Shanghai student to live Harvard dream of many A Harvard-bound Shanghai pupil is the envy of her peers, for whom entry to the Ivy League ranks is a class act

Barbara Demick:

It was just a week after Chang Shui received her acceptance notice from Harvard that the first book offer came.
A publisher approached her father with a detailed outline for an inside guide to how a Shanghai couple prepared their daughter to compete successfully with the best students from America. Local newspapers weighed in with articles about how Shui’s membership in a dance troupe surely helped. “Magical girl ‘danced’ her way into Harvard,” the Shanghai Evening Post headlined its story.
Qibao High School, where Shui is a senior, trumpeted the news on a large electronic billboard at the front gate. The day that she received her acceptance notice – by e-mail at 5am on April 2 – teachers at the high school crowded around to have their picture taken with her.
“She was a celebrity,” her homeroom teacher, Xiong Gongping, boasts.