The wealthy pay up to $300,000 for classes aimed at getting their child into an Ivy League school. English skills and extracurricular activities that are nothing short of impressive are a must.

June 04, 2010|By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

Jonathan Browning / For The Times

Reporting from Shanghai — It was just a week after Chang Shui received her acceptance notice from Harvard that the first book offer came.

A publisher approached her father with a detailed outline for an inside guide to how a Shanghai couple prepared their daughter to compete successfully with the best students from America. Local newspapers weighed in with articles about how Chang's membership in a dance troupe surely helped. "Magical girl 'danced' her way into Harvard," the Shanghai Evening Post headlined its story.

Qibao High School, where Chang is a senior, trumpeted the news on a large electronic billboard at the front gate. The day that she received her acceptance notice — by e-mail at 5 a.m. April 2 — teachers at the high school crowded around to have their picture taken with her.

"She was a celebrity," boasted her homeroom teacher, Xiong Gongping.

"I'm not exactly a celebrity," Chang said, interjecting a note of modesty. "But it is true that more students are approaching me wanting to know how to go to college in the United States.

"And for the parents, it's their dream to send a kid to Harvard."

Charlotte Chang, as she'll call herself in the United States, is a skinny 17-year-old with hair pulled back into a perky pony tail and a broad, confident smile despite the braces that she hopes to get off her teeth before moving to Cambridge in August. Striding through her high school campus last month, she switched easily between Chinese and English, the word "cool" punctuating her speech, a product of spending her junior year of high school as an exchange student in Seattle.

She wears the Wedgewood-blue track suit jacket that is part of her school uniform, along with jeans and canvas sneakers that put a cheerful bounce in her step. The only book she carries is a paperback version of the novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife." She was reading it for fun.

Although she was at school that day to have her photograph taken with the rest of the senior class, she has stopped attending classes even as her classmates are preparing for the dreaded gaokao, or high test, that determines placement in Chinese universities.

"My friends are so depressed. They study from 7 a.m. to midnight," said Chang.

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