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Good articleHarvard Girl has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
April 15, 2009Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 25, 2009.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in the first eight years after Harvard Girl was published in mainland China, the number of Chinese applicants to Harvard increased tenfold?

Sources

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Here are a couple sources I have but didn't put in the article.

  • Haley, Dan (16 January 2009). "From the Annals of Unusual Parenting: Getting Your Child Into Harvard". IvyGate. Retrieved 19 February 2009.
  • Nguyen, Toan (22 January 2009). "Hot for Harvard". The Phillipian. Retrieved 19 February 2009.

The reason I didn't include these is that the first one is little more than a blog aggregating a bunch of other sources which are already in the article, and the second only barely mentions Harvard Girl (the rest of it is about another book which was specifically about their own school)—it might be useful as an inline reference in a discussion of how well-known the book is among Chinese students and how many copycats it has created, but it's not appropriate as an EL (and is certainly not "about" Harvard Girl). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:57, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Moar

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rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Impact

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first reading the article i thought it was kinda boastful. But the impact section is very well written to balance both sides of view. Im amazed that an 'undergraduate' degree would spawn a book like this, I would have expected a book about making millions or maybe a 'graduate' degree. One thing that i dont think i saw was, Was she the first chinese girl to get into harvard? Though its interesting its also sad, How can holding ice make you smarter? id imagine youd grow up pretty 'cold' as a person. Few more things id like to know; Is the book even accurate Is there any information about the scholarship she received?., Did she get good grades?., Did she struggle there? Were people upset with her when they found out about the book, or proud and suportive? I think the article could use more follow up to what the person did after, but i guess its an article about the book not the person. Anyway I want to know more so i guess the article served its purpose Landlord77 (talk) 15:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. To be honest, I have not read the book, I am only familiar with it through having lived in China briefly and through research I have done on the Chinese higher education system (and this book and Liu's name come up a lot when you're talking about Chinese education). The impact it has had is undeniable; the general way of thinking among a lot of people is that there is Harvard and then there are other schools, and if you don't go to Harvard then you're just not in the same league (I think that is slowly changing with the educational reform that's going on now, but that attitude certainly isn't gone).
As for your questions... I don't have any sources saying whether or not she was the first Chinese student at Harvard, but I would imagine she almost certainly wasn't. There's probably a way to look at '90s records and see for sure. As for the book's accuracy, I don't know without reading it, but I imagine it's just about as accurate as any "self-help" book—some things that are helpful if you read them with an open mind, lots of things that need to be taken with a grain of salt. As for her grades, I don't know, I imagine she did well (and she got a job in a prestigious investment firm after)...one of the things that a lot of the articles on this book mention is specifically that people don't really know what she did after school, as her getting into Harvard has overshadowed everything she did after. (That's one of the reasons a lot of top Chinese students now are saying "I don't want to be compared to 'Harvard Girl'"—people perceive her as being famous just for getting in, and no one really cares about what she did in school or after graduating.
Anyway, I will see if I can find some more information...and if you come across anything, don't hesitate to leave a note here or to add it to the article! rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've added some more info about Liu herself, as requested. The Chronicle of Higher Education article by Jen Lin-Liu (linked in the References section) is specifically about Liu, rather than about the book, and has a lot of information about her, including some stuff I didn't include in the article like how she got on with her roommate and friends and stuff. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:36, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Harvard Girl/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

In general, I think this article is good, but I would suggest expanding and clarifying a few parts and asking for another copyedit.

  • I read on the article talk page that you have not actually read this book. Is it possible for you to obtain a copy of the book and read it? Doing so would allow you expand on the "Description" section. I feel that this section is thin and the reader does not really get a good sense of the "meat" of the book from the article. Several details are repeated throughout the article, instead. (The book is almost 400 pages - surely there is more to say!)
  • I see from your userpage that you read Mandarin Chinese. I was wondering what kinds of Chinese sources might be available for this article. Clearly, the main audience for the book was Chinese, so the bulk of the sources are probably not in English. I'm worried that by relying exclusively on English sources, the article does not adequately fulfill WP:NPOV. (I don't know if such sources would be in Mandarin or not, however.)
  • Have you checked Lexis Nexis and other subscription databases for other news stories about this book? I did a quick search on Lexis Nexis and found a few more sources that look promising.
  • this experience changed her views about America and made her interested in applying to American universities - What was the change exactly?
  • What are the titles of some of the books that this one spawned?
  • The tone of the article is a bit colloquial at times. I tried to replace words such as "top" and "get", which are both colloquial and vague. I suggest another copyediting pass by an uninvolved editor. If you cannot find a good copyeditor quickly, let me know and I'll copyedit the article again in a day or so.

I hope these suggestions are helpful. I am putting the article on hold for ten days. Awadewit (talk) 19:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestions. I am a bit busy tonight so I might not be able to work on this much, but I will try to address these issues by the weekend. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 21:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • In response to your first suggestion...I might be able to get a copy of the book, but it will be many months before I'm able to read it; I might not even have time during the summer (and even if I do, I am a slow reader in Chinese...I can read and understand it, but it takes some time). So if this review will hinge on that, then I would probably just have to withdraw it for now and try again sometime in the future. Some of the other sources in the article might have some more details on what sort of stuff is in the book, I'll have to look.
  • As for looking into LexisNexis and Chinese sources, that is something I can do. I will do some perusing tonight and over the weekend.
  • Did a quick search through several databases that I have access to through my university library, and added everything I could glean from those. I haven't really gone to Chinese sources yet, just because reading the articles is more effort (with an English article I can tell at a glance if it's gonna be useful or not, but reading most Chinese articles is a bit of a commitment...) and I'm not quite as sure where to look, since most of the Chinese reading I do is just within my little field and I'm not as familiar with what other search resources are out there. I can snoop around more, though. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 00:17, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Have you searched LexisNexis for non-English sources? There is a box to check for that. You might also ask a reference librarian for advice on how to search for Chinese newspapers and magazines. If you are at a university, there should be subject area librarian dedicated to the library's Chinese collections who can help you. Awadewit (talk) 18:27, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hm, I keep getting an application error when I try to search LN in Chinese. I have been experimenting with other databases at my university today, but not having any luck finding anything (although interestingly I do get several hundred hits for science journals when I do a search for the book title in Chinese, even when it's in quotes...not sure why that is happening). I'll keep fiddling around. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:37, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I added a bit of stuff that I found just by googling around a bit. This was a good suggestion; I stumbled across some things that were never mentioned in any of my English sources (most of which are older, other than the 2007 NYT article which is only a passing mention anyway). For example, I didn't realize a follow-up book was published, and right now I'm very tickled by the title Harvard Girl 2, which sounds like it should be an action movie. (Maybe I'm just too inculcated with this street-fighting, car-chasing Hollywood society.) rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 06:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • this experience changed her views about America - in the source I got that from, it's referring to breaking some of the stereotypes about America that were/are common among a lot of non-Americans. I'm not sure if it even really needs to be included; here is the relevant quote from the Chronicle of Higher Education source, to help judge whether or not it is important enough to keep in the article:

    "the one-month exchange program in Bethesda, Md., helped her break stereotypes that she held about the United States. Before she went to the States, she thought that it would be like a Hollywood movie. She and several other Chinese exchange students were surprised that they didn't see any street fights or police-car chases."[1]

  • I would include the bit about the Hollywood movie, street fights and police-car chases. I think it is important to convey the idea that much of the world's ideas about America are shaped by the movies. This is actually a revelation to many. :) Awadewit (talk) 18:27, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tried to work it in here, let me know what you think. I guess you're right that it's good to throw in.... in college I helped out with orientation and stuff for a lot of international students, so I got pretty used to "hey, this isn't like NYC!" and "what, you don't have a gun?" and stuff like that, but I forget that not everyone in America realizes this is how the world perceives us :). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:43, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Book titles... I have the titles for a bunch of them, mentioned in various sources, and will add some to the article.
  • Added a whole bunch; now, if anything, we have more than necessary. I was thinking of putting them in a bulleted list in a subsection, but I worried that 1) that could become a target for junk editing/spam; 2) it might look ugly and useless, since I don't have author/date/publisher information for both of them. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 00:17, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • As for copyediting, once I've addressed these content concerns I will try to find someone to do a quick copyedit. I'm pretty terrible at copyediting my own articles (since I already know what I'm trying to say, and therefore don't notice parts that are awkward or anything) so it's best if I find someone on the outside to do it. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 22:35, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question How is source search coming? Awadewit (talk) 04:39, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, I haven't really done anything since this small addition (also linked above, it's nothing new). I snooped around some of the databases I have access to here and none of them are much use (we have some wonderful databases of Classical Chinese texts, but very little in the way of contemporary stuff), and LexisNexis seems to just not like when I put Chinese characters into it, no matter what browser I use. The stuff in that edit above I just found by googling around, random Xinhua and Sina articles; I might be able to find some more stuff like that but I'm not sure how valuable it will be. Granted, those ones I found earlier did have some nice surprises in them, so it certainly wouldn't hurt to peek into more, I just might not have the energy for it for a few more days. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 04:54, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine. Just drop me a note when your are done. Awadewit (talk) 18:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I made a couple more small additions, and I think I'm ready to sit tight for a little while now. In general, there seem to be several times when there were "bursts" of articles about this—specifically, around 2001-2003 in the US, when journalists and educators apparently started realizing how big a deal this book was in China, and then in late 2004 in China, when the anti-HarvardGirl book came out and stirred up attention...I assume there was also a big media buzz in China in 1999-2000 (when Liu was admitted, and then when the book actually came out), but I'm having a hard time finding articles from then (presumably because they're overshadowed by the more recent hubbub). In any of these "bursts", there are a bunch of articles that all say similar things (or, in the case of the Chinese ones, that all say the exact same things, thanks to the rampant copyvio that goes on at blogs and news websites over there). Anyway, I'm sure there is more out there that can be said, but right now I feel more or less satisfied with what I've dug up so far (although you can let me know if you think there are still any major holes or deficiencies).
I also have a minor MoS question pending at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (use of Chinese language)#Traditional and simplified characters—basically, all the Chinese text in the article and the sources I added before is simplified characters, but the Epoch Times source I just threw in is traditional, and I don't know whether it would be better to put its title in simplified (for consistency within the article) or to keep it traditional (for faithfulness to the source). Hopefully I'll get a response there pretty soon (I spammed a couple editors who I know do a lot of editing in this area, with links to my question). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 01:17, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think the additions to the article are good. I'm going to pass this now. Awadewit (talk) 03:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Propaganda!

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Has anyone thought that this book is propaganda that has been encouraged if not outright supported by the university or the american university system?

If one searches for harvard/princeton/chicago on the chinese youtube, youku.com, one finds there several 30-minute university-produced videos which extol their respective insitutions, made specifically for chinese students in mandarin!

The result is brain drain from China. The sooner ones comes to the US the more likely it is they will stay here, rather than drift back to china. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.137.88.165 (talk) 19:58, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, Harvard and the American university system had no involvement in getting this book written, published, or advertised. It was a happy coincidence that happened to benefit them (and I can guarantee you there are Harvard students who were somewhat bitter about it and saw Liu as having "sold" her life story to the media), but it wasn't a giant conspiracy or anything. If the universities are advertising themselves to Chinese students now, it's because China is a huge and growing source of applicants and because it's very much in vogue right now; it's not because this is part of some grand conspiracy.
As for brain drain...actually, the truth is the opposite. These days, Chinese students who go abroad are more and more likely to ultimately go back to China; it used to be the case that they would stay abroad, but the trend has shifted a lot in recent years. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:02, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Scholarship vs. Need-Based Aid

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While the sourced article states that Liu received a full scholarship, and while, yes, I agree that technically anything can fall under the term of 'scholarship', we also know that it the scholarship was need-based, not merit-based, given that Harvard offers only need-based aid, no merit-based aid (http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do): "All of our financial aid is awarded on the basis of demonstrated financial need". I don't think there's some big semantic argument to be made here, but I think it's at least conceivable that some readers will see 'full scholarship' and assume it is a merit-based scholarship, which is what that term often means. Why not, in this case, err on the side of clarity and either use Harvard's language and say 'need based financial aid', or, if you want the term scholarship in there, 'need-based scholarship'. I would think this increases clarity without any reduction in veracity.

Be namo (talk) 02:02, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Criticism

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Acceptance to Harvard

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One of the claims in the Criticism section is "Liu gained entrance into Harvard not because of her comprehensive or well-rounded education, but by exploiting "loopholes and defects" in Harvard's admissions policy for Chinese students" (from the link [2]: 刘亦婷利用哈佛大学招收中国学生时存在的制度漏洞和缺陷进入哈佛，根本不是综合素质教育的结果). However that's it as far as the information goes, on here as well as in the reference . So what "loopholes and defects"? How did she exploit it? The reference does not explain any of these or offer any details. This seems like a rather serious accusation, so the article definitely need to state what is it. Without any elaboration, this is an unfounded accusation.--Sevilledade (talk) 22:11, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And the statement immediately following that "or by taking advantage of guanxi, personal relationships and networks", citing this dead article [3], again fails to gave any details, but exist simply as an accusation. What relationship is it? What "networks" did she have? Did she come from a prominent family? Simply stating an accusation without anything else makes the statement seem quite fallacious.--Sevilledade (talk) 22:11, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that the bit about guanxi needs clarification; it's already pretty obvious what that means, and for a reader who wants to know more it's all in the source, which specifically says that her mother has connections with an admissions officer named La Rui.
As for the "loopholes and defects", yes, I agree that clarification would be good, which is why I never removed the {{clarify}} tag there (you did). The reference is about Xiao Hui's book, and I imagine there is much more detail about this therein, I just don't have the book. If someone has the book and has time to find the relevant section, it would be possible to expand on this (although, in the sake of summary style, I don't know how in depth it should good). In any case, it's certainly not an "unfounded accusation", there is an entire book about it and that book is clearly pointed out in two references. Furthermore, this WP article never says that we think she did any of those things; those words are firmly placed within Xiao's mouth. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:23, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That source is a Chinese "blog", is it credible? Has her parents ever responded to these accusations, or commented about Xiao Hui's book Raising Children Requires Great Wisdom: The Truth About "Harvard Girl Liu Yiting?--Sevilledade (talk) 22:32, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a blog, it's a reproduction of a published news article that happens to be posted on a blog. As you know, the original source is currently a deadlink (linkrot is pretty common when dealing with Chinese media, unfortunately), I just linked to that copy of it for your convenience. I'm still in the process of looking for an archived version of the original.
As for whether her parents have responded, I don't know; if you can find a response from them you are welcome to add it. but Xiao's book is out there and multiple sources report what it says (not to mention the book itself, if anyone on en-wiki finds the time to dig it up and read it), so there's no reason not to mention it here. Like I said, I have not taken any position on the issue of how Liu got into Harvard, and the WP article presents it in a neutral fashion, only saying "Xiao said this...". rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:26, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comparisons to Liu and news attention

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Several of the claims in the Criticism section, does not have references to back up. One example is the claim "many of China's top students are still compared to "Harvard Girl"", which was not in the two references cited at the end of the sentence [4] [5]. The contributor Rjanag stated in edit summary that "while not said in these exact words, it is obviously suggested in all these sources." What "all these sources"? And the writer wrote it based on the suggestions and impressions these articles gave? While I could not find such information in any of these articles, including The New York Times article Rjanag mentioned. Further, the next statement "admissions to top overseas universities often make big news in mainland China", is also unreferenced and was not found in the two references cited. What source mentioned admissions to top overseas universities often make big news? Just based on Cheng Wanxin and several examples listed in this article that's enough to make a conclusion that admissions to top overseas universities "often" make big news?--Sevilledade (talk) 20:12, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As for your first question, numerous sources describe this comparison quite clearly, and/or quote other Chinese students not wanting to be compared to Liu (implying that they otherwise would be):
  1. [6] "'The relentless moniker of “Harvard Girl” has seemingly branded Liu for life, but also haunts the efforts of other student authors who would rather avoid the title. Kate Wang ’07, published a book called “Confessions of an American Nerd” with her father in 2003. It compared Chinese and American education systems, and Wang says she was “offended” when audience members asked her about Liu and made comparisons to “Harvard Girl.”'
  2. [7] "I'm not Liu Yiting #2"
  3. [8] "don't call me harvard girl"
  4. [9] "I didn't want to create a Liu Yiting phenomenon," Yin said
The point here was to describe the impact Liu and the book have had on students to follow, and that impact is pretty obvious. If you disagree with the way it's worded here you might suggest a rewording, but there's no reason to remove mention of this entirely.
As for the second point, basically you are objecting to the word "often"? That's fine, again, you can suggest a rewording. Replace "often" with "still" or "still occasionally" or something, or replace "make big news" with "attract substantial attention" or something like that; six of one, half a dozen of the other. Again, even if these exact words aren't in the source, you still get this impression quite clearly from most of the sources, many of which describe attention that later students have gotten or are worried about getting. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:39, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated insertion of unsourced POV content

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The same unsourced POV content has been inserted repeatedly in the last week. Please provide references that support these changes.

diff1, diff2, diff3.

Thanks, MrBill3 (talk) 08:49, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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