[Admission Committee Notes]

I don't want to speak for the US educational system for many reasons, not least of which is I'm Canadian and have never attended a US institution, but I think many of these points also apply to Canadian schools.

First, the GRE. From everything I've read, GRE scores aren't a very significant part of admissions decisions; used as a cut-off, perhaps, but not much more. Believe me, I'm the last person to defend the GREs use as a measure of anything meaningful, but to the more general point, if you're going to a US university you have to be expected to communicate in English at a roughly equal level with domestic students. That's just the way it is. I TAed at a school where many students had English as their second language,and while I admired their courage at trying to write and speak in their non-native tongue, I could not 'relax' standards of, say, proper syntax and semantics on papers. They chose to attend an English-speaking school, as you have.

Second, of course US schools don't know everything about every university around the world. I don't expect that they should, and they couldn't even if they tried. It works the other way around, too. There may well be, for example, a state university which has a great reputation but which a top school in, say, Germany, has never heard of because it isn't Harvard or Princeton or the like. It's only common sense that schools will know the most about other schools in their own countries, in the US as in everywhere else.

Third, the recommendation system. Again, I'd just say that that's the way it is. That's how US schools do things. They can't tailor their admissions processes for every particular international context.

I seem to be reiterating the same basic point, which is that it's only "unfair" if you expect US schools, or any other institutions, to account for every educational practice and make admissions uber-individually tailored. That's logistically impossible and I see no need for it. I understand that a lot of international students want to study in the US; I'm one of them. But I don't see the system as being "biased" or "unfair"; if it is, then I fully expect it to be. I understand that, given equal 'skills', I would likely have a lesser chance than a native German of getting into a German university, simply because they've been immersed in that particular educational system for much longer. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. International students make an intentional choice to 'subject' themselves to the American educational system. Noone forces them to.

Of course no one forces him to. He took the initiative himself, to cross oceans, to go to another country that does not even speak his own language, to get himself the best education that he could possibly acquire. I think it is admirable and courageous, and it should be admired and praised, not to be discriminated against, told to leave, not to come, or just shut up if he raises concerns or gives his opinion on his admission process or other institutions or people or phenomena of his new country.

"No one forces you to come" - I doubt that you would ever dare to utter such words to the Blacks, for the fear of being called a racist or getting you a$$ whooped. But you did not think twice about saying such things to a Chinese or other minorities. How ironic. Maybe we need a Chinese Dr. King to change such mindsets; Some people never learn.

I do not think there is anything to debate about the points Wallerstein raised; of course it is unfair to him and puts him at a disadvantage. I would love to hear what you'd say if you have to take the GRE in Chinese, or what your score would be like compared to the routinely perfect marks the Asians get in an English GRE. This being said, I do not think the admission process is intentionally biased. On the contrary, I believe America aims to attract the best and brightest minds to this country no matter where he lives, Russia or China. Yet, like so many things in this country, having such an unfair process, in reality only serves to do disservice to its own objectives and violate what it requires of, or expects from, itself.