Got up at 5:30 am and had breakfast with Mengli’s mother and grandmother (we are still in Diana’s city Chanxing). Have no idea what I was eating since neither speak English (Mengli was still sleeping), but it was good. Spent the morning catching up on emails and updating my photo gallery and trying to reach Dottie on Skype.We leave at 8 am for Hangzhou to meet with an agency at 10:30 A.M. and then lunch with Adam’s mother and maybe a few other students. We will meet with another agency at 4 pm and then do a presentation on How to Gain Entrance into America’s Top Universities at 7:30 P.M. for a group of parents the agency has brought together. Mengli has arranged and organized everything. She will also be my interpreter in all the meeting and the presentation tonight.
We have had a full day. After a 2 hour car ride to Hangzhou, which Diana’s (Mengli) parents provided for us from Changxing to Hongzhou we went directly to meet with Shinyway one of China’s largest agency and a partner with us in recruiting students. The agency has over 400 agents in Beijing, Shanghai, Hongzhou, Ningbo, Wenzhou and several other Chinese cities. On this day the results had just come out of the college entrance exam taken by all Chinese seniors in their final year of high school. The agency was filled with parents and students who did not score well enough to get into top Chinese universities and wanted to explore study abroad option so that they could get into top American universities. In China GPA, difficulty of classes, much less extra curricular activities or teacher recommendations have zero influence into gaining entrance into a top university. Everything is based on the result of this one test. As a result, if a student does not score well they either need to look at joining the work force or attending what Chinese would consider sub par universities or coming to America – many choose to come to America. It is clear that many parents see the hand writing on the wall even in a student’s 9th or 10th grade year and choose an American boarding school. This is certainly true for 30% of our Chinese students.
We had lunch with a student and his parents and then were joined by two other students. In getting to all these meeting in Hangzhou Bolin Zhu’s mother had arranged for a private driver for Mengli and I – of course it was helpful that Bolin is dating Mengli. After our lunch which was at a famous restaurant reported to be Chairman Mao’s favorite restaurant on the West Lake in Hangzhou, we headed to another agency owed by Adam’s mother. After our meeting we all went to dinner. After dinner the agency had arranged for me to give a presentation, “How to Gain Entrance into America’s Top Universities”, with a group of over 60 parents and students who were considering studying abroad options at an American private school. We started the seminar at 7:00 p.m. and finished at 10:00 pm and got back to hotel at 11:30 p.m. Mengli and I led the seminar for about an hour and Mengli did and excellent job answering parent and student questions. The agency had arranged an interpreter for me but I insisted on using Mengli, who politely said she didn’t mind taking a break if the agent wanted to interpret, but I insisted. Mengli is exhausted and I feel bad for her, but I have the greatest confidence in her so I politely asked Mengli to interpret which she did willingly. She was great and the agency applauded her as did all the parents and students. During the last hour of our seminar she was joined by some of our other students Bolin Zhu and Adam who with the Chinese agency answered questions on private schools in America. Again our students “stole the show”. I pointed out to the agency that this was important lesson for all of us to learn – that while we are professionals it was our students that the parents and their children wanted to hear from and not so much for us.
