I'm somewhat surprised no one has commented on cheating.During my MFE, it soon became clear that the Chinese students in particular had all the answers before ever setting foot on campus. They had scans or pdfs of homeworks/midterms/finals along with the solutions. They even had full-text pdfs of several textbooks. A couple of the extremely smart ones would share answers with and in general help out the rest. It was roughly analogous to the Borg, if you are familiar with that reference.One misguided Chinese student turned in an exact (and exactly correct) facsimile of a stats homework solution. In the next class, it was announced that anyone found "collaborating" on future homeworks would automatically fail. I suppose the cheaters became slightly more clever after that.The word "cheat" just doesn't seem to exist in the Chinese lexicon. I won't elaborate on specific conversations, but asking one of them why they copy and share work was like asking "why do you tie your shoes?" It was just such a non-issue.Last year, I met a guy who had completed an MS in statistics at a different university. For whatever reason we started talking about our experiences and he said things were the same way when he got his degree. That was somewhat comforting, I suppose. The worst part to me is the Chinese were - with a few exceptions - quite smart and should have been able to muddle through along with the rest of us. It's not a bunch of idiots cheating their way through an MFE who will be exposed in the workplace. Instead it's a nationalistic group of competent and intelligent students who simply use every advantage to ensure they "win".Sorry for the wall of text. It's an emotional issue for me.

QuoteOriginally posted by: syorgyaI'm somewhat surprised no one has commented on cheating.During my MFE, it soon became clear that the Chinese students in particular had all the answers before ever setting foot on campus. They had scans or pdfs of homeworks/midterms/finals along with the solutions. They even had full-text pdfs of several textbooks. A couple of the extremely smart ones would share answers with and in general help out the rest. It was roughly analogous to the Borg, if you are familiar with that reference.One misguided Chinese student turned in an exact (and exactly correct) facsimile of a stats homework solution. In the next class, it was announced that anyone found "collaborating" on future homeworks would automatically fail. I suppose the cheaters became slightly more clever after that.The word "cheat" just doesn't seem to exist in the Chinese lexicon. I won't elaborate on specific conversations, but asking one of them why they copy and share work was like asking "why do you tie your shoes?" It was just such a non-issue.Last year, I met a guy who had completed an MS in statistics at a different university. For whatever reason we started talking about our experiences and he said things were the same way when he got his degree. That was somewhat comforting, I suppose. The worst part to me is the Chinese were - with a few exceptions - quite smart and should have been able to muddle through along with the rest of us. It's not a bunch of idiots cheating their way through an MFE who will be exposed in the workplace. Instead it's a nationalistic group of competent and intelligent students who simply use every advantage to ensure they "win".Sorry for the wall of text. It's an emotional issue for me.you're generalizing your own experience as if it rings true all across. If anything, the good ones will not collaborate at all because they are very competitive and cuthroat even amongst themselves. Cheating and collaboration that happens among the weak, no matter what ethnicity they are. ???Using advantages to make sure you win is the point of the game, otherwise you're just inefficient.

) Cheating generally exists within different group of ethnics, not Chinese alone; my firend is doing a project in a Top UK uni ( she is a Chinese), and she complained when they're about to complete the project, her non-Chinese classmates will come and ask for solutions, which made her uncomfortable. Non offence, just to show it's an universal thing, when it comes to cheating.2) Chinese may have a different understanding about homework; they like to discuss and solve it out together, which I don't think is a bad thing given when they step into workplace, teamwork is often placed at a higher priority compared to individual work; while when it comes to exams , there is no way of cheating…3) Individual doesn't represent the group; I don't deny there are Chinese ( maybe not a small number) doing cheatings ,which is quite shameful, I think the majority worked their way by hard-working , as syorgya just shared. There isn't, and shouldn't be much difference between Chinese and other groups.Just my 2cents, by a Chinese. Finally, come back to the topic of Chinese Quant taking over, I don't see that trend ( yet). Quants in my firm are mostly Europeans ( a good number of which are French). Even if there're increase in the number of Chinese Quant, I would think it's natural. Just go to any university in US or UK; quite likely you'll find the presence of Chinese students. It's always like a double edge sword, on one hand, by the name of internationalization you will have more talents from other places of the world, and more money by taking advantage of them; on the other hand they will definitely, more or less, take up some of the jobs previously owned by locals. There will always be pros and cons. It's an art to manage the balance so to maximize the benefit while minizing the damage.Thanks,

QuoteOriginally posted by: syorgyaDuring my MFE, it soon became clear that the Chinese students in particular had all the answers before ever setting foot on campus. They had scans or pdfs of homeworks/midterms/finals along with the solutions. They even had full-text pdfs of several textbooks. A couple of the extremely smart ones would share answers with and in general helpout the rest. It was roughly analogous to the Borg, if you are familiar with that reference.I don't see the problem with this part. The MIT physics undergrad degree assumes that everyone has scans of all previous homeworks/midterms/finals along with worked out answers, and that everyone helps everyone else with homework. Having everyone help each other with homework isn't going to be that much of a problem since homework was only a small part of the grade, and everything depends on the tests.QuoteThe word "cheat" just doesn't seem to exist in the Chinese lexicon. I won't elaborate on specific conversations, but asking one of them why they copy and share work was like asking "why do you tie your shoes?" It was just such a non-issue.For the most part the Chinese educational system (like the MIT physics curriculum) is very test centered, and assumes that homework isn't that important and that everything depends on how well you do on the test. You can and in fact are encouraged to work with other people to do the homework, since the homework is just preparation for the test. If by copying someone elses work on the homework, you can memorize the steps and repeat them on the final exam, so much the better.QuoteThe worst part to me is the Chinese were - with a few exceptions - quite smart and should have been able to muddle through along with the rest of us. It's not a bunch of idiots cheating their way through an MFE who will be exposed in the workplace. Instead it's a nationalistic group of competent and intelligent students who simply use every advantage to ensure they "win".Actually the work place is *very* group centered which is why a lot of academic practice breaks down when you move to industry. When you do real world coding, you are *expected* to share and copy code with other people in your workgroup, to work as a team, and to use your expertise to help the other people on your team. The fact that everyone is copying everyone else's code for the simple stuff, means that everyone can work together at the more complex stuff.

QuoteOriginally posted by: JWYWXQ) Cheating generally exists within different group of ethnics, not Chinese alone; my firend is doing a project in a Top UK uni ( she is a Chinese), and she complained when they're about to complete the project, her non-Chinese classmates will come and ask for solutions, which made her uncomfortable. Non offence, just to show it's an universal thing, when it comes to cheating.Part of the issue here is defining exactly what is cheating and what isn't. If I were to design a curriculum, it would be such that the students are *encouraged* to share homework answers and collaborate on homework, and part of the strength of the MIT undergraduate physics curriculum was that it did just that. You can check for individual competency by making the tests really nasty, and also assign project based homework. What is the answer to X, is something that you can figure out by copying someone else. Tell me about a financial problem that you think is particularly interesting, is something that you can't.Quote2) Chinese may have a different understanding about homework; they like to discuss and solve it out together, which I don't think is a bad thing given when they step into workplace, teamwork is often placed at a higher priority compared to individual work; while when it comes to exams , there is no way of cheating…It isn't. In the real workplace, if you can solve a problem in five minutes by copying your neighbors solution to the problem, you get no points for spending three weeks working the problem out by yourself. The big problems are those in which neither you, your neighbor, or anyone else has any idea to figure out.There are some strengths to the Chinese educational system. There are also a lot of weaknesses. The strengths is that the Chinese educational system puts out people that are extremely technically strong. The weaknesses are the the system very strongly discourages individual self-expression.

One other thing is that there are a lot of generational shifts among Chinese. People born after 1980 can be career focused and nationalistic to the point that it really disturbs people born in the 1960's. A lot of what you see among Chinese in schools today is a consequence of government policies designed to keep the Communist Party in power after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and those policies were designed to get people to take the energy that could have been used for political organization and direct it at careers and economic advancement. The other thing to note is that anyone born in mainland China in the 1950's and 1960's has lived through poverty. Lots of people born in the 1980's haven't.It will be interesting to see what happens with this financial crisis. Especially if we run into the situation where lots of people who have gone through the motions and gotten degrees find out that they have extreme difficulty getting entry level jobs.