Happy New Year everybody. Denise and I have reached the halfway point in our yearlong adventure Down Under. We chose to live and work, not simply travel, in another country in order to really get to know another society. The Letter from Melbourne series has evolved into an examination of the differences between two very similar countries, Australia and America. Today I'm going to explore the differences in the high school preparation and application for college/university in the two countries, as it reflects the attitudes and practices of families in their respective countries.
This story begins with a Tale of Two School Boys or Another Six Degrees of Separation story. American-Australian married couples seem quite common. Denise and I have run into at least a half-dozen in our six months here. Families with children that lived in the United States for years and then emigrated to Australia, often with one parent having been born in Oz, also appear common. An American-Australian family that continues to live in both countries is less common but I've known one for over eight years.
Justin (for this piece I've changed everyone's name and made slight alterations in family details to protect everyone's identity), the father, was born in Sydney and raised in Melbourne. He met his American wife, Carla, when he was working in the U.S. They have two children, Joseph and Jenna. The whole family moved to Australia four or five years ago but then Justin returned to America after two years for employment reasons. He would visit Australia four times a year and Carla and the kids would come to the U.S. twice a year.
Joseph, now sixteen years old, decided in the beginning of 2015 that he wanted to return to the U.S. and finish high school in the Bay Area. With the assent of his parents he returned in July, lives with his father and is a sophomore at a prestigious parochial school on the Peninsula. He seems very happy with his choice and his parents are pleased. Jenna has remained in Melbourne and is doing well at her public (as in England, that means private) school. The publicly funded schools in Australia are called state schools.
I met Michael, another sixteen year old at a "bush barbecue" organized by his parents about two weeks ago. Randall, his father, and I met at the tennis club. He suggested a rendezvous should we be passing through the area where he kept a country home. He told me briefly that he met his American wife, Alice, when he was studying for a Ph.D. degree in the U.S.. They lived for two decades in the U.S. most recently in an upscale community in the West. They decided two years ago to move to Australia and settled in Melbourne where Randall has family. Michael, a 10th Level high schooler, also has a younger sister, Lora, who just finished primary school.
At the barbecue I spent some time talking to Michael. I learned he attended the most prestigious public high school (remember that means private) in Melbourne. I wondered. Michael and Joseph were about the same age. I knew that Joseph had also gone to a very prominent school when living in Melbourne. I thought - no, not possible - that they might know one another. So I asked Michael, "Y'know Michael. I know this kid. I think he went to your school but now he's going to school in America. I think maybe he might have been a student at your school. His first name was Joseph."
"Oh, Joseph. The American kid," Michael replied ("The American Kid," that's ironic, I thought, since Michael had been American, though in two years he had already adopted the accent of his current Aussie peers). "That's what everyone called him. Of course I knew him. We were in the same level. I didn't know him well. How's he goin' in America?" Michael didn't seem at all surprised, but I was blown away by the coincidence. I mean really -- what were the chances that I would know two boys going to the same school in the same grade in Melbourne, never having lived here until six months ago!
As everyone knows it's a small world so I quickly got over my shock. I got to talking with Alice about why Michael's family decided to live in Australia. She was very clear the decision had much to do with the quality of her children's lives, especially Michael's, as he was entering the high school years in preparation for college, which in America has been called the race to nowhere. The Race to Nowhere also happens to be the title of a documentary film on the frenetic lives of American high school students as they attempt to accumulate the credentials felt necessary to get accepted at a "good" college.
"I just didn't want Michael or our family's life to be so completely dominated by the college preparation process," Alice said. "I mean everything a kid does is supposed to be connected to improving his chances in getting into a school. What he does during the summers, his after school interests and hobbies, his sports - all of this is supposed to be in concert with how the colleges will evaluate him. And the pressure...that's all parents talk about with one another where we lived. I, myself, was getting sick of it.
"Randall had talked so positively about his school experience in Australia. We had visited many times. I talked to the children and they liked the idea of moving as well. Actually Michael was more pro-Aussie than his sister, but she was younger and we thought actually it would be easier on her making the move than for her brother. But it's worked out very well."
I was a little surprised. I certainly knew from work with American teenagers and their families about the pressures to perform and do extra-curricular work that will "look good on a college application," but I also had just been reading in the Age about the VCE scores when they were announced. I had read up a bit on the VCEs (Victorian Certificate of Education) and knew it was a set of scores that determined your ranking and chances of admission to one of the public (in this case meaning state financed) universities in Australia. So when the scores are announced it's a big deal in the newspapers.
"Oh, I prefer that it just be one test rather than a whole life-style for Michael and us," Alice remarked, after I asked her about the VCEs. She probably also knew that the elite high school Michael attended had a track record of producing the highest average VCE scores for any school in Melbourne. One of the criticisms (among many) of the VCE system is that wealthy families can send their children more easily to private high schools that obtain on average the best VCE study scores year after year. Notwithstanding that in Melbourne, Melbourne High (for boys) and Mac.Robertson (for girls) are academically selective, publicly funded, tuition free high schools and are regularly at or near the top of the performance tables.
The VCE is actually a curriculum established for levels 11 and 12 in Victorian high schools, though certain schools may offer the courses in level 10 as well. I probably misunderstood Alice. The VCEs is not a single test but a series of single tests that assess the students' knowledge and abilities in those subjects. The VCE exams scores are employed in combination with some assessment of the student's performance in the VCE subjects at his/her school, which determine the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR). The ATAR is expressed as a percentage. The lowest published ATAR is "30 or less", which means that at least 70 percent of your peers did better than you. An ATAR of 99.95, which is the highest score possible, means only 0.5 percent of your peers did as well as or better than you.
Most Australian higher education colleges and universities, whose tuitions are generally partially paid for by the state, admit strictly on the basis of the VCEs and ATAR scores. There will be a threshold score, which may vary from year to year and depend on the course of study selected, above which you are definitely accepted as a student. That's all it takes, but obviously the competition for spots at a premier college like the University of Melbourne is intense.
Compare this threshold approach to the American "holistic" approach to college admissions. Some of the publicly supported American state colleges and universities operate close to a threshold approach to admissions. For example, without a baseline GPA (grade point average) and certain ACT (American College Testing) or SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores, a school like the University of California, Berkeley, (UCB) will not even review other aspects of the applicant's profile, despite the wish for diversity and the knowledge that not everyone tests well. With so many applicants to choose from, UCB can achieve a relatively diverse and interesting student population just with those applicants with extremely high GPAs and test scores (African Americans, however, continue to be relatively under represented - and efforts at "affirmative action" have been legally thwarted).
But American private colleges have much more leeway in the evaluation of applications beyond the GPA and ACT/SAT. In order of importance, colleges rank -- 1. Grades in college preparatory course 2. The strength of the student's curriculum 3. The grades in all courses and 4. Class rank -- as most important. A poll of college admission directors gave rankings as to the percent of directors who felt the following to be important in their college's evaluations of the applicant:
Grade in college prep courses 83%
Strength of curriculum 66%
Admission test scores 59%
Grades in all courses 46%
Essay or writing sample 27%
Student's demonstrated interest 23%
Class rank 22%
Counselor recommendation 19%
Teacher Recommendation 19%
Subject Test Scores 10%
Interview 9%
Extracurricular activities 7%
Portfolio 6%
SAT II scores 5%
State graduation exam 4%
In concept the holistic approach seems more humane but many middle/upper middle class American high school students describe their experience as hellish. While grades are most important, with grade inflation a straight A (4.0) GPA and even higher than 4.0 (the highest grade on a college level high school class is 4.3), have become ubiquitous. So grades are critical but other factors are perceived as necessary to distinguish all the 4.0 achievers from one another.
SAT and ACT preparatory classes have become the norm, as has hiring professional advisors to take the student through the application process, particularly writing the essay. Sports and summer activities are chosen with at least a minimum nod as to whether it "will help for college." Alice, it would seem, does have a point.
Then why did Joseph and his family decide to move him into this potential maelstrom of achievement seekers? Their decision was complex and not solely based upon Joseph's ultimate college career. But ironically they felt having Joseph go to any good American college would offer him better post-college opportunities -- graduate school wise/employment wise - even if he returned to Australia, than if he attended the best Australian university. And going to a good American high school increased his chances, they believed, of getting into a decent or good American college.
I don't know the statistics well enough to support either family's position. Many, many of the best international students now compete for places in American colleges which would suggest at least an informal higher ranking for U.S. institutions. On the flip side I thought I would check in the how U.S and Australian kids experience their respective pressures as reflected in the suicide rates in each country.
Honestly, my hunch was that even with the pressure coming from a series of exam scores deciding the fate of Australian high school students, the overall "no worries" Aussie attitude would protect those teens who did not make the cut. There are in Australia, like in the U.S., the equivalent of community colleges and trade schools that require no threshold score. As I've mentioned before in the Letters series, the Australian middle and lower middle classes appear to be doing much better as a group compared to their increasingly struggling-to-maintain-their-position American counter-parts.
Therefore, the "good college" equals "good income" equals "good life" which has been a cherished cornerstone of American upwards mobility may simply not be as important in Australia. Not withstanding, the dollars value of an American college education has been increasingly challenged as college costs have soared for families and job opportunities for graduates with a simple college degree have declined.
I know suicide rates will be a reflection of multiple factors but that was the criteria that came to my mind as a bottom line reflection of the stressors teens feel in preparing for college admissions. It turns out that Australia has slightly higher rates of suicide in the 15-19 age group. In 2013, the Australian male rate was 14.3/100,000 and for females 5.6/100,000. In 2014, in the United States the male rate was 13.02/100,000 and female 4.18/100,000. The numbers do not appear that different between the two countries, but when dealing with such large populations the difference is significant (but not by a lot).
There are other aspects of the college/university application process that are also quite different in the two countries. Most Australian high school students, upon admission to university, choose a course of study that results in a specialized degree. For example, medical school actually begins for most Australian kids at age 18 in their first year of college. They go to school for six years in a specialized track that results in an M.D. degree. There are similar tracks for lawyers, accountants and other professional degrees.
American college students must declare a major at some point in their education but in general are still awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree after four years. Specialization begins at the post college graduate school level. An American college student may be pre-med and must take some specific classes in order to apply to medical school. But then he/she will spend four years more at an American medical school in getting the M.D. degree.
The early specialization track is changing in Australia, but I think at this point I'm going to end my exploration of the high school/college experience for the two societies. I'm certain I've only touched the surface even though it seems to me in meeting many doctors and other professionals in Oz that their preparation and length of time it took to achieve their specialty training was as adequate and as long as their American counterparts. So maybe it all comes out in the wash. Is that an Australian idiomatic expression?
Which is a neat segue to our bilingual lessons of the month. I am becoming inundated by contributions from Australian readers of the Letter. So here's this week's list. I warn you it's quite long:
•ocker - an uncultured Australian male. An uncouth, offensive male chauvinist. Can be used as an adjective (combining it with one of my most favorite Aussie words) as in "an ocker bogan." (origin: 1970-75 after Ocker, a character in an Australian television series)
•bowser - a gasoline pump at a filling station (origin: 1930-35 said to be after S.F. Bowser and Co., a Sydney manufacturer of gasoline and oil storage systems)
•yobbo - short for a yob: a teenage lout or hooligan (British slang origin: 1855-60, a consciously reversed form of "boy")
•fossicker - one who "fossicks", to search for any object by which to make gain, to hunt, seek, ferret out. Used in the gold rush days "to undermine another's digging; search for waste gold in relinquished workings. (origin: 1850-55, a fossick as a troublesome person)
•biffo -fighting or aggressive behavior, violence, a fight, pugnacious (Australian/New Zealand slang)
•sparrow fart - Australian for very early in the morning as in "people lining up at sparrow fart with nothing in mind to buy."
•More Australian diminutives: pressie (pronounced "prezzie')--present; mossie (pronounced "mauzzie")--mosquito; wrinklies--old people (isn't that just a great one!); a good possie - position (literal or job)
•Call them trousers not pants in Oz otherwise they'll be thinking of your underwear
•In the U.S. it's trunks, not bathers or swimmers
•If you ask for a lolly in Oz, you'll receive blank looks. It's a sweetie.
•Pudding is all deserts in Australia (includes cake, buns, donuts - all classified as puddings)
If you've been following the Letter from Melbourne you may think you will need an Australian-American dictionary for ease of communication in either country. It really ain't that bad. "Ain't" is unacceptable/acceptable in both countries.
Still to come -- five to six more months of Oz-servations in the Letters if I can keep it up and you don't mind reading them.