An Indian Student's View After Visiting America

Apoorva Uppala (shown with Indiana Governor Daniels) and Rohit Sridharan both visited the United States as the guests of Two Million Minutes the last 10 days of April. We asked Apoorva to share her observations after spending time visiting with her American peers in the film and visiting two U.S. high school.

Q: What advantages do you see that American high schools have over Indian high schools?

A: I think that one of the major advantages that Americans have over China and India is that since they come from such a developed nation, their access to resources and opportunities is much greater than us. Even on our tour to Carmel High School and Guerin Catholic High School [which was supposd to be a relatively small school], we were completely bowled over by the infrastructure in the school. Their athletic complexes, laboratories, music rooms, everything topped the ones we had in our school.

So if an American student really decided to focus his energies on something specific, he really has everything one requires to excel in it. Which I think may not necessarily be true in China or India.

Q: What advantages do you see that Indian high schools have over American high schools?

A: I do think being an Indian High School student has certain advantages over being an American High School Student. One of it being that our depth of knowledge in Science related subjects seems to be greater than an average American Student. This is largely due to the fact that an Indian High school graduate [if he has chosen in 10th grade, Science as his career path rather than Commerce or Liberal Arts] would have completed almost 5 years of education in Math, Biology, Chemistry, Physics.

This is in contrast to the American way of schooling where AP courses are taken by choice. And few students would voluntarily want to challenge themselves intellectually with more syllabus then required.
Hence it is but natural that there would be a difference in syllabus covered at the end of the senior year.
And I think that scientific skills are of paramount importance in this modern age of Globalization.

Q: Did anything surprise you about American Education?

A: "Well roundedness" -it seems to be something that Americans lay a lot of stress on. It is true we don't spend as much time socializing as our American counterparts and we concentrate more on the academics, but still I do not think Indian students are Single Dimensional! Whether Americans are more well rounded - if the extra edge in "well roundedness" comes at a cost of having to be academically less competent, It isn't probably worth it.

Q: In your view, how accurate was the film Two Million Minutes?

A: I think the film did an extremely good job of putting the point across given the time constraints. It did give a pretty fair depiction of lives of students in all the three countries. But I do wish that a few of the co-curricular activities that Indian students participate in could have been shown, so that the common conception that Indians are not well rounded could be disproved.