Curriculum
In the past ten years, under the Nobel Innovative Plan, we have developed a Nobel Smart Curriculum (NSC)™ (trademark application pending) to promote twenty-first-century educational reform. Nobel Smart Curriculum is an independent Pre-K-12 intelligent curriculum system designed to provide an interactive and immersive learning experience via NSC’s specialized encrypted learning pad. The entire curriculum is a balanced combination of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and liberal arts courses which contain three key modules: STEM, Chinese Liberal Arts, and Western Liberal Arts. The global pioneer of STEM pedagogy has been Israel, thus, NSC’s STEM module was adopted from this proven curriculum based on the principle that an innovative and entrepreneurial society that is integrated into the global knowledge economy must actively promote the STEM fields. With China’s ever growing importance on the world stage, the Chinese liberal arts module is designed for students interested in Chinese culture, history, and philosophy. CSC’s Western liberal arts module is a synthesis of the most pertinent and holistic elements carefully selected from the required core curriculum of the top Ivy League universities. All three modules are presented in an interactive format with multi-sensory approaches including the haptic, auditory, and visual to enhance learners’ long-term memory. Compared with traditional textbook-based curricula, the Nobel Smart Curriculum is easily adapted to either an online or onsite format or a combination of both. By providing students with more visual, intuitive, and interactive learning experiences, the Nobel Smart Curriculum helps students to learn independently while developing their critical thinking skills. Because of NSC’s unique mobile design, it is more inclusive than traditional curricula and can be used as an excellent optional choice for home-based learning or as an add-on to an existing school curriculum to provide an enhanced learning platform for personalized learning.
New Educational Evaluation System
In the U.S., the SAT is one of the major tests measuring students’ academic potential. Students are given seven chances a year to take the SAT exams. In China, the National College Entrance Exam (the Gaokao), the one and only benchmark in Chinese education, is administered in June of each year, and Chinese students get only one chance to take the exam. Colleges in China rely heavily on these scores when making admissions decisions. This situation has prevailed in China since the Communists came to power in 1949. As a result, students cram mindlessly in order to fulfill a one-time performance requirement instead of steadily developing a genuine base of knowledge and character. The entire system is designed to foster short-term accumulation of information and a utilitarian attitude to education. This test-oriented education system pushes students to become “cramming machines” rather than full-scale humans with a balanced personal commitment to learning and critical thinking. Many primary students in China wake up at 5:00am in the morning and go to sleep after midnight. They carry overloaded schoolbags weighed down with test papers, reference books, and teaching materials. This grade-obsessed education can only produce mindless study drones whose relationship to learning is defined by a self-serving perfidiousness and disdain for authentic knowledge. Is it any wonder that Chinese students have become infamous for using stand-ins to take exams for them, for hiring ghost writers to author their essays, and for even forging fake high school transcripts?
John Philips, founder of Philips Academy, reminded us of the significance of a truly valuable education when he said: “Goodness without knowledge is weak, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous.” A holistic educational evaluation system should take into account all aspects of human existence: IQ (Intelligence Quotient), EQ (Emotional Quotient), SQ (Spiritual Quotient), and PQ (Physical Quotient). The myriad cases of corruption occurring in China today should alert us to the fact that it may be ability (IQ or PQ) that helps an individual succeed, but it takes character (SQ and EQ) to maintain success. The original purpose of education, as Thomas Mann said, is for education to “prepare our citizens to become municipal officers, intelligent jurors, honest witnesses, legislators, or competent judges of legislation – in fine, to fill all the manifold relations of life.” It requires a balance of all 4Qs to determine a person’s full potential.
Build On Higher Ground
The effectiveness of our program speaks itself. After our competitive training, many of our students gain admission to top schools in the U.S. This has been a common occurrence over the past five years, reflecting our students’ truly exceptional performance.
History: Founded originally at Harvard in 2004, officially registered in Beijing in 2005, registered in Texas in 2008, and registered in Boston, MA, in 2015.
Original Founders: Artists and Scholars from Harvard, Columbia, and University of Houston
School Operation: both in China and the U.S.; originally established in Beijing, later expanded to Boston, Houston, and Shanghai.
Programs Offered:
Extended Elite High School Program: an additional year of study for high school students at Nobel to prepare them for undergraduate studies in the U.S.
Extended Elite Undergraduate Program: an additional year of study for undergraduate students at Nobel Academy to prepare them for graduate studies in the U.S.
Annual Student Population: targeting 100 students annually
Student Acceptance Rate: one out of ten thousand
Instructors: prominent industrial leaders and outstanding academic scholars from around the globe
Teaching Delivery Method: On-site and online instruction
Academic Index: Student average SAT upon graduation, 2200
Highest SAT Score student achieved: 2300, writing: 6 out of 6, 99% percentile)
Hall of Fame of Nobel Academy
We are small and limit ourselves to the best. So far, we have a great track record: one student accepted by Harvard (2014), four by Yale (2005), two by Princeton (2006 & 2007), one by Caltech (2008), one by Cornell (2009), ten by Columbia (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), one by Washington (St. Louis) (013), one by Johns Hopkins (2010), one by Northwestern (2010), one by Emory (2014), one by Carnegie Mellon (2010), one by University of Virginia (2011), and one by Carleton College (2011).
