Share your educational experience

Good evening. I'm from India, where the course relies way too much on rote learning, even for subjects like Math and Physics. It's a very competitive environment here, where millions of students fight to get top ranks, and get into the few really good colleges in the country. So, a lot of emphasis is placed on the exam, and not much on the subject. Problem solving is almost completely neglected until the final years of Secondary schooling where people struggle to understand concepts.

But overall the courses are up to standard. In an idealistic world with no competition, this would be a good course, but sadly, it is not an idealistic world. Due to the heavy competition, there is extreme emphasis on just getting marks and not on understanding the material, or enjoying what you do.

I from Eritrea, but I am in United States now.The course in Eritrea was much harder and you had to do a lot of memorization.When I first came into Us I took a magnet test for gifted students, I didn't pass the test due to lack of English and not been that speedy in math. My classes are boring, I take pre calculus and geometry and some free online classes.While science I started learning the awesomeness of physics this year.I ask my teachers for challenging problems and more work. Sometimes I think that math teacher should be someone who is passionate not some one who tells you that you don't use this in real life.I would like to hear from others and and thanks for making this note.

This is kinda long, but I have been to a lot of schools :P

I am a mostly proud product, of the deeply flawed, but tremendously valuable American public education system. For k-12 I attended schools that were good, but not the "best," in a pretty middle class place in America.

Education in America is absurdly diverse both in type and quality. Region to region, neighborhood to neighborhood, the schools vary in how well funded they are and the demographics that attend them. From elementary school to highschool, I had both heroically spectacular and abysmally bad teachers across pretty much all subjects at some point in time. In general, I had fewer good math teachers, but a wealth of good science, English/Literature, and History/Social studies teachers.

High school for me was easy, slow, and often boring, but now always. I used to be able to do all my homework at lunch to make more time for sports, reading novels, and working for money. In America we do a whole lot of rote learning/memorization, though compared to the stories I hear from Asia, we do a lot less of it and our rote learning is much easier. No American students ever see anything mandatory that looks as scary as the JEE until college (that might be a lie). When I say highschool was easy for me, that is less a testament to my talent and more to the degree that doing "well," at typical American high schools just involves being good at learning and remembering to turn in your homework. I went to Wilson Highschool if anyone wants to creep on it. Their website has not improved much since 2002.

I then somehow managed to get into a totally insane school called DeepSprings College. That is way too long a tale to tell here. Deep Springs is an unbelievably intellectually rigorous place. Classes at Deep Springs are perpetually demanding, extremely intimate and ambitious endeavors, spent with people who are all smarter than you. No matter who you are. They destroyed every idea and value I ever had and built them back better from scratch.This is an old recruitment brochure, it can give you a sense of what happens at Deep Springs.

Deep Springs is a two year college. I then took a year off of college and stayed on as the Staff Cowboy of Deep Springs for several months. Eventually I moved to New York City, to try to get a job and see what it would be like to live in a city and support myself. It was the fall of 2008 which was a bad time for job hunting in America. I failed at that and mostly starved and failed to make ends meet doing odd jobs as a janitor, butcher etc... and squandering my life's savings until eventually I found work back west, and moved away. I only mention that because I learned as much in that year between school as I ever did while in school. Hence my recommendation: not all great learning and adult development happens in school. That said school, is still probably your greatest shot at upward mobility no matter where your from, so you should still go.

Because I was homesick and terrified of student debt, I transferred to Oregon State University where I spent a few years and got a degree in Geology, which I love to the bottom of my heart. A common trait of American public universities is their extremely bi-modal quality within them. Most of my lower division general science/math and general-ed classes were appallingly bad. They were easier than high school and crammed full of 100's of people that probably didn't belong in college. My Upper division courses within my department were functionally an entirely different university. The classes were absurdly challenging, joyfully interesting, and spent with really smart and supportive people.

The best part about American college in my opinion is that you generally have a lot to do, but way more unstructured time to do it in than you have in high school. Also, if you are in a cool department, the thrill of college is participating with others in asking questions that have no known answers. At cool colleges, you get to do fewer exercises and a lot more learning by doing, exploring, and creating. I am unsure the degree to which that version of an undergraduate degree is unique to motivated American students, at schools with awesome departments, or common in other systems as well.

Right now, I live in America. I go to a crappy public school and I'm in Algebra 1. It sucks. Pretty much, I'm not allowed to skip courses, so I do crappy math at school, and fun stuff outside of school. Hopefully, when I get to high school I'll get recognized for my hard work and achievements.

Hello,I am from India land of scientists. The educational structure here though developing yet is one of the finest educational system of world. Courses here mostly concentrates on theory not practical thus making a serious setback to this system.Courses here are neither too hard nor easy but depends on the person itself who is attempting the course. Some people have view that Indian educational system mainly concentrates on cramming but lets take it as positive because this leads students to develop and encourages them to do research work in a way.

Well, I am from India and I live in Berhampur, Odisha. Actually the problem with the education system in India is that a lot of importance is given to rote learning or memorization and almost no importance is given to the understanding of concepts. Actually a survey showsmost of the students joining IITs are not necessarily conceptually strong(no offense intended). In our country a lot of emphasis is on getting a good rank in entrance examinations rather on education.

@Calvin Lin @David Mattingly @Peter Taylor @Suyeon Khim @Silas Hundt @Maryann Vellanikaran @Arron Kau Daniel Hirschberg

Hi,I'm from India I like to study but,usually when I try to concentrate on my studies in school my friends sometime call me Einstein or anything so I just don't do it at all in school instead I try to do it in my home alone and it helps in studying too even though in my last year I got cgpa same as my class' topper who usually go to tution and study a lot of extra classes I was like I didn't even study as per being in this age I topped in PSA ,and other some competition tests and I was just laughing at me and some my classmates who used to show-off their extra studies i 'be decided to study this time so I joined brilliant and I will be like last time but study also for time to time intervals and will see what will I score this time.what about you guys????