(High) Scores to Settle
Harvard University: 1520 out of 1600
Stanford University: 1570 out of 1600
Seoul National University: 377 out of 400
Tsinghua University: 681 out of 750
Peking University: 680 out of 750
These numbers are the average college entrance exam or standardized test scores of students admitted to the most prestigious universities in East Asia, the United States, and the world. They represent the nearly unattainable, almost holy, prestige associated with elite institutions of education. They represent the social mobility, employment opportunities, and the better life all parents want for their children. They represent the physical, psychological, and financial sacrifices students make for prestige. Most importantly, they are the driving factor behind the plummeting mental health of East Asian and Asian American high school students around the world.
As a result of historical and cultural emphasis on education, East Asian students face tremendous and mounting pressure from their parents to get into highly ranked universities compared to students of other ethnic backgrounds. Starting from the imperial dynasties of its early history until the late 1950s, China had an annual civil service examination (the keju) open to all citizens, regardless of socioeconomic background or status. If they studied hard and received a high score, any individual could become a public official in the emperor’s service. The top scorer could even marry a princess, elevating themselves and their families into nobility and wealth. Simply put, dedication and a good score would ensure one’s own success, as well as prosperity for generations to come. The concept of selecting bureaucrats based on educational merit soon spread throughout East Asia, becoming popular in Japan, Korea, and even Vietnam. For centuries, the keju remained the only steadfast, respectable route of socioeconomic mobility accessible to all, creating and reinforcing a cultural emphasis on education that continues today. While the civil service examination no longer exists, the value of education still rings true for East Asian students. In “Can Education Values be Borrowed? Looking into Cultural Differences,” Dr. Kai-Ming Cheng points out that “in mainland China, formal education remains the only path for conversion of rural citizenship into urban citizenship. In Japan, passing the university entrance examination is still a necessary first step toward a respectable career. Thus, children labor under incredible pressure to study for and pass their exams. To a significant degree education is still seen as the major, though no longer the only, route for upward mobility in East Asian societies” (Cheng 17). The modern versions of the keju — China’s gaokao, South Korea’s hanja, and Japan’s Sentaa Shiken — are the college entrance exams that dictate where students spend their college years, employment prospects, social networks, and more. In other words, achieving top scores on standardized tests has incredible historical and cultural significance in East Asia.
Taking into account their national history and engrained cultural values, East Asian parents are inclined to put enormous academic pressure on their children’s test scores. As evidenced by the scores above, the numerical thresholds for elite schools in East Asia are becoming more and more difficult to reach. Propelled by cultural values and tightening competition, parental pressure on students has reached frightening heights. Of course, one cannot deny the statistical effectiveness of parental pressure. VOA News reports “Students in China, Singapore, Macao… Japan … Korea … and Hong Kong are among those who eclipse U.S. students in reading, math and science, according to an international study of education worldwide.” It seems that East Asian students are leading the pack; whatever their parents are doing, it’s working.
Yet scores only tell one part of the story. Once we dive past the shiny exterior of high scores, we see that intense parental pressure has manifested itself in East Asian students’ increasingly toxic mental health. A research team under the Harvard Graduate School of Education found “Research confirm[ed] the debilitating of academic stress on Chinese students. In a study with [Chinese students] from urban and rural areas, Therese Hesketh and her colleagues found that … 73% of them were physically being punished by parents for lax academic effort. Over one-third of the children reported having psychosomatic symptoms at least once a week. In a study by the Beijing-based China Youth and Children Research Center, researchers … found that 76.2% of the students reported being in a bad mood because of academic pressure and high parental expectation” (Zhao 2). Unsurprisingly, China’s low levels of student mental health are mirrored in other East Asian countries with standardized college entrance exams. The extreme familial pressures on numbers may have pushed East Asian students to the top of statistics but has made their psychological and physical lives unbearable. The shocking discrepancy between academic achievement and the mental state of the achievers begs the question: Do test score success stories really make successful people?
The same question can be asked in where I live: California, home to the largest East Asian American immigrant population in the country. According to the Public Policy Institute of CA, “Foreign-born residents represented at least one-third of the population in five California counties… Among [CA] immigrants who arrived between 2010 and 2019, more than half (53%) were born in Asia” (“Immigrants in California”). Furthermore, Chinese Americans and Vietnamese Americans subgroups make up a large proportion of the Asian immigrant population in California. Like their native counterparts, East Asian American children face intense pressure on test scores from their parents, as well as similar mental and physical health struggles as a result.
Along these lines, it is easy to attribute the academic pressure East Asian immigrant parents put on their children solely to their education-heavy cultural values. After all, what else differentiates them from other second-generation immigrant children in California? The answer is obvious and not obvious at all: their status as East Asian immigrants. An academic journal published by American Psychologist clarifies, asking “why do these other ethnic [minority groups such as Blacks and Latinos] fail to adopt education as a means of mobility? … It is worth noting that ethnic minority groups have different cultural backgrounds and different historical contemporary experiences in the United States” (Sue and Okazaki 919). In other words, East Asian immigrants push their children academically more not just because of native cultural values, but because of their uniquely East Asian experience with US immigration policies that shaped their entry and populations in the United States. In “It Takes More than Grit: Reframing Asian American Achievement,” Jennifer Lee explains that “the cultural manifestations of Asian American achievement have legal and structural roots — namely the change in US immigration law in 1965 that altered the socioeconomic profiles of Asian immigrants. Privileging those with high levels of education and skills, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 ushered in a stream of highly educated, highly skilled immigrants from Asia.” Put simply, only the best of the best were given the opportunity to come to the United States. The American job opportunities and visas were only available to those from top universities. The historical hyper-selectivity in immigration policies targeting East Asians explain the high education levels of Asian immigrants today. For example, 51% of Chinese immigrants in the US are college educated compared to the 36% of the general American population. More specifically, 66% of recent CA immigrants attended university at the associate, undergraduate, masters, or graduate level (“Immigrants and Education in California”).
In a modern context, the educational criteria used to limit Asian immigration contribute to their current perception of education. Because many of them were able to build a life in the United States because of their own college entrance exams, East Asian immigrant parents place a heightened value on their children’s scores. For them, the beginning of a better life has a numerical value. Drawing from their personal experiences with testing, these parents perceive a high SAT or ACT score (US standardized tests for college admissions) as critical to their children’s success. While cultural values may have created a test-centric outlook, US immigration policy reinforced it in East Asian families. To summarize, East Asian cultural values and hyper-selectively in East Asian immigration culminate in extraordinary pressure on standardized test scores in the United States.
As I make the argument for high expectations for second-generation immigrants, I realize it could be misconstrued as isolating academic pressure to East Asian American students. I am not denying that other groups and individuals are not expected to do well on standardized tests by their parents. Rather, I am saying that parental pressure on standardized tests is heightened overall in East Asian immigrant families, as well as the risk of subsequent physical and psychological issues for their students.
Much like their foreign counterparts, East Asian American students’ mental health is severely impacted by parental pressure. The numerical mindset East Asian immigrant parents advocate is internalized by their children. One’s sense of self hinges entirely on a score and its placement in relation to others. College admissions may be a “numbers game,” but these students now perceive their lives as numbers. Suniya Luther, an ASU psychology professor, explores the impact of this “self-measurement” system: “When a child’s sense of self-worth is dependent on what they achieve, it can lead to anxiety and depression. Anxiety can come from worrying about keeping up with or outshining peers, while depression can be caused by a failure to achieve” (Wallace). The damage done to mental health manifests itself in a myriad of ways — some barely noticeable and brushed off as “weird study habits” and others making national headlines. It is not uncommon for students to skip meals, reject interpersonal interaction, and concentrate all their time on getting that perfect score. In fact, some parents even encourage these practices, praising them as efficient and signs of a successful future.
For many East Asian children, childhood has transformed into a crushing climb to the (numerical) top. Even worse, its subjects are unable and unwilling to cope with the expectations forced upon them. In East Asia, mental health and treatment are extremely stigmatized. Like the historical prioritization of exam scores, East Asia’s stance on mental health issues is rooted in history. Psychiatry expert Chee Hong Ng attributes the “strong psychiatric stigma … attached to the family [to] the burden of intense shame and guilt they carry. Mental illness tarnishes family honour, name, and ancestors. Origin of psychiatric stigma is partly in the fear of the [East Asian] family exposing its own shame to outsiders. The stronger the wish to conceal its ‘disgrace’ from being exposed, the more intense the psychiatric stigma” (Ng 385). While discussion of psychological health has definitely progressed beyond “disgrace,” contemporary East Asian families continue to view mental health as a matter of “gritting your teeth” until you reach your goals. As a result, student mental health generally goes unaddressed in East Asian high schools.
On the other hand, the importance of adolescent mental wellness has achieved a consensus among academic and scientific experts in the United States. However, this general agreement has failed to translate into permanent, meaningful action. For instance, following the suicide of a California high schooler in 2013, her high school was allocated five additional counselors (eight total at the school) to address the concerns of teachers and students. A summer later, the additional counselors were gone due to insufficient funding. Another common practice to help high school students cope with academic pressure is “doggy wellness days,” when high schools employ several therapy dogs for the general student body. Meant to serve as respite from suffocating competition and the score comparison, these “wellness days” offer ten minutes of fluffy pet therapy — at the most. Some high schools took a more restricting, academic approach: restricting the number of Advanced Placement courses (APs) students could take in a year. Such measures were eventually overturned after parents petitioned the schools about “missed opportunities” and complained that their child could “handle the pressure.” Clearly, the current institutional attempts at easing pressure on high schoolers fail to effect long-term change. Of course, I am not denouncing school counselors or adorable pet therapists. Rather, I hope that these coping mechanisms can become long-term and accessible to more students. As evidenced by the removal of additional counselors in 2013, mental health resources in schools lack attention and most importantly, funding to make any positive change. I propose a more pro-active, permanent protection of mental wellness in high schools.
However, it is important to note that coping mechanisms are unable to fully address and lessen the pressures and psychological barriers East Asian high schoolers face. To truly do so, I propose the phasing out and eventual dismantling of the standardized college entrance exam, removing the source of numbers anxiety and expectations.
In advocating for the abolition of these national examinations, I fully acknowledge the equity concerns that may arise. Historically, scores have represented the equitable accessibility of education. Through hard work and dedication, anyone and everyone could make a better life. Yet the “universal” appeal of standardized testing is no longer universal due to the increasing presence of test preparation centers. As acceptance rates for universities drop, their score thresholds rise, becoming a source of stress for number-centric East Asian parents that see their children’s road to success narrowing.
The combination of competition and numbers anxiety have led to the meteoric rise of test prep centers, private institutions offering extracurricular classes meant to provide extra practice and tutoring for students while they study for standardized tests and apply for college. In Taiwan, the number of cram schools has increased 4500% in the past thirty years (Tsai). Known as hagwons in South Korea, buxiban in China, juku in Japan, and SAT or ACT prep schools in the US, cram schools have become massively popular among East Asian students globally as a way to stay a step ahead of their peers. And everyone wants to stay ahead. In “Effects of Cram Schooling on Mathematics Performance: Evidence from Junior High Students in Taiwan,” Dr. Ping-Yin Kuan writes that “about 75% of elementary, middle, and high school students in South Korea participated in outside-school [cram schools]” in 2008. The massive popularity of test prep institutions in East Asia is mirrored in California, where attending an SAT or ACT prep school is as common as being in a school club or sport. But why the extreme popularity of these institutions? Not everyone wants or even needs extra help while studying for tests. Right?
Technically.
Once again, we turn back to the emphasis East Asian history and culture places on test scores. Feeding into these parents’ eagerness for numerical success, test prep institutions embarked on masterful and targeted self-image campaigns, marketing their services as a critical component of high scores and a successful future.
A Chinese advertisement for buxiban winter break classes (Figure 1) exemplifies the East Asian cram school. The poster implores students to “study hard, battle the gaokao” under an image of three students — none of them facing one another — holding up pencils in an almost militaristic salute, seemingly ready to go to war for their scores. A boxed line of text roughly translates to “Don’t let your life lose on the starting line.” This poster equates a college placement exam to the start of your life, a war against your peers, and potential for lifelong prosperity. And most importantly, success in all these things starts with taking winter classes at this buxiban. Though less extreme, test prep classes halfway across the world are marketed in a similar fashion, playing on numbers as the pathway to success. Figure 2 is a screenshot of a popular California SAT prep school’s website.
The first thing you see on Elite Education Institute’s website is an offer for a “free SAT or ACT diagnostic test,” accompanied by the potential of gaining admission to your dream college. (“Elite Prep Fremont”). The institution is telling eager parents that they, too, could become part of its historically successful, high-scoring clientele. With the cram school’s help, the college of dreams seems a step closer. Cleverly named, Elite Prep places itself squarely in high scores and the success that follows, values that East Asian parents are sure to consider when looking to supplement their child’s test preparation. Considering California’s high Asian immigrant population, it should be no surprise that the center’s emphasis is exceptional standardized test prep. Throughout East Asia and California, excellent marketing and word-of-mouth have established test prep schools as critical for multifaceted success. As more and more families buy into the numerical success the institutions sell, attendance at one becomes the norm. However, the large role cram schools play in success come at a hefty price.
Not only do these test prep institutions encourage and profit off the East Asian test-heavy mindset, but they also create financial inequity within the supposedly universal opportunity success standardized testing provides. Each “essential” test prep service costs upwards of one thousand dollars, a financial sacrifice many families are unable to afford. According to a China Youth Daily article, “one year in [a prestigious] cram program can reportedly cost up to $8,000, roughly three times the average annual disposable income in Anhui” (Lu). The South Korean parents spend on average “20% of its income on after-hours ‘cram schools,’ or hagwons” (Hatch). Whether test prep institutions really yield results, their high price tags have become almost mandatory financial burdens on East Asian families. The accessibility of the test itself versus the inaccessibility of learning resources needed to pass the test defeats the equity argument for college entrance exams. Put simply, standardized testing systems have become obsolete. Not only have they created a high pressure, degrading method of self-measurement for students, college entrance exams have spawned preparation institutions that defeat their primary function: equality. The modern standardized test is no longer a non-discriminatory route for socioeconomic mobility and should therefore be abolished in favor of a more student-centric college admissions process. In East Asia, the path to abolition must begin with academic and social conversations about mental health, removing the “disease” stigma associated with psychological wellness. In other words, the education system and its participants must realize the ramifications of intense emphasis on testing for wholistic college applications to develop.
Currently, college admissions in the United States are primarily dependent on three things: standardized test scores, grade point average (GPA), and college essays. Unlike single examination scores, a student’s GPA encompasses their work and progress over the course of high school, rather than a lengthy sit-down examination that could go wrong at any moment. In other words, GPA is more reflective of the student’s work ethic and academic prowess than test scores are. Furthermore, college essays are undeniably more student-central than test scores. These written questions examine students’ creativity, humanity, humor, logic, etc. — characteristics that define a person more than a score ever will. These are the parts of a student that matter in and out of the classroom, as well as the ones colleges should value. By promoting long term dedication and character, college applications become a wholistic selection process, as well as a journey of self-improvement — rather than score improvement — as well. The absence of standardized testing increases the value of GPA and student essays — application components that show the person a college is accepting, not the statistic.
To better understand how we can approach the eventual termination of college entrance exams, let us take a look at how East Asian countries and the United States are currently attempting to reform college entrance exams and consequently, better student mental health. Currently, Chinese students are given the option of choosing liberal arts or science subject tests in addition to the core subject tests like math, Chinese literature, and English. Besides the choice to focus on humanities or science, test-related reforms have not made significant progress in China. In South Korea, the government imposed a 10 PM hagwon curfew in attempts to encourage high school students to get more rest. The Korean Ministry of Education has also implemented popular exam-free semesters in almost 4,000 middle schools, with recent efforts to “expand the initiative into an “exam-free year” for 7th grade in 2017, with pilot programs starting in some schools in 8th and 9th grade as well” (Hatch). In California, the nine University of California (UC) campuses suspended consideration of the SAT and ACT in their college admissions process. However, there’s a catch. The absence of standardized testing in the admission process will only continue if a test that better aligns with the UC’s expectations for freshman is not created by 2025.
Considering the current reforms (and lack of), it is evident that the dissolution of standardized testing is a big step to take, requiring reform and movement in educational, public, and private institutions. In East Asia, the phasing out of college entrance exams and emphasis on wholistic student measurements must begin with the de-stigmatization of mental health. Families and academic figures should be able to speak freely and without fear of “disease” about the psychological toll of pressure and education. Only when a conversation has begun can reform be accepted and understood by society. Of course, I am not calling for the dismantling of East Asian historical and cultural values that emphasize education. Rather, I hope that the real, serious consequences of extreme numeric pressure can be recognized. East Asian governments have started to and should continue to fund mental health efforts in schools, allocating consistent funding for school counselors. Eventually, recognition of mental health should transition into dismantling the college entrance exam’s position as the sole factor of college admissions. In California, we must build on the momentum of current mental health discussions, as well as the recent steps the UCs took towards a student-centric application process. Petitions, community lobbying efforts, and public translation of awareness into institutional action is step after recognition of the issue. With the continued stigma of mental health and test-heavy cultural values still present in East Asian families, the road towards institutional protections for student mental health is a long and difficult one.
Of course, there is no end to progress. I fully recognize that dissolving college entrance exams will not eliminate high school mental health issues. However, this reform is important in that it strikes up critical conversations about progress and begins to ease pressure on our most vulnerable populations. In other words, terminating standardized testing in college admissions is only the first step towards easing the enormous pressure foisted on East Asian high school students and their peers. I might not see the effects of an entrance exam-less system, but I will continue to push towards it in hopes that my children, their children, and future generations will.
Billions before me have built a better life through hard work. Yet, somewhere along the way, hard work has become insufficient for success. Moreover, what we work towards has been so warped that numbers color our self-perception. Cultural values and immigration policy have created extreme focus on test scores for East Asian high schoolers, who are facing record levels of depression and mental health issues. At the same time, the exam route students are taking is no longer open to all. Educational success has become contingent on cram schools inaccessible to many. The dissolution of college entrance examinations is more than a movement for educational reform, but the first step to protecting the growing, vulnerable children of our world.
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Works Cited
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