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Comment by hugh | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting to know what happens to these students once they actually get to Havard/Yale/Princeton. Do they find themselves able to cope in an environment where they have to learn on their own, without anybody to hold their hand? Do they run amok once they get out of that strictly controlled environment, and turn into drunken party animals? Do they become disillusioned when they realize that everyone around them is getting by just fine by putting in one tenth the effort? Or do they keep up the habit of insanely hard work, shoot to the head of their classes and go on to have stellar careers?

No doubt it's some combination of all of the above, but it'd be nice to know.

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Having known graduates of both Daewon and KMLA at several elite colleges, I can say that their performance is comparable to most of the other students at their respective colleges. There are those who continue in their study habits and graduate at the top of the class, those that relax a little to explore their options and enjoy more of their college experience, and those that put more emphasis on socializing than studying. There's no real stereotype of a typical graduate from one of these schools, other than being smart, Korean, and communicating in fluent English. Most of them seem to be happy to be going to college in the U.S.

The craziest thing about most of this is that it takes just as much (if not more) effort for kids in high school to get to one of the top 3 Korean colleges (Seoul, Yonsei, Korea). In fact, both KMLA and Daewon also have a track for students who want to attend Korean universities that is just as intense.

It's hard to say whether this is the best way for a person to spend their high school years, but in places like Korea and Japan, this is the way that any college-bound student spends their youth. Everybody who wants to go to college either attends a college prep school or a private prep program from about middle school, because that's the way it has always been.

It depends on the person. I know too many (see long rant of a comment on this same topic) who've gone the route of study study study study study go to ivy. One's committed suicide. Some work themselves as usual..until they get burnt out. Others figure out this wasn't what they wanted to do and they were doing it just to make their parents happy, and then go study something else that interested them.

I actually haven't heard of very many that go on to have stellar careers. Unless you define "stellar" to be something that is stellar to them...then some of them do.

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