Video chats test China’s US university applicants

BEIJING — Ms Zhao Yang, 18, a high school student in Beijing, looked upset as she emerged from a room equipped with a video camera.

“I was too nervous, so I spoke too fast,” she told her parents. “The questions were too weird. I wasn’t prepared for most of them.”

Ms Zhao is a top student with ambitions to go to an elite US university. She has been preparing for years, working with a private admissions agent and taking the SAT and the Test of English as a Foreign Language several times. Her parents have invested more than US$30,000 (S$43,183) in the project, hoping to give their only child a boost.

On this afternoon, Ms Zhao faced a new challenge — being interviewed in English before a camera.

The video of the interview, conducted by a private company based in Beijing, would be uploaded to the company’s website, where it could be viewed by US admissions officers, who would consider it alongside Ms Zhao’s test scores and written application.

The number of Chinese students competing to enter high schools and colleges in the US has soared in recent years. According to the Institute of International Education, in the 2014-15 academic year, more than 300,000 Chinese were enrolled in US higher education.

Traditionally, colleges conduct on-campus interviews or enlist alumni to help. But with the surge in applications from China, colleges are unable to keep up with the volume of interview requests. To sift through the flood of applicants, more US institutions have sought third-party interviews with prospective students. This helps determine whether students who score highly on paper can also engage in class discussions. It also provides a check against fraud, such as forged transcripts or ghostwritten application essays, by testing their English-language abilities.

That, in turn, has given rise to new services on the Chinese side to meet that demand. Mr Terry Crawford, CEO of InitialView, which provides interview services, said that in 2013, more than 6,000 applications from China included an InitialView interview and that by 2014, the number exceeded 17,000. According to Chinese admissions agents, more than a third of the 100 top-rated US colleges and universities recommend third-party interviews.

“Students who are able to articulate their thoughts in understandable (perfection is not expected) English, and who appear ready to succeed in the college classroom, are advantaged,” said Mr Jim Miller, a college enrolment consultant.

Mr Yan Xiaoliang, 19, who attended a private high school in Chengdu that offers courses in English, said he believed an interview made the difference to his admission to the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“My SAT scores were below average,” he said in a phone interview. But in his interview, Mr Yan, who is now a sophomore at Georgia Tech, discussed his interest in electric cars and the novel Moby Dick, explaining what he considered his own personal “white whale”.

A third-party interview can cost US$150 to more than US$450. Many students complain, but some parents accept this as the price of admission.

“I guess this will help schools to know my daughter better,” said Ms Zhao’s mother, who declined to give her name. “But it is tough.”

Applying to only US colleges has spared her daughter the ordeal of taking the gaokao, China’s notoriously stressful university entrance exam, said her mother.

Still, she said her daughter sleeps only about five hours a day, with the demands of homework and applying for college. “I would say the pressure is just as great as for the gaokao,” said Ms Zhao’s mother. THE NEW YORK TIMES