Some insights into the better ESF/Intl schools

esfpaststudent

Hi all,

I randomly came across this forum and was totally surprised by everything I saw. I was totally impressed by parents efforts and dedication they have spent in analyzing international schools.

I graduated from an ESF secondary school recently, (the traditonal 5, not one of the newer ones) and made the choice of going to a local university - the most elite one, and did the most elite course at that university. Thats the only reason why I stayed in Hong Kong. But I have deeply regreeted this and eventually made the choice to transfer to study abroad.

It appears that things have chnaged so much from say 6-7 years ago when I entered high school and so thats why I felt the compulsion to write some of my insider thoughts. Especially since it appears that many parents who are discussing on this forum have not gone through an ESF or an overseas education....and they appear to be just getting all their information from random people's opinions, rumours etc.

Everyone seems so concerned about getting in - yes, that is important, but I just wanted to provide some more long term advice.

1st point - you really shouldnt consider sending your child to a local HK university, unless you really cannot afford overseas. I made this dreadful mistake, mainly because I was attaracted by the course I was offered at this elite local university.

And one other point - if you are considering a career in business/ commercial / investment banking, corporate law etc - as many ESF grads go into these fields - you must go overseas for your education. All the biggest and best firms (who pay the most!) recruit almost exclusively from overseas universities, and almsot always from the best ones.

Fortunately - as an ESF graduate, and if you arent too dumb or anything - you should make it into an "elite" overseas university quite easily - it just happens, dont ask me how. We're are not particularly smart but just that LSE/Ivy League etc seem to take alot of us every year. It's easy trust me - i know for a parent it seems so far away - but beleive me - your child will get into a good university if he / she makes it into a ESF or any other good International school.

So dont waste his/her potential - dont go back and then send him back to a local university.

And its not just in terms of career, but also the people - ESF / International school kids VS Local kids are just totally different. We do not mix well. So going to a local university wasnt great in this aspect. So expect your child to come out being different, come out expecting him to be an i"ntl skool kid"....but thats prob the main reason why you are all considering sending your child to an Intl school rather than a local school - cuz you want your child to stand out.

And some parents ask about ranking of Intl schools - i think this is very hard to give. And one post which I read described the situation very well - group them into tiers.

Top tier will always be the traditonal and well established ones with western origins -

ESF (i think in my opinion all ESF are almost the same....same culture, same uni entrances...and when we are overseas universities and see ESF people, we tend to hang out and associate with each other very well, since we went through the same sort of education.)

ESF/GSIS/FIS/HKIS/CIS

In my opinion these are the best intl schools (in no ranking...its a tier, ok?)....all about the same. All have very good acadmic standards, get into good universities. But yes, I would generally agree that GSIS is slightly more rigourous. But if your child is smart, getting into say LSE/Ivy League should be equally easy whether he went to ESF or GSIS.


But they do have different foccus and culture:

GSIS - widely regarded as being the most academic and indeed this is true, best uni entrances, best A-Level etc.

ESF - mainly professional class, more down to earth, determined kids working for their aim. Not filled with "yee sai jo" rich kids. So the work atmosphere is good in all ESF schools (the 5 traditional ones i mean - IS, WIS, KGV, SIS, SC). Good uni entrances - we get into elite London Unis (LSE, UCL, KCL) quite easily as well as US Ivy Leagues or near-IVy Leaguges without much difficulty....provided your kid is decvent;ly smart. But if at a local school - many of these Unis would be very hard to access, unless your kid was super smart)

HKIS - more of a rich kids school, party school, but yet very high academic standards since many get into good Ivy Leagues. If you think your child has Ivy League potential and would enjoy an American culture, then this is good (btw....not everyone likes / suited for an American culture/education)

CIS - more of the local chinese rich people. business man, but also high standards and good uni entrances.

In my opinion, how to get in

I entered ESF in P6, many years ago, after having come back from overseas ( i was one of the kids from the migration generation). So for me, it was quite easy and back then the waiting list wasnt as long.

I know ESF teachers very well, they are nice, kind people - nthey are our firends by the time we come to Year 12-13....so dont get intimidated by them. What they really like and what they are really concerned with isnt academic ability alone - you have to be WESTERNSIED. You have to make your child behave as if he was brought up overseas. Back in my days, most of my classmates were retrunees from Canada, Australia, USA etc...so it wasnt as hard ...cuz we were genuinely "overseas". But I suspect what ESF teachers like is someone who will fit in with them - someone is isnt too "local"....for example...try to learn about life overseas (i know its hard, if you come from a totally local family)....in the interview....show international insight (if your child is old enough for this), when asked about past times - say things like "i play cricket with my dad" or I play rugby at the HKFC etc etc....not that Im saying you should lie - but rather eneterring ESF is a logn term thing - you shoudl try and make your chiold more international from a young age....take him to play western sports, hang out with western people or at least returnee chinese....the culutre betwen local and international families / returnees is very different. Try to mix and immerse with these people somehow - be it sports clubs, kowloon cricket club...that sort of stuff.....your child needs to feel international in order for the interviewer to feel comfortable admitting him / her. They are gwai los afterall, they dont like to be surrounded by parents/children who are totally different from them..

Whilst eveyrthing that I have read in this forum is very important and well said - like  brushing up on your child's English, chosing the rightr address, strategically chosing schools based on their catchment zones etc...whilst all this is good - dont lose sight of the big picture - the gwai lo interviewers are looking for people who are like them - who are like their kids - who can fit into the school.

ESF in the past used to be very international - cuz it was mainly westeners, returnee chinese etc.....but nowadays the migration trend is over and most people who apply fopr ESF are locally born and bred - the ESF teachers want to preserve the atmosphere that was prevalent back in the late 1990s.

Thats my own opinion about ESF schools - they are not that harsh and unfriendly. They are nice people. But they are being so tough in the admission mainly bevcause of demand for places has risen so much and as such they want people who can genuinely fit into their culture - dont lose sight of the bigger picture in the search of a school for your kids. Good luck!!

Hope my insights have been of some help.

hysterical

Saturn,

Good to meet a soul-mate on this matter!

Regarding the HKIS 2007 college admissions results, really impressive! Even the worst uni is not so bad... What about for ESF secondary, any published data?

mattsmum

我倒想從另一就業角度看本地／国際學校的問題.

見過不少半唐番,他們很多都有才华華,但有時想:要他們為那几大財閥打工,可能是行不通的,那都是十分傳统的中国人,星期六日也要返工.

但要他們為國際化的機构工作,可能如魚得水.

原文章由 tnt2ndhb 於 07-10-20 00:25 硐表
我大伯早年英皇中學畢業拿全費獎學金到美國伯克萊讀數, 唸完數博留在美國, 從打工到合資軟件開發, 現在在上海已有員工逾千, 他對我們說: 中國人很有做數的精神, 從小就開始題山題海地訓練, 從多、到準、到快、到深,  ...

tnt2ndhb

我大伯早年英皇中學畢業拿全費獎學金到美國伯克萊讀數, 唸完數博留在美國, 從打工到合資軟件開發, 現在在上海已有員工逾千, 他對我們說: 中國人很有做數的精神, 從小就開始題山題海地訓練, 從多、到準、到快、到深, 這和普遍國人認為數學和理科能有較好的出路有關, 也有很多小孩子很快就因為這種永遠高一線的數訓而burn out, 他在大學學數不是求答案, 而是找為甚麼1+1一定=2, 過程好寂寞也很好玩, 他的外國同學不像亞洲同學那麼關心出路的問題, 反而視研究數學為終生事業(不是職業),所以, 為甚麼諾貝爾獎總是外國人多.

Cayenne

Just received my copy of the 2007 HKIS Annual Report, which contains this year's college acceptance data. Here are only some of the figures  as the complete list is very long :

US Colleges :

Princeton (2)
Harvard (1)
Stanford (3)
Columbia (5)
Cornell (6)
Brown (1)
Dartmouth (1)
Duke (3)
U Penn (3)
WUSTL (6)
U of Chicago (3)
Northwestern (6)
Johns Hopkins (3)
UC Berkeley (4)
UCLA (4)
UC San Diego (10)
U Mitch (5)
USC (10)
Georgetown (4)
Boston U (26)
Carnegie Mellon (11)
NYU (6),    NYU Florence (3)
U of Rochester (3)
Syracuse (11)
Wellesley (1)
Wesleyan (1) ( 宋美齢母校 )
Parsons School of Design ( 8)
Rhode Island School of Design (3)
Purdue (18)
Middlebury (1)
Vassar (4)
Tufts ( 10)
.
.
UK Universities:

Oxford (1)
Cambridge (1)
KCL (1)
Nottingham (1)
Warick (1)
Durham (1)
.
.


Canadian Universities :

Waterloo (2)
UBC (18)
UT (9)
U Western Ontario (6)
Queen's ( 7)
Alberta (1)
Simon Fraser (1)
McGill (5)
York (1)
. . . .

Others :

HKU  (2)
CUHK (1)
Waseda 早稲田大学 ( 1)
Swiss Hotel Management School (1)
Les Roches, Swiss School of Hotel Menagement (1)

[ 本文章最後由 Cayenne 於 07-10-19 23:40 編輯 ]

Saturn

hysterical,

Thanks a million for your sharing.  I trust the info. you provided has reflected no less than 99.9% of the truth.:

Saturn.

原文章由 hysterical 於 07-10-17 22:00 硐表
Just wanted to provide some insights into the education system in the US. Having gone to junior high school and high school in the states, and then subsequently graduated from UC Berkeley, I think tha ...

YOSASHTO

As WYmom said a while back: Why has this discussion, originally about IS education, turned into a discussion on Mathematics?

I believe the strengths of an IS education is beyond that of academics.  IS students are expected to understand the world around them, and be able to relate to events in the real world.  Therefore, instead of churning out "little academics" who can do math problems very quickly, or memorize pages and pages of textbooks and classnotes, students become thinkers, and therefore know their place and can contribute to society at a very young age.

My son is at HKIS Grade 5.  This year, they have to rotate to lead discussions on current events (once every 2 weeks).  They have to pick out a current event, usually from the news (can be local or international), present it to the class, and reflect on how this event affects them, and what they would like to do about it.  From what my son tells me, kids have talked about bigger issues like climate change, species extinction, the HK stock market, etc.  They have also reported on local news issues relating to crime and other wrongdoings.  At the end of the presentation, they have to answer questions from their classmates as well.  They get scored on their presentations, covering not only the content, but their personal reflections as well.  I believe this process helps educate a child who is able to care about his community, and able to independently learn from non-school related events.

Another example is history (they call it Social Studies).  Instead of reading about a certain period of time, they are studying WHY certain events happened, and WHY the leaders at that time made their decisions.  They not only have to learn about a specific person (of their choice within the period of time), they have to understand how that person thinks.  They are expected to act out that person, and put themselves in that person's shoes.  They are given a set of questions which they have to reflect on, relating to how that person would view certain issues.  That, I regard, is the proper way to learn history.  History is all about understanding why past civilizations did certain things, and how these things lead to where they are today.  Reflecting on this, we can understand why people behave the way they do today, thereby gaining a better understanding of our own selves.

While I agree that academics is important, and both my husband and I have first degrees in Engineering, we hardly use math in the academics sense anymore.  The little bit of math we use now are mathematics application in the real world.  Therefore, the ability to apply what was learned in school into real life is much more important than the academics itself.  Also, thinking back, as Annie123 said, there was a lot more language and analytical skills required back in Uni than math skills.

Just my 2 cents worth.  Sorry for such a long post.

[ 本文章最後由 YOSASHTO 於 07-10-18 19:20 編輯 ]

Paris

Annie,

How do you train your children math, do you give supplementary exercises or extra class. Please share.

原文章由 Annie123 於 07-10-17 11:51 硐表
結果是, local schools培養了大量的會數學運算的"庸才", 而ISs就連這樣的"庸才"都不多   

hysterical

Just wanted to provide some insights into the education system in the US. Having gone to junior high school and high school in the states, and then subsequently graduated from UC Berkeley, I think that I will share from experience the math level and also college admissions issue.

1. The students can take different levels of Math in high school according to their individual level. That means that if he is very advanced in math, then he can even take college level math while still in high school. Of course there are always students who are not so good at math, and there are the average ones. But there are always very advanced ones as well. There is really no limit of what they can take in high school. Thus, it's not fair to say that everyone from Australia, Canada, or US are very poor in Math.

2. Admissions to university in the US is not just looking at one subject. Since English is the primary language there, the student's proficiency in English is obviously a critical factor in consideration. Math is also very important, but then so are many other things in the student's portfolio. It is very important to show that he is involved in the community, and have a passion or hobby that he has followed throughout his academic career. It can be a musical instrument or sports or debate or drama, etc. The point is that he needs to show that he has a significant acheivement outside the academics.

For example, a friend of mine had all A's in high school (4.0 GPA), and he did okay on the SAT, but he could not get into the top universities. Why not? Because he was a so-called "nerd", as he did not have any activities outside the school life.

The above reason is probably why IS students in HK have a better chance of admission into the top universities in the US, compared to those who went to a famous local school.

3. In the US, the real academic education begins at the university level. I believe that the previous 12 years are really preparation for the real thing. So, of course the math would be hard. The English is very hard too, and so are other subjects. Also, it depends on what major the student is intended to take. For Science majors, pre-med, pre-engineering, of course math would be very hard. For business majors, the math requirements would be less challenging.

All in all, I think IS and local system both have its own advantages and disadvantages. It really depends on the child's personality and learning style, and also most importantly where he intends to attend university.

Hope the above information is helpful. Cheers!

Share

BK 一向卧虎藏龍,高手雲集,

可是最近已少見這些這麼高水平的discussion.

真精彩,可惜我的數學平太差,只能希望從中偷師，幫孩子找到一條容易些的路。

阿胡

Annie123,

恕我孤陋寡聞, 我所講是基於如下幾點:

1) 我大兒子在香港讀IS, 當年算是該校最好幾個畢業生之一, 畢業後進了美國最好的大學之一. 儘管如此, 他的大學數學課程讀得很辛苦.

2) 他的同學, 不少也在美國讀頂級大學, 數學課程也是讀得很辛苦.

3) 見過不少讀本地大學的IS學生, 不客氣地說, 數學很差. 可能本來這些學生在中學時就是差學生.

4) 也見過一些從澳洲, 加拿大, 美國返香港讀大學的學生, 數學慘不忍睹.

5) 見過幾位香港名校畢業生, 不是第一, 第二的學生, 但肯定是當年學校最好的學生之一. 數學不錯. 但進不了美國top 20大學.

所以, 我非常同意esfpaststudent所說, 如果在香港讀IS, 可以進美國頂級大學, 而學費又不是問題, 本地大學根本不須考慮. 而讀IS如是為了將來讀本地大學, 會遇到好多意想不到的(常常是壞的)事情.

當然, 我不是說IS不好, 否則也不會將我小朋友送去讀. 但是, 香港IS在數學的教育上, 確有很多改進的空間.

[ 本文章最後由 阿胡 於 07-10-17 22:13 編輯 ]

father_ho

原文章由 WYmom 於 07-10-15 15:19 硐表


I don't think that if students do not score high in public exams, overseas elite schools will still keen to accept them.  It is simply not true.  As I see so far, ESF students have to score high to  ...

Dear WYMom,

Please don't be sensitive or may be I didn't expressed my feeling accurately. I just refer to if for approx. same standard of student, the elite oversea U's will perfer the IS student in regarding their wider exposure on reasoning training and similar atmosphere in the IS. For the culture in IS, I support they preserve their tradition (in fact it is their culture and should not be changed because of admission on local student) . It is my family may not be totally adapting it (such as changing our hobbies) before I change my kids to that type of school. I simply don't want a cultural conflict inside my family in future.

WYmom

原文章由 JasonDad 於 07-10-16 11:58 硐表
I totally agree with what ToTo said.

Global vision, moral education and thinking skill are far
more important than academic result or a diploma from
an elite unversity.

As a matter of fact, pure  ...

I don't think parents can control the kids' future or career, I won't expect what my kids to be, just let them to be what they like to be as long as they are on the right track.  Studying in IS or local depends whether they are suitable or not, and if parents can afford.  If they are capable, they can enter elite Us and lead a good career and life, they can contribute to the society in any job.

As parents, we just try to give the best we can, let the kids have more exposure and experience, enjoy their studies and school lives.  Who knows what will they be in future?

ESF do involve students in a lot of community work, even primary students will help to give some presents to the elderly or poor during X'mas seasons, or do some performance etc.  In secondary schools, students will do volunteer work in their communities or even help people overseas.  Not sure if other IS implement the same.

JasonDad

I totally agree with what ToTo said.

Global vision, moral education and thinking skill are far
more important than academic result or a diploma from
an elite unversity.

As a matter of fact, pure honor degree does not
necessarily mean a fortune ( I am not saying higher pay ).
Person who makes a fortune nowadays and deems as
suceessful figure by the public relies on what I mention
above like global vision and thinking skill. No one will ask
Bill gates, Kar Shing Li, or Buffet Warren which university
they graduate from.

If you just expect your kids to be a mere professional, like being a doctor, a lawyer or accountant. I can assure you
that it is not neccesary for you to let your child study in
IS. Local school in Tin Shui Wai will do. Simply pushing
your kids to do more exercises, recite more, do
more past papers before exam and learn more exam skill.
I know lots of professional they graduated from local 屋村
中學, some of them are working for me. No boosting.

I think we should focus on all round education,
arouse our child's studying interest and encourage lift long
education. This I think is a right way contributing a
person's success. That's what IS does better than local
school in my opinion.

Jason Dad

tomo

I would like to believe that one of the reasons why IS is better than local schools is that they cultivate 'global citizens' who are accepting of other cultures and differences , who try to reach out to those in society who are not as priviledged or lucky as themselves and then  use their 'privileged' position to make their society and this world a better place.... But if these people are only 'working' for their own selves , building a nice portfolio, getting into an elite university , and then an elite job, and carving a comfortable nest for themselves, feeling superior to local students... than I rreally don't see any difference between the local education system and IS.Maybe I have too high expectations of the IS system.

原文章由 WYmom 於 07-10-15 15:19 硐表


I don't think that if students do not score high in public exams, overseas elite schools will still keen to accept them.  It is simply not true.  As I see so far, ESF students have to score high to  ...