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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

Who thought it was a good idea to use academic paper authorship as a selection criteria for university!? There can't be enough high school kids writing academic papers for it to be that helpful, and certainly encourages this kind of cheating.

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They don't have it as a selection criteria. Some context:

South Korean educational system recently had a crackdown on private academy(hakwon), and in their infinite wisdom, decided to ban every non-public educational experiences (including things like international olympiad awards) when applying for the university. Which means that the only thing you can submit in the application is SAT scores, some public education awards, and personal essays. Naturally it became the fight of who can write the most compelling personal essays for the university, and people started to let their children 'write' academic papers so that they can write stories to claim their interest and impetus on the application in hopes of impressing the judges.

So it is not a selection criteria but it helped rich & powerful people get an edge in the university application.

As a South Korean, I think most of the things described here are not exactly true, but I might be wrong. Could you provide any source?

AFAIK the history of Korean educational system is the history of Hakwon superiority in adapting to new rules. A hakwon crackdown was something the gov did in 80s and failed miserably.

Also there are now very diverse channels for univ entrance. I would think some channels still allow many of those banned criteria. Maybe they cannot be used in some prestigious public ones?

I am also a Korean and wrote this on top of my head, though I do have to admit that it has been some time since I've been a student involved in it.

I'm mostly talking about 학종 where you submit 자소서 and 생기부(학생부?), and that there's been a ban on writing non-public education related experience on the latter. As for the claim that it being part of the government crackdown an hakwon, [here](https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20100407138500004) is a source I found where they directly mention it. Ctrl+f for 사교육.

> decided to ban every non-public educational experiences (including things like international olympiad awards)

How is an International Science Olympiad non-public?

It is run by a non-profit as opposed to a government. Granted the SAT would also qualify as non-public so that just confuses things further.

Sorry I meant the Korean one (CSAT?) which is indeed run by the government. That's interesting that American SAT is not run by the government directly.

As is common in the United States, we have a number of pseudo-monopolies on certain things that are run by mismanaged “nonprofits”. In this case that’s the College Board and the ETS.

From what I understand, much of the actual operations of CB / ETS are contracted out to Pearson Education (massive educational publisher).

It would be a bit odd for the American SAT to be run by the federal government when ACT vs SAT is so regional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAT-ACT-Preference-Map.sv...

I think the ACT largely exists because the SAT is not handled by the federal government.

I mean, at that point you are straight up lying... why not just write an essay and claim all of that without actually getting your name put on a real paper.

This is exactly what I find confusing about the whole affair. A university applicant with an academic paper authorship under their belt, while in high school, should warrant extra scrutiny, not automatically jump them to the top of the list.

It wasn't that hard for me to be a co-author on a scientific paper in high school. I just walked into some research hospitals, asked if anyone there wanted some help, and worked with some researchers after school a few times a week. I did the lab work, the charts and graphs, and the first rough draft of the paper. The researchers provided the analysis and conclusions and finalized the paper. And voila! A few months later a paper appeared in a journal with my name on it.

That’s sounds like it’d be an exceptional selection criteria. It shows hard work, dedication, follow through, and especially gumption.

How many weeks total were you there?

It also sounds pretty unbelievable.

You can't really just walk into some research hospitals and somehow find yourself talking to the right person who will get you in as a research intern. In my experiences, sadly, virtually all research interns are basically just the PI/member-of-lab's daughter/son or a collaborator's children/relatives.

One reason I can think of as to why this is is that you do really need a filter, because not having a filter will cost you immense time. It just turns out that references -- which are bound to be from your close friends and relatives -- are a signal one tends to trust.

I didn't just walk into some random lab and find someone, I went to several places and spoke with some administrators who asked around for me before I found one which wanted an assistant. It wasn't any cutting edge or sexy research, maybe that was why they don't have enough interns. I don't remember it being particularly difficult to find, though.

@koolba, I don't recall how many months I worked there, somewhere around 3~4 months, maybe?

It was Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in the 90s, maybe things are different now.

It's happened at my research institution. Then again, I run a pretty unconventional one. I took a high school student in who just had the initiative to email us and make an unscheduled visit.

Science should be for us all. Not the crony system we have right now.

You put on your resume: interned at such-and-such lab, was co-author on paper X based on work done over that summer.

Paying any attention to any extracurriculars could be thought of as "encouraging cheating"- just get someone to sign off that you actually attended Food Club, or that you interned at Widget Co., your cousin's business.

I had a lot of friends in high school who did the Intel Talent Search (since renamed or reorganized) via partnering with a lab in the nearby university. Most of them got some kind of publication and authorship out of it.

None of it was fake, and I don't think this is uncommon for applications to top schools.

It's not uncommon for individuals at elite universities to have published research in high school - especially in mathematics.

AP Capstone introduces two research focused classes with pretty high academic rigor, I think it’s great for college prep. We should do more research not less.

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