Moving children from U.K. to USA high School
Mar 29th 2022, 4:25 pm
#31
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Joined: Nov 2006
Location: Hong Kong, mostly.
Posts: 5,214
Re: Moving children from U.K. to USA high School
I wanted to add two points:
1) don't underestimate the social adjustment issues, especially in the last year of high school. He would be attending school with kids who have been together for 4-8-12 years of schooling. They know each other very well, and your kid will be the 'new kid' in a school where most of the kids are 'done' with friend-making until they get to college. It can be a really rough adjustment (note: I'm not even talking about the US-UK aspects--even many Americans would hesitate at a Senior / Year 12 transfer.
2) coming to a new school and then trying to leverage that to get to Uni is going to be a stretch. He won't know teachers well enough to get more than a standard template 'recommendation letter' and the coursework, if it transfers, may only transfer without any academic marks (i.e. no honors, A+, etc) such that calculating a grade point average (GPA) would be difficult. This would make the college admissions process all the more complex.
1) don't underestimate the social adjustment issues, especially in the last year of high school. He would be attending school with kids who have been together for 4-8-12 years of schooling. They know each other very well, and your kid will be the 'new kid' in a school where most of the kids are 'done' with friend-making until they get to college. It can be a really rough adjustment (note: I'm not even talking about the US-UK aspects--even many Americans would hesitate at a Senior / Year 12 transfer.
2) coming to a new school and then trying to leverage that to get to Uni is going to be a stretch. He won't know teachers well enough to get more than a standard template 'recommendation letter' and the coursework, if it transfers, may only transfer without any academic marks (i.e. no honors, A+, etc) such that calculating a grade point average (GPA) would be difficult. This would make the college admissions process all the more complex.
Mar 30th 2022, 1:59 am
#32
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Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 1,189
Re: Moving children from U.K. to USA high School
This varies A LOT by field. In mathematics, (good) US PhDs are generally considered to be superior to PhDs awarded elsewhere. In Europe/the UK/Australia, you are definitely exposed to more advanced topics early, but the treatment is invariably brief and superficial. In the US, yes, you have to wait until grad school to cover a lot of things, but you are going to see them done in far more depth. This sets you up for more options when it comes to research.
When I go back to Australia, it's tale of woe after tale of woe about how faculty can barely scrape together PhD projects because the students know so little. The tradition is very much to ship the best students off to the US for grad school to give them a "better start in life".
When I go back to Australia, it's tale of woe after tale of woe about how faculty can barely scrape together PhD projects because the students know so little. The tradition is very much to ship the best students off to the US for grad school to give them a "better start in life".
Mar 30th 2022, 2:48 am
#33
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Joined: Apr 2019
Posts: 46
Re: Moving children from U.K. to USA high School
Again, I like to think of it as anecdotes vs. data. If it really were true that American education as a whole, especially elite American education, was inadequate at preparing people to compete globally (unless they were the lucky few "at the top of the bell curve" or graced with the presence of a European expat to "bring them up to speed") we wouldn't expect the US to be ranked so high internationally for scientific research, we wouldn't expect it to get the most global investment per capita in industries like technology and biotech, and we would expect it to rank on the low side for worker productivity among developed countries rather than the high side.
There are a lot of problems with American education - like very poor outcomes at the lower end, not really knowing how to deal with the masses of English language learners now in the system, and inadequate options for people not cut out for university. But failure to churn out a ton of highly qualified, globally competitive graduates at the top end is not really one of them.
There are a lot of problems with American education - like very poor outcomes at the lower end, not really knowing how to deal with the masses of English language learners now in the system, and inadequate options for people not cut out for university. But failure to churn out a ton of highly qualified, globally competitive graduates at the top end is not really one of them.
Mar 30th 2022, 3:12 am
#34
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Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 1,189
Re: Moving children from U.K. to USA high School
Again, I like to think of it as anecdotes vs. data. If it really were true that American education as a whole, especially elite American education, was inadequate at preparing people to compete globally (unless they were the lucky few "at the top of the bell curve" or graced with the presence of a European expat to "bring them up to speed") we wouldn't expect the US to be ranked so high internationally for scientific research, we wouldn't expect it to get the most global investment per capita in industries like technology and biotech, and we would expect it to rank on the low side for worker productivity among developed countries rather than the high side.
There are a lot of problems with American education - like very poor outcomes at the lower end, not really knowing how to deal with the masses of English language learners now in the system, and inadequate options for people not cut out for university. But failure to churn out a ton of highly qualified, globally competitive graduates at the top end is not really one of them.
There are a lot of problems with American education - like very poor outcomes at the lower end, not really knowing how to deal with the masses of English language learners now in the system, and inadequate options for people not cut out for university. But failure to churn out a ton of highly qualified, globally competitive graduates at the top end is not really one of them.
