Zhao Yang, 18, a high school student in Beijing, looked upset as she emerged from a room equipped with a video camera. “I was too nervous, so I spoke too fast,” she told her parents. “The questions were too weird. I wasn’t prepared for most of them.” Ms. Zhao is a top student with ambitions to go to a top American university. She has been preparing for years, working with a private admissions agent and taking the SAT and the Test of English as a Foreign Language several times. Her parents have invested more than $30,000 in the project, hoping to give their only child a boost.

January 19, 2016 ・ From The New York Times