There are also school districts in America.
Public schools enroll students according to school districts, so Americans also buy school districts for their children's education. The distinction between good and bad residential areas in the United States is very obvious. Because the houses in the same area are of the same level, there will be no village in the city behind the high-end residential area, so if you can afford the house here, you may live in this residential area.
The most obvious contrast is the Bay Area where San Francisco is located. The Silicon Valley area to the west of the Bay Area is a good area, and the house price is expensive. On the east side of the Bay Area, the public security is poor and the house price is cheap, so few people are willing to move there. In order to send children to a good school, everyone wants to buy a good house in the area, which leads to high housing prices in the good area, and the housing prices on both sides of the Bay Area are very different.
In addition, good residential areas are basically in the suburbs, and the conditions of host families are excellent. Many renters often choose to live in the urban area, so there are many mixed phenomena.
Therefore, although Americans have set up key high schools for people, as long as they know which district the school is in, the quality of high schools is a matter of empathy.
American educational resources are relatively balanced.
Although there are school districts in the United States, the gap in the quality of education is not huge, because primary and secondary schools in the United States are established according to the same standard in terms of facilities and teachers, and even if there is a gap, it is absolutely not big.
Compared with China, this is obviously different. In China, there is a big gap in software and hardware between rural and urban primary schools. Therefore, many rural people with a little money want to move to the county town and let their children go to a good school.
American education pays more attention to individuality.
When people in China comment on the quality of schools, they often get the answer that they are strong in English, strong in Olympic Mathematics, long classes and high enrollment rate, but they continue to think deeply. Why do they learn English, Olympiad and piano? Because other people's children learn this way, so should my children.
But for ordinary Americans, these are secondary. The important thing is to tap the potential of the child and cultivate his personality. As long as you maintain a certain level of achievement, you can be admitted to a certain level of school.
The United States is more supportive of learning their favorite subjects, so Americans who don't like mathematics and physics think it is unnecessary to spend a lot of time learning trigonometric functions and calculus, just know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. In the United States, the math part of all professional GRE exams is only at the junior high school level in China. But if you are a math major, you will have a very difficult professional exam.
The top 20-30 universities in the United States can recruit the best students in the United States, which is why there are more China and Indians in the engineering schools of most other American schools.
You can study without a hukou.
The population of the United States can basically move freely, without the obvious household registration system in China and the resulting employment, schooling, medical care and other problems. There is no concept of hukou in the United States, so there is no hukou to study nearby. But only if you have paid this tax.
Because primary and secondary schools are more like compulsory education in China, as long as the schools are not full, everyone can study. Some visiting scholars from China stayed here for a year, and many of them brought their children from China to the United States, where they attended primary schools.
Most students attend public schools in primary and secondary schools.
American primary and secondary schools are mainly public schools. Public primary and secondary schools in the United States do not need tuition fees, and other miscellaneous fees are also available, but the number is small. There is a school bus to and from school, which is very safe. Moreover, there is basically no pressure for primary school students to study. In the first grade of primary school, the school bus comes to pick me up every morning 10 and returns at 3 pm, so I spend most of my time playing, which is much easier than the endless extracurricular tutoring classes for primary school students in China.
Of course, there are private primary and secondary schools with good quality, but the annual tuition fees are numerous and need tens of thousands of dollars. Unless the family is particularly rich, most people will not consider it.
There is no first and second choice for the senior high school entrance examination.
American students apply for the college entrance examination according to their own wishes after graduating from high school. Everyone can apply to several schools and be admitted to several schools at the same time. There is no question of volunteering and batch. Students finally choose their own schools.
University enrollment in the United States mainly depends on scores and rankings. If a university wants to say that our freshmen are of high quality, it is necessary to compare the SAT scores, or say that what percentage of our students' high school scores are in the top 10%. In addition, there are letters of recommendation, what awards you have won and so on, all of which are attached together, and these are all somewhat watery.
American universities, as mentioned earlier. The best are the top 20 private schools, such as Harvard and MIT, which are equivalent to our Peking University Tsinghua. The population of the United States is 300 million, which is 1/4 of ours, so it is equivalent to 40 times the enrollment expansion of Peking University Tsinghua in China. This is enough to drive away the best students in America.
High tuition is the last hurdle before entering school.
Four-year undergraduate tuition and living expenses in private universities cost hundreds of thousands. The operation of private schools mainly depends on donations and tuition fees. Although there are various scholarships, not everyone can get them.
I once had a friend admitted to Yale, but because there was no scholarship, I finally had to give up what I wanted.
Most public universities are state universities, which are very cheap for residents in the state, and the tuition gap with domestic universities is affordable for ordinary families. If it is out of state and foreigners, the tuition fee will increase by1-20,000. Because each state generally has 1-2 good state universities with similar grades, it will not go to other States to study in public universities.
Community college, equivalent to our junior college, is cheaper. In order to save money, some people go to community colleges for two years and then transfer to other universities. Fortunately, most American schools allow transfer of credits.
Therefore, even ordinary Americans in the upper and middle classes, rather than top talents scrambling to give scholarships, will face enormous competition and economic pressure if they want to squeeze into the top 20 elite circles of private universities.
It is normal to borrow money to study and work in the United States to earn tuition.
At the undergraduate level, scholarship coverage is a very small part. The American government provides various low-interest and interest-free loans to provide students with the possibility of studying, so a large number of students in the United States borrow money to study.
Part-time jobs are common, but the income from part-time jobs is very small. If you work in a school, it is basically a relatively simple job in the school, such as working in a library, which is similar to that in China. If you are willing to endure hardships, you can earn some living expenses, but if it is a private university, it is impossible to earn tuition by working.
But in America, fairness is not absolute. As far as education is concerned, a good state university is good, but a relatively poor state university is not good. For students in poor States, you can't go to a state university in a good state, because the tuition fees of state universities are much higher than those of foreign students.
In the United States, you are free to go to new york to find a job, but it is certainly not easier for you to survive in new york than for a foreigner to survive in Beijing. The only difference is that there are no artificial barriers in America.