To Gabriela Morillo Dal Piccol (9), who lived in Barcelona, Spain from kindergarten through second grade, the American college application process is more competitive and foregrounded in the U.S.
“There’s not nearly as much of a hyper fixation on getting into a good college,” Morillo Dal Piccol said. “Obviously, there’s better schools and less prestigious schools, but there’s not this whole thing about [the] Ivy Leagues, the top schools. People mostly don’t have to do, for example, extracurriculars and things like that to go on their college apps.”
College applications consist of “primarily taking exams” and an evaluation of school records; therefore, they are more “academic based,” according to Morillo Dal Piccol. In Spain, students must complete 10 years of compulsory education, which includes primary and secondary education (ESO), until the age of 16. Later, they can choose whether to go through Bachillerato, an upper-secondary two-year program meant to guide students into college studies.
“Most people, even though it’s not required, take the two extra years of Bachillerato to pursue their university education,” Morillo Dal Piccol said. “In Bachillerato, it’s kind of like, you focus more on a specific field … it’s kind of like pre-college a little bit, just to prepare for what you want to matriculate in once you’re in university.”
While extracurricular activities are “equally as common” in Spanish schools, according to Morillo Dal Piccol, they exist for “different reasons.”
“Here, a lot of people do extracurriculars because it might look good on college [applications],” Morillo Dal Piccol said. “[In Spain], a lot of people take English classes after school, or they’ll do a sport just because they like that sport. Obviously, people do that here as well, but there’s not that added pressure of, ‘oh, I need this to appeal to a college.’”
Much like Ji’s experience facing challenges in the extracurricular activities encouraged — or even demanded, Morillo Dal Piccol also felt the system can sometimes dictate individuals into certain “molds.”
“The good thing about schools here is, obviously, there’s that integration of community and networking and just meeting other people and focusing on your passions and such,” Morillo Dal Piccol (9) said. “There’s a lot of options, but at the same time, it all kind of becomes strange regardless, because you have this pressure to conform to what is wanted from the college.”
In terms of daily school life, Morillo Dal Piccol finds the U.S. more eventful, based on the stories she hears from her cousin back in Spain.
“My cousin says school here is a lot more fun,” Morillo Dal Piccol said. “I think they find ways, at least with our district, to … integrate the community, like sports games, having pep rallies, stuff like that. They don’t have that [in Spain] … [they] tell me [that] they go, they ‘die’ for six hours [in school], and then they come back.”
French and German were the only languages offered as electives in most Spanish high schools, according to Morillo Dal Piccol. While the secondary part of school involved electives, they were more “academically focused” compared to what is offered at TPHS, according to Morillo Dal Piccol.
“Here we have a huge array of electives to choose from, but over there was, like one year you get a certain selection, another year you get another selection,” Morillo Dal Piccol said. “In total, you’d have maybe, like three things to pick from … and it wouldn’t be creative and liberal.”
Despite a narrower range of electives, Morillo Dal Piccol noticed a stark difference in the curriculum of the two schools she attended — one in Spain and the other in the U.S.
“Even when I was in second grade and I moved here in third grade, I was already ahead of my peers, even though I was still adapting to a new environment and these languages … academically, I was doing much stronger than my classmates,” Morillo Dal Piccol said. “And I think since it’s less focused on that social, community [and] having fun [in Barcelona] … it’s just school, do work … so we were more … not aggressive, but disciplined in that sense.”
Catalina Baraya (11), a student who just recently moved back to the U.S. from Japan last August, observed differences in school life more from an overarching cultural dissimilarity. Though Baraya attended an American international school with fully English-taught classes, it was not the same as attending school in the U.S.
“Even if you’re going to an American [international] school, in a different country, the standards are very, very high because … you’re not in your own country,” Baraya said. “… Since you’re in a foreign country, you already have an opportunity that not a lot of people have, so they’re expecting you to succeed past what is the very basic demand of you here.”
Baraya’s school was competitive, not only because of the social expectations placed on foreigners, but because of its size and academic rigor as well.
“My school was really small, compared to Torrey Pines,” Baraya said. “So I would say academically, it was very competitive. You knew who the top 1% of academic people were, and you knew who your valedictorian [is] of your year … [so] you were already discouraged by your sophomore year. But, I would say, it is more competitive just because [of] the number of students and everybody’s so connected, like everybody knows everybody … you know what you’re up against, and you know that there’s a limited number, and you’re either on the low side or the high side.”
Baraya had already been studying Japanese on her own when she moved to Japan. She hopes to pursue higher education in Japan at universities such as Waseda University, Temple University and Sophia University.
“What a lot of people around me did was, you either come back to America or you go to school in different countries, because you already had that global perspective,” Baraya said. “I personally did really want to go to university in Japan, just because I spent my formative teen years there, so … when I moved [to TPHS], I felt so out of place. Even though I did go to an American school [in Japan], [the school] was like a bridge between the two [countries], and I was thinking [in] this in-between world … I felt more connected to Japan than I did here.”
Attending an American school in Japan did not prepare Barraya for high school life in the U.S.
“When I moved to Japan, I was pretty prepared,” Baraya said. “Visually, I wasn’t expecting how much I was gonna stick out… in Japan, it’s very much like, here’s your box. You’re inside the box. Stay in the box. But here it’s like, you can draw off the box. I forgot how people are very talkative here … I was so used to, ‘don’t speak unless you’re spoken to’ … so it was definitely a culture shock here, plus just how expensive everything was, because the yen rate was really low back when I lived there.
Although cultures differ drastically, some international students adapt well, while others struggle.
“90% of [the students adapted to Japanese culture],” Baraya said. “You had your outliers, the ones who did not want to be there, the ones who missed America so badly … But a lot of us, we had our thing. Everybody was adapting to Japanese culture, even if you didn’t speak Japanese; we knew [things like] ‘don’t be loud on the train.’ You knew the basics.”
Social life was also different in Japan.
“The fun thing about being a teenager there was that while our parents were working, our parents felt safe enough to let us out in Japan, wherever, because Japan is so safe, we would just explore,” Baraya said. “We would just go to random villages and walk around.”
In Japan, nine years of education is required: six years of elementary school and three years of middle school. High school and college are optional, yet many naturally follow the path. Though similar to South Korea in that college applications are academic-based, after-school programs are prosperous as well.
“I had traveled a lot back then, and we would have flights that were like five in the morning, and I would see students,” Baraya said. “I would see students on the first train just passed out … I’ve seen a lot [of] students just so zoned out and about to fall asleep … I would see kids just entering the train station at nine [p.m.].”
High school students in their final year take the Common Test for University Admissions, which determines their qualification to apply to certain universities. They then proceed to take school-specific exams that determine their eligibility for admission. While other methods are provided under certain conditions, high school records and exam scores are the mainstream.
“Personally … I would say essays [are better for students], because you really get to shine through,” Baraya said. “You can write about your personality. And I guess you could say that if you went through something, you could really show that off. But I feel like I would personally enjoy an exam better, because the essays are sometimes, to get your point across, you’re in a sea of so many different people. And they’re not only looking at your academics, they’re looking at your personal story as well. So I feel like when you put those together, it kind of blurs the line.”
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