■ 马君朝

　　Each year, elite American universities and liberal arts colleges, such as Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Amherst and Wellesley, offer a number of scholarships to Chinese high school graduates to study in their undergraduate programs. Four years ago, I received such a scholarship from Yale.

　　What are these Chinese undergrads like? Most come from middle-class families in the big urban centers of China. The geographical distribution is highly skewed, with Shanghai and Beijing heavily over-represented. Certain magnet schools, such as the Shanghai Foreign Language Middle School and Middle School 4 in Beijing, have supplied many students to American college campuses. Outside the main pool, a number of Yale students come from Changsha and Ningbo,swhereseach year American Yale graduates are sent to teach English. Unfortunately, only students from the coastal metropolises seem to have any idea of the existence of such scholarships.

　　The overwhelming majority of Chinese undergraduates in the US major in science, engineering or economics. Many were academic superstars in their high schools - gold medallists in international academic Olympiads or prize winners in national academic contests. Once on US campuses, many of them decide to make research a lifelong commitment. A Shanghainese friend of mine, who had won a very high physics prize in high school, majored in physics at Yale. In his senior year, he rejected a job offer from Microsoft and opted for the physics graduate program at Harvard. Others jump at the opportunity to enter fields like engineering and finance. Working for a major financial firm on Wall Street is the dream of many pragmatic Chinese undergraduates. In my freshman year at Yale, there were seven undergraduates from mainland China, and now two of them are employed by big-name Wall Street investment banks. Many Chinese students also study biology in college and then go on to medical school. And occasionally undergraduates choose radically different careers: One Yale undergraduate, a history major, took up journalism after graduation. An autobiographical essay of hers entitled "Coming to America" was published in The New York Times and won accolades from both Western and Chinese readers.

　　Life outside the classroom constitutes an important part of college life. At American universities the average student spends less than thirteen hours a week in class. Many Chinese students use their spare time to pick up some extra pocket money. At Yale, one of the most common campus jobs is washing dishes in the dining halls. Virtually all Chinese undergraduates at Yale work part-time in the dining halls at some point in their college years. As they grow in age and sophistication, they upgrade to better-paying and less stressful positions. The more popular and interesting jobs include working as a computer assistant, math homework grader, investment office assistant and lab or research assistant. The latter three often lead to stimulating summer jobs.

　　Student activities are another prominent feature of American college life. Each week there are countless student-organized events of all sorts - athletic, artistic, cultural, political or social (i.e. just for fun). New student organizations are constantly being created, and Chinese undergrads contribute to this ferment. The year before I went to Yale, they staged Cao Yu's play Leiyu. The whole Chinese undergraduate student body plus some Singaporeans and Chinese-Americans were mobilized to make props, act and persuade their American friends to come to the show, which was entirely in Mandarin. The physics student I mentioned earlier was very active in social life. He was on the Yale solar-car team, took part in a student theatrical performance and studied ballet, which he once demonstrated for us on a dinner table in the dining hall. Sport looms much larger on US campuses than in China. At Yale, intramural sports from soccer to water polo take place all year long; hence athletic talent is a real social asset. One of the Chinese students at Yale several years ago was a versatile sportsman. His athletic talents and enthusiastic participation in sporting events, combined with his other fine qualities, made him a popular figure in his residential college. Years after his graduation, his teachers and friends at Yale still remember him with great fondness.

　　Of course not all Chinese undergraduates in the US cut such prominent figures on campus. At Yale, plenty of Chinese students are like me, content with finishing their homework and using the rest of the time for relaxation and recreation. Many evenings were chattered away in the library,swhereswe clustered around a table supposedly to "study" together. True to our upbringing, we Chinese Yalies marked all our important events and holidays (welcoming new students, Christmas and Chinese New Year, saying farewell to graduates) with a banquet, usually in an Asian restaurant. And though Chinese students don't drink as much as their American peers, late night carousing is no rarity.