Are American schooling expectations in films the same in real life?

[Offandonagain]

I find that Typically in American high school type films such as She’s all that, 10 things, fresh Prince, American pie, Spider-Man etc there is a big emphasis on going to college after school…. Grades, scholarships, summer schools, locations.

It seems to be a bigger deal that the UK, and you’re a failure if you don’t go. Hope true is this though?

Also, are us unis better both academically and socially than uk ones?… not sure if that question can be answered

one of the graduation band members was not going to college, he was training in underwater welding and I thought, how cool is that! After all the engineering, law, medicine and music majors it really stood out.

in dd1s high school - very much a college prep school - one girl in her year refused to apply to any colleges because she was going on the beauty pagent circuit! dd said the college counsellors begged her to just apply (so they could say they had a 100% college acceptance rate) but she wouldn't :)

Another thing that is definitely different to Ireland - but I suspect not so much to UK - is what really matters when talking about colleges in high school is what university you go to more than the major you intend to pick. loads of people have no idea going in. The friend of my son who qualified as a welder in high school had no idea. did a geology class in his first semester and fell in love with the subject and that is what he is today.

If we’re generalising and talking about an “average” suburban high school (so not an inner-city school or a rural school out in the sticks) where the parents are a mix of blue and white college professionals, then yes. It’s mostly like the movies. School buses, sports teams, prom, driving lessons, taking a mix of subjects all four years and stressing over college/university/SAT exams.

Where real life will differ from tv/movies most, IMO, is that because so much of the film industry is based in California, they tend to capture life in a climate that most of the US doesn’t experience year-round. Eg, students in Minnesota won’t be hanging out in a “quad” after school in February because they’d get frostbite.

But yes, overall just like the movies. Plots may be dramatized but the structure is based on reality. If it wasn’t, American moviegoers would question it.

I read somewhere, a few years ago, a review of a book saying that at 18, academically, American kids were behind a lot of the Western world, but by 30 the reverse was true, because they would keep plugging on with further study, research, professional qualifications and development.

How true is this and can anyone name this book I have never been able to track down since?

Not true; standard US graduating courses are more like GCSEs; AP is more like IB but isn’t at the A-level standard. I work in admissions at a global top 10 U.K. university (parity with Harvard) and our admissions requirements for AP are much higher than Harvard’s, to reflect our A-level standard offer (in fact even full 5s across the board in 5+ APs we would still consider just about what we’d expect as a baseline).

US universities/colleges admit much more on aptitude scores and on extracurriculars: we don’t; but we find to be honest that U.K. applicants tend to be just as well rounded anyway as a decent US applicant. Most sixth formers are actually doing quite a bit of stuff outside their academic subjects, and are more focused on work experience.

The U.K. school system even at an average state school is performing at an average academic level that is better than the average US high school, and actually also somewhat above the Irish system and slightly above the Scottish system; though (like the IB and EB) those also have a slightly different emphasis and style.

Yes, there’s some truth in this. Many courses that are degree level here are graduate degrees in the US (eg medicine, law) so only taken after a first four year degree. There is a wider plurality of institutions and more ability to swap between them, so as a pp said, you can eg. do two years of community college after high school, then transfer to a good state university for your final two years, then move to another university for a graduate degree or law school, or business college, or a PhD (which takes 6+ years). You might also spend some of that time working as a teaching or research assistant to a professor as part of any scholarship or financial aid package, or do other paid work. There are many more routes for what we would call mature students to go back to or on to further study, too.

It is amusing how many UK people think americans are all thick with a bad education and that quite average UK students would storm through academic life there.

It was one of many surprises for me that this is a common conceit among people on MN, given that it's based on no actual evidence at all. Like the poster above who said "The vast majority of high school graduators [sic] don't go to Uni. Don't even try, not even in the cards." when a simple google search provides ample evidence that it's simply not true.

If we're all so thick and poorly educated, perhaps someone can explain to me why out of the twenty largest technology companies in the world, fifteen are American, four are in Asia and one is in northern Europe.

If we're all so thick and poorly educated, perhaps someone can explain to me why out of the twenty largest technology companies in the world, fifteen are American, four are in Asia and one is in northern Europe.

Americans aren’t all thick and poorly educated; but the reasons for those tech companies being there and in Asia are actually the tax incentives.

However: the US education system has an enormous range compared to other systems. At the top end students work very very hard to be all-rounders, but there is a lot of busywork and less encouragement of deep independent research and argument until well into the degree. But students tend to take a wide range of subjects. On average US high school leavers are at a lower academic attainment level than in most of Europe and parts of Asia, but it’s far easier and more common in the US to continue education into college level and higher vocational study than in many of those countries. US students are also substantially more independent and self-motivated than Asian countries tend to allow students to be.

And European countries have big variations in their systems: despite the fees, the U.K. system probably works overall somewhat better than most EU countries. Germany, for example, has impressively high levels of technical and vocational education and training, but a rather sclerotic academic degree system which inhibits disciplinary innovation.

Each system has its flaws and good points overall, and the US system has a lot of good points.

I spent a few years in a rural American high school. The vast majority of my class went to the local community college. Of the people
I stayed in touch with, about half did two years and then on to a trade and the others moved to state university and earned 4 year degrees.

But certainly going to community college (at least in that community) was considered ‘going to college’, a big achievement, something to really be celebrated, even though it was incredibly easy to get in.

One of the other major differences in the US and UK systems is that mostly you dont choose your degree before you go to College, you probably have an idea, but you enroll in a place and then work out what you want to ‘major’ in over the first couple of years - while taking the broad range of courses that the College mandates for graduation. Its a better system for people who arent sure what they want to study yet, but not so great if you are already very focussed

Oh and each course you complete gives you a number of credits (depending upon if the particular course is 1 term or 1 year). If your circumstances change (run out of money, move State, have a baby) you can mostly bank the credits and use them to reenroll at another College within a certain time frame. That why many students take more than 4 years to graduate, but still get there

Also did you know the difference between a College and University in the US is that Colleges only teach undergraduates, Universities also have graduate and PhD programs.

And the Community College system is great, it mostly gives associate degrees and certificates and has more vocational programs like nursing, business administration and health technician specialties. Those that want can then take their credits and transfer to a traditional College and go on to study for a Bachelors degree. Those that dont can enter the workforce without as much debt

US universities/colleges admit much more on aptitude scores and on extracurriculars

They really don't. I appreciate you are an expert on oxford or cambridge admissions but you really don't understand the US college admissions process.

the reasons for those tech companies being there and in Asia are actually the tax incentives.

@nightwakingmoon, what is the difference in tax incentives that particularly applies to technology companies.

US universities/colleges admit much more on aptitude scores and on extracurriculars

Pallisers is correct, this is really not the case. Most universities and colleges have dropped the requirement for aptitude tests. The primary focus is on GPA and the difficulty level of the courses you've taken - calculus vs ceramics, for example. Extracurriculars might be a tie-breaker between two otherwise equal applicants.

Also did you know the difference between a College and University in the US is that Colleges only teach undergraduates, Universities also have graduate and PhD programs.

This is true as a general rule, but not in every case. Many institutions start out as colleges only offering undergraduate degrees, then add post-graduate programs without changing their names.

As a Scot my impression is that it's the English A level system that is the unusual system with such early specialisation, the American system, the IB and the Scottish system teach more broadly for longer. In Scotland we do more subjects at Higher than you do at A level and are then admitted to a faculty at University rather than a specific subject and don't chose our honours subject until we're two years in. I think it's a massive weakness of the English system that specialisation starts so young. But you all love A levels.

The American system has lots of strengths, it's much more focussed on creating rounded individuals than the English system. And if it encourages life long learning that's a massive strength.

My sister went to an American college post A levels, not Ivy League but a good one nonetheless. She found it shocking how little the students knew about the subject they had gone to college to major in. It seems in the states up until 18 they continue to do lots of subjects, rather than the 3/4 you’d do in the UK for A level so there was a broader knowledge but it wasn’t at anywhere near such a high level. She majored in biology and in her first year at college had a series of lectures explaining photosynthesis. She was 19 and expected to write an essay explaining the basics of photosynthesis as a biology major 🥴

I can assure you that they do use aptitude tests and extracurriculars more than we do — because we don’t use them at all. There is no equivalent of the SAT or the admissions essay in the U.K. at all (the BMAT is a small exception). Whereas even though it’s less used than it used to be, the SAT is still widely used in the US — as is the GRE for graduate schools, which again doesn’t exist here.

We also don’t give any weight to any form of extracurriculars in the U.K. Yes it’s nice to see a UCAS personal statement where someone’s done a lot of extracurricular activities — but it isn’t part of the academic assessment process, mainly because to do so would give wealthier students an advantage.

What makes you think I haven’t worked in the US? I have — at both a liberal arts college and a big R1 — so I can assure you I know the differences very well. Aptitude tests are still in use in the US, whereas not at all in the U.K.

I'm very curious about which university this is, because as far as I can tell the stats for getting into Harvard are significantly higher than getting into any UK school.

Most Oxford courses, for instance, require a 1400 on the SAT, combined with three 5s on AP exams. Harvard doesn't have requirements, of course, because US schools don't have requirements; it's much more flexible than that. However, the average SAT is a 1510, and the 75th percentile is at a 1580 (which is near-perfect). Most Harvard entrants who have a full range of EPs at their schools (which isn't true for all schools; Harvard draws from poorer and less provisioned schools as well) would be startled at the low bar of just three 5s--they would expect most students to have at least five or six.

It's true that American schools stay far more general for far longer than UK schools; you'd have to go through at least an MA degree in America to get to where UK students are at the end of their BA. However, along the way you have significantly more exposure to other subjects, which, at its best, promotes lateral thinking, creativity, and curiosity. A lot of British students will, for instance, stop taking a language, or a science, or a literature at the age of 16. In America, you more or less have to do all of those things until at least your sophomore year of college, or around 20. British courses are far deeper and more specialized than American ones, on the other hand.

It really depends what you want an undergraduate education to do for students, in the ideal: make them skilled specialists or make them broad, creative thinkers. One isn't better than they other; they're just different.

In terms of admissions, at the big state schools, it tends to be your stats alone: your GPA (based on coursework throughout your four years of high school) and your standardized tests, either the ACT or the SAT. Some don't even require essays or recommendations.

At your most elite universities, which have huge admissions teams, it's also very much based on letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, personal statements that talk about your perspective on the world, supplemental essays, contextual information, (sometimes) interviews, relationship to the university, particular skills or perspectives you might bring to campus/the classroom, the rigor of your coursework, and then your GPA and your SATs.

Finally, yes there's an increasing expectation amongst the professional classes that you'll do some form of education beyond your BA. These include academic degrees (MA, PhD), as in the UK. But they also include law (JD), medicine (MD), business (MBA), policy (MPA), etc., as well as vocational MAs (e.g. MA in advertising). There are no law or medicine undergrad degrees, and most big corporations will want you to do an MBA at some point, though they'll often pay for it.

in our wealthy suburban area, I think the statistic was 97% of students go to university.

We would consider it to be dropping out of school and basically throwing away her future if our dd didn’t at least complete a bachelor’s degree. Like all of her peers, she has been taught from a very young age that school goes through university. More advanced degrees are optional and depend upon the chosen career path.

she doesn’t attend summer school because that is typically for failed classes. She has enrolled in summer camps for subject matter enrichment. She enjoys those because they tend to be full of quirky gifted and advanced kids like her. She also takes purely recreational activities. Both are good for creating a well-rounded, well educated individual.

(The latter half of that was general, not aimed at the quoted poster, who clearly knows higher ed!)

NB we also don’t use an equivalent to GPA here — and that is related to one key difference between US and UK systems. In the US there is a lot more focus on rote-learning, multiple-choice testing, survey work and busywork, which is good at keeping students working and focused, but also tends to inhibit independent learning and research, as well as analytical and critical skills.

A bit of that kind of test-focused work tends to be a good thing - the old modular AS/A-level here was actually pretty successful - but there tends to be a greater emphasis on the U.K. system on deeper topic-based and problem-solving skills rather than testing or survey work. Hence US students having a broad curriculum but tending to take longer to catch up during the degree.

The range of the US college system I think is better on average than here, and there’s much more flexibility - in fact, generally, Anglophone tertiary systems are better at allowing students to switch between vocational-technical and academic study than many others. Germany, as I mentioned upthread, has very high quality technical and vocational education, but it’s hard to move between that and more academic streams (and if you wanted to go to university to study something like philosophy or literature, you’d find it very old-fashioned and rigid compared to just about anywhere in the Anglosphere).

We also don’t give any weight to any form of extracurriculars in the U.K. Yes it’s nice to see a UCAS personal statement where someone’s done a lot of extracurricular activities — but it isn’t part of the academic assessment process, mainly because to do so would give wealthier students an advantage.

Seriously? you think oxford and cambridge don't give an advantage to wealthier students? It is all egalitarian heaven compared to US universities?

I do understand though that it is important to remember that England is still Top Nation otherwise we'd have the End of History.

sorry about the lack of quotes there

Yes, I agree with all this — and also that there are a lot more facets to college applications in the US, which we either don’t make use of or disregard (for various reasons). (For example, we disregard extracurriculars; but use a lot of contextual data to see how an applicant’s exam results fit into their social demographic - so that we can see eg. how they compare to local and national benchmarks for their postcode/school type. So it’s quite data-heavy and not nearly as much about the qualities of the person themselves as it is in the US.)

Where I am we don’t actually have any SAT requirements for US students at all (we might glance at their scores/GPA just to see what they are, but we essentially aren’t that bothered what they are) — but our baseline requirement is at least 5 APs at 5. To be honest we get relatively few US applicants, mainly because our fees for overseas students are so high, it’s often cheaper to go to an Ivy or an expensive liberal arts college anyway 🤷‍♀️ 🙁

There are many more US applicants at graduate level, where we look in detail at the transcripts and written work, but not at all at GRE.

Actually, we don’t! There are still many kids from private schools - but largely because they are, unfortunately, often extremely good at educating their students, and there are some very clever kids there, and a perennial feature of life is that wealth buys you good education.

But your average private school kid will need to do a lot more than a state school kid to get an offer — everything is now done through a big spreadsheet of adjusted data analysis that tells us how an applicant is performing relative to school advantage, local and national levels and a range of other benchmarks including postcode data on social disadvantage, free school meals, and a range of other indicators.

One of the reasons we don’t use extracurriculars at all in admissions is that they are often merely reflective of parental income or school resources, so we’re looking only at academic performance, but also how that is adjusted by social background and school, so that we see (fur example) for every applicant, the stats on their school’s exam performance and university places awarded. Three A* from Westminster is going to be far less of an achievement than getting the same at the local comp.

I was a Journalism and Spanish major.
I still had to take biology, algebra, music, philosophy, sociology, physical education and other classes that had nothing to do with my dual major. In fact, the maths and science courses were for "non-major" students and were pretty basic.
However, when I took my journalism and Spanish language classes in my first year, they were higher level due to my AP's in those subjects and in consideration of my major.
I think your sister was badly advised. She could have changed her class to one towards her major/upper-level.