Student Union
Will Kindness Get You Into College?
![Colleges and universities are starting to recognize kindness as a factor for admissions.](https://gdb.voanews.com/99f9436e-6324-414b-b862-c5078e455bf7_cx0_cy8_cw0_w250_r1_s.jpg)
Kindness, not grades and test scores, may become the new “it factor” for college admissions departments.
More admissions officers are including kindness, compassion and helping others in their assessment of college applicants.
“This is a real opportunity for us to think about how we can get along with people, particularly those who are different than us,” said Trisha Ross-Anderson, senior program manager at Harvard University’s Making Caring Common project.
Kindness has been pushed to the backburner in the admissions and education process, she said, but needs to come forward.
“Kindness helps build a better community on campus,” said Ann McDermott, director of admissions at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. As students understand and respect their peers more it improves the college experience for most students. And hopefully, that translates into a better society after the student graduates, she said.
As incivility increases on campus and on social media, kindness becomes more important, say educators. Colleges and universities realize they have neglected to include that message in the highly competitive world of higher education.
“Today, [civility] is so important because of what we see in the larger community,” said Paul T. White, assistant dean of admissions at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore.
During the required admissions interview for Johns Hopkins Medical School, interviewers note how an applicant treats staff and other applicants.They want to “see how they act with people who aren’t involved in the process,” White said.“If they are rude to someone, I want to know about it.”
He said he looks for things that demonstrate compassion, such as an applicant's service history and letters of recommendation.“I frankly look for others who are interested in serving others and not just checking off a list of ‘Oh, I need clinical experience,’” White said.
White pointed to events like those held in Charlottesville, Virginia, near the University of Virginia, as a larger reason for promoting kindness at the college level.A white supremacist rally ended in three deaths there in August.
The Center for the Study for Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, which tracks hate crimes, says incidents increased 20 percent in 2016 in cities with a population of 250,000 or more.
Kindness has not been obvious on the checklist of qualities most schools look for in an applicant.Many students think admissions officers want to see participation in many clubs and extracurricular activities, McDermott said.
Some high-school students find themselves at 4 a.m. swim practice, practicing long hours on the violin or flute after school to achieve first chair in the orchestra, and studying long into the night to keep top grades.
Get into a good school and a good life will follow, is the prevailing expectation, said Iris Godes, associate vice president of enrollment, and dean of admissions at Dean College in Massachusetts. She said many parents put unnecessary expectations on their children, as they feel their kids represent them.
McDermott said students show up to college already burned out because of the pressure they feel to succeed.
“It’s important to reduce the anxiety level that these kids have,” Godes said, “There’s been too much placed on status.It’s about being a good citizen. It’s about being a good person.”
All this activity to compete nationally -- and in the past decade, internationally -- for a spot at a coveted college can exhaust and discourage a student, while conditioning them to think that only kids gifted on many levels have a chance at success.Some students are willing to push the boundaries by padding their resumes or cutting corners on their alleged superlatives, which can lead to cheating, Ross-Anderson said.
More than 175 college admissions offices, including eight Ivy League universities, have joined an effort called "Turning the Tide". “High school students often perceive colleges as simply valuing their achievements, not their responsibility for others and their communities,” according to Turning the Tide’s executive summary.
Many participating schools have added essay questions to the application about kindness and reduced the number of places to list extracurricular activities, Ross-Anderson said.This will make students feel less pressure to participate in numerous extracurriculars.
Students should stop “overloading” on advanced placement (AP) and international baccalaureate (IB) courses that show they are beyond high school curriculum, according to Turning the Tide.They should focus on “sustained academic achievement in a limited number of areas,” the executive summary said.
“Kindness is very important professionally,” Ross-Anderson said, “Employers want people that can collaborate well with others."She admits kindness is hard to measure, “The assessment portion of this work is very challenging.”
“It’s much more an art form than a science,” Elgarico echoed.
At Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, one applicant stood out because of one of his recommendations - from the high-school custodian. The letter spoke to the boy’s kindness when nobody was looking, picking up trash, and how he took the time to learn all the members of the custodial staff’s names, according to the New York Times.
The admissions staff voted unanimously to accept him to Dartmouth.
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- By VOA News
International students have options to pay for grad school
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U.S. News & World Report tackles the challenges of paying for grad school as an international student with this story giving tips on paying for school. Read the full story here. (August 2024)
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Economics, tensions blamed for Chinese students shifting from US to Australia, Britain
![FILE - Chinese students wait outside the U.S. Embassy for their visa application interviews, May 2, 2012, in Beijing.](https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-4fea-08dc96d3d82c_cx0_cy5_cw0_w250_r1_s.jpg)
U.S. universities are welcoming international students as the academic year begins. But while the total number of foreign students is steadily growing, the top sending country, China, is showing signs of leveling out or shrinking.
Industry analysts say the negative trend is mainly due to higher costs amid China’s struggling economy, with a growing number of students going to less expensive countries like Australia and Britain, and tense ties between Washington and Beijing.
The number of foreign students studying in the U.S. in 2022-23 passed 1 million for the first time since the COVID pandemic, said Open Doors, an information resource on international students and scholars.
While the U.S. saw a nearly 12% total increase year-on-year for that period, the number of international students from China, its top source, fell by 0.2% to 289,526.
That’s 600 fewer students than the 2021-22 academic year, when their numbers dropped by nearly 9%. The COVID pandemic saw Chinese student numbers drop in 2020-21 by nearly 15%, in line with the world total drop.
While it’s not yet clear if the drop is a leveling out or a fluctuating decline, analysts say China’s struggling economy and the high cost of studying in the U.S. are the main reasons for the fall in student numbers.
Vincent Chen, a Chinese study abroad consultant based in Shanghai, said although most of his clients are still interested in studying in the U.S., there is a clear downward trend, while applicants for Anglophone universities in Australia and Britain have been increasing.
"If you just want to go abroad, a one-year master's degree in the U.K. is much cheaper,” Chen said. “Many people can't afford to study in the U.S., so they have to settle for the next best thing."
Data from the nonprofit U.S. group College Board Research shows that in the 2023-24 academic year, the average tuition and fees for a U.S. private college four-year education increased 4% to $41,540 compared with the previous academic year.
The British Council said three to four years of undergraduate tuition in Britain starts as low as $15,000.
The number of Chinese students in Britain was 154,260 in 2022-23, according to the U.K. Higher Education Statistics Agency, HESA, up from 121,145 in the 2018/19 academic year.
Australia’s Home Affairs office said in the 2023-24 program year, China was the top source foreign country for new student visa grants at 43,389, up slightly (1.5%) from the previous year.
Chen said Chinese state media's negative portrayal of the United States and concerns about discrimination have also contributed to the shift.
Bruce Zhang, a Chinese citizen who received his master's degree in Europe after studying in China, told VOA Mandarin he had such an incident occur to him after he was admitted to a U.S. university’s Ph.D. program.
When he entered Boston's Logan International Airport last year, Zhang said customs officers questioned him for more than an hour about his research, and if it had any links to the military, and took his computer and mobile phone for examination.
"Fortunately, I had heard that U.S. customs might be stringent in inspecting Chinese students, so I had relatively few study-related data and documents on my personal computer," he said.
Zhang was allowed to enter the U.S. for his studies in materials science, but the questioning left him so rattled that he has encouraged other Chinese to study elsewhere.
Cui Kai, a study abroad consultant in Massachusetts told VOA Mandarin that experiences like Zhang’s or worse happen for a reason.
"Students who were questioned or their visas were revoked at the customs are usually those who completed their undergraduate studies in China and come to the U.S. for a master's or doctoral degree in a sensitive major," said Cui.
Former President Donald Trump signed Proclamation 10043 in June 2020, prohibiting visas for any Chinese student who “has been employed by, studied at, or conducted research at or on behalf of, an entity in the PRC that implements or supports the PRC's “military-civil fusion strategy.”
The U.S. says China has been using students and scholars to gain access to key technology and, under Proclamation 10043, revoked more than 1,000 visas issued to Chinese nationals and has denied thousands more.
Critics say the policy is costly to the U.S. and is encouraging Chinese students to look to European and other universities.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
- By VOA News
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![FILE - A Dartmouth Athletics banner hangs outside Alumni Gymnasium on the Dartmouth University campus in Hanover, NH, March 5, 2024.](https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-e46b-08dcc24fe52c_cx0_cy9_cw0_w250_r1_s.jpg)
A report by Duolingo takes a look at the experiences of Gen Z international students studying in the U.S., Australia and the U.K, The Pie reports.
The report, the site says, debunks "characterizations of them as 'tech-obsessed, attention-deficit and self-centered'" and highlights "their emerging role in shaping global politics and economics."
Read the full story here. (August 2024)
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![FILE - A newly printed U.S. dollar bill is shown at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's Western Currency Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on Dec. 8, 2022.](https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-5bb0-08dba10bf4ed_w250_r1_s.jpg)
U.S. News & World Report crunched the numbers and came up with a list of 20 U.S. colleges and universities with annual total costs at or below $20,184. Check out these best bargains for international students here. (August 2024)
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![FILE - Students walk down Jayhawk Boulevard, the main street through the main University of Kansas campus, in Lawrence, Kansas, April 12, 2024.](https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-b8af-08dca145cc99_w250_r1_s.jpg)
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U.S. News & World Report takes a look at them and details how to best use them. Read the article here. (June 2024)