This section was prepared by alumni interviewers from the Harvard Club of Hong Kong for potential applicants to Harvard College.

For Hong Kong students, going to the U.S. for university can be a real culture shock. Reading about some of the differences in attitudes towards tertiary education can help you prepare.

At the risk of over-generalizing, our experience is that there are several differences between the Hong Kong university experience and the American one. The first big difference is that there is a lot more diversity in U.S. schools. Compared to universities in Hong Kong, a typical top-tier American university has more ethnic, geographic, and religious diversity, and this may take some getting used to. Unlike in Hong Kong, where you tend to socialize mainly with your classmates in your department, in American schools, socialization cuts more frequently across different groups (academic, ethnic, religious, etc) because you live and participate in sports or clubs with people from various backgrounds.

Another big difference is that students are generally expected to be a lot more independent in American universities. The university experience in Hong Kong is perhaps more structured than it is in the U.S.Students in the US have more choice in courses and activities, and more flexibility in putting together their schedules. Many of the top U.S. schools have an amazing amount of resources available to students, but again, you need to be independent and self-driven in order to really get the most out of your time at school.

Yet another difference between going to university in America versus Hong Kong is that in the U.S., there is perhaps more emphasis on extra-curriculars and out-of-class learning. Part of the reason that admissions offices emphasize diversity so much is that students can learn a lot from the backgrounds of their peers. In fact, almost all students participate in sports or student clubs; it is quite expected that everyone tries to have a rich extra-curricular life, because of the philosophy that a huge amount of the learning you can do during your university years will come not from the classroom, but from interacting with your peers.

The last big difference between the American and Hong Kong university experience is the philosophy of the liberal arts education. In many parts of the world, including Hong Kong, tertiary education is specialized, pre-professional, and technical. Students have to decide during their high school years what they want to do for - when they get out of school, and they spend their university years preparing for this profession, whether it be law, accounting, or engineering.

In contrast, a liberal arts education is a general one. (The term "liberal" in liberal arts refers to the Latin word for freedom: these were the subjects that a free person (ie, a non-slave or a citizen) was expected to know.) At Harvard, for example, all students are expected to have a well-rounded education that encompasses a variety of disciplines including literature, history, science, maths, and writing.

Practically speaking, America's university system has two main differences with Hong Kong's. First of all, your major may be totally unrelated to your future career path. For example, many students concentrate in History or Social Studies at Harvard College and go on to medical school; conversely, many students concentrate in biology and go on to law school. Secondly, in the American system, you do not apply for admissions to a particular department. Instead, at most American liberal arts colleges, you apply to the college and then decide what you want to major in only after you enroll.

Some people think that the liberal arts system wastes time. Indeed, it does take eight years of tertiary education to get an MD degree in the U.S., while in Hong Kong, you graduate from medical school after only five years. However, there are several advantages to a liberal arts education:

1. A liberal arts education gives you more time to understand yourself and explore different areas of interest before you decide what you want to specialize in.

2. Ideally, a liberal arts education teaches you to learn, rather than just teaching knowledge. In an age when information is proliferating at an ever-increasing speed and when it's impossible to master all the knowledge in any field, it becomes more critical to learn how to learn, rather than to just memorize knowledge.

3. A liberal arts education is cross-disciplinary and therefore exposes you to areas of learning that may come in useful later. If you aspire to be a future leader, you'll need to rise above your specific areas of expertise and work with others who have different ways of thinking.

4. Finally, a liberal arts education helps you appreciate knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and in that way, helps you to become a more complete person.

As you can see, there are many fundamental differences between going to university in the U.S. and in Hong Kong. Taking the time to think about these differences and to weigh their importance to you will make your college application journey a much more directed one.