You should know I was accepted to UT Austin provisionally (and passed) in 2000, I was third quarter in my high school (and that high school is full of Asian Americans).
In Taiwan I would not be attending college at all if my class rank was like this.
Unless that high school is in some remote village in Miaoli and I happened to have aborigine blood (which I don’t).
This is why I don’t have much trust and respect for the doctors in Taiwan. Most of them are just very good at exams(考試機器), but conduct poorly in communication skills (especially with patients) and critical/independent thinking (to make medical reviews/ judgments). Because you know why, they don’t challenge and they are not being challenged throughout their education process.
But many doctors in Taiwan also have medical degrees in the US, so it depends on where you go.
How many is “many”? There are certainly very few U.S. trained doctors in Taiwan. But more than “many” doctors attended seminars in the U.S. They merely go to U.S. to attend commercial seminars for a few days, so they can add one more title on their resumes. I am sure you know what I am talking about.
That’s not accurate, my nephew is applying for medical school in the USA and even with a degree from a tier 1 school it is very very competitive, about 200 applicants per open space.
My sister-in-law’s son went to school with a guy who did not want to be a doctor but his parents forced him into attending medical school. His mother brought him to school everyday and waited for him to finish classes. She worried he would commit suicide so accompanied him everyday to class.
That’s some helicopter parenting if I ever heard of it… and unfortunately it’s not unheard of. Kinda makes me wish there’s a MANPAD against helicopter parents…
Then, what happened? did you graduate from UT with a degree major in computer science or biology? And a GPA of 3.9/4.0?
I think not.
Cause parents project own insecurities to kids. I won’t allow my child to study 16 hours per day for tests. Don’t take odds in a rigged game. Rich Taiwanese understands this and they have double passports. Smart Taiwanese sent kids to Poland, if they failed to enroll medicine locally.
My sister-in-law is checking with her son about language used in class. Will let you know later.
I was on faculty at Taipei Medical College (now Taipei Medical University) in the late 1990s. I was in the “general studies department” so I can’t speak to their medical classes except by hearsay from students at the time. It was awhile ago, for sure, but the role of English in the whole thing was a bit…unsettling. Everyone had to take 1st year required English, which was a random “conversation” class – they didn’t care at all what we taught. Then they had no English at all until fourth year, when they had to write their “pathology report” in English. I did teach an elective on English research writing, but 50% or more of what I had to teach wasn’t English at all – it was how to tell a logical conclusion from one that couldn’t be defended, what you could say based on a set of data, what you put into a research paper in the first place, and so on.
You could definitely see a decline in the, um, academic rigor displayed by students as you went from the medical department student, to dentistry, to public health, to nursing…I don’t mean English proficiency necessarily, I mean sort of the seriousness they had toward their studies. Of course I had mostly freshmen (1st year of a 7-year course for the medical department at least) and most college freshmen think that freshman year should be a relaxing time after all the exam prep in high school.
I did have a student from LA who was in the Public Health department, and he could not read or write Chinese. He had some elaborate cooperative arrangement going on where he never did learn in all the four years he was there. I didn’t make him come to English class because what was the point, he spoke English as natively as I did. I tried to teach him to read some Chinese but with limited success, probably because he was managing just fine without it in practical terms.
Did he plan on going back to the U.S or move on to other English speaking countries?
I can not imagine someone not learning Chinese and want to stay and work in Taiwan.
My sister-in-law’s kid said his medical school in Kaoshiung used English textbooks, English tests, and English language for instructions. However, some teachers English was not too good so they reverted to Mandarin or Chinese.
Hey Flakman!
Thank you so much for this information!
This makes the whole situation with English / medicine very interesting: May I ask what was the time period or how long ago was that?
Hello, ironlady!
Thank you so much for your detailed input and information.
Though definitely a lot of time has passed since then, I am sure a lot has changed by now (can’t be too sure). Though I am not too worried about how the courses are taught (English or Chinese); it definitely seems like there are some complications/interchanges between the two languages judging by the recent reviews/experiences.
You mentioned that you had a student that was in the Public Health Department, but did you have any students that were from the medical department? If so, did any of them mention any of their experiences in the medical field?
Again, thank you so much for your detailed reply!
He graduated this year.
