the article, Korean society grants great social status to people who graduate from Ivy League colleges in the United States. This certainly helps explain why parents and students are willing to accept the Daewon and Minjok lifestyle, and may also explain the Azia Kim episode at Stanford and a recent string of scandals in South Korea involving high-profile figures who lied about their U.S. academic credentials.

I don't agree with the methods and attitudes at the two Korean schools, but students have to be admired for being able to do so well on the American SATs, coursework, and especially their writing skills, considering English seems to be a second language for most of them, and they are growing up in a Korean-language environment. They're not getting into Harvard based on legacy status or the Z-list ...