"Gabriel Nobre, 19, with his mom and sister right after he found out he’d passed Brazil’s famously difficult university entrance exam. The young man had cut a deal with a prep course to clean the building in exchange for free classes to help him prepare for the exam."
Some context offered by ThatDIYcouple at the
MadeMeSmile subreddit:
As a little bit of background: Brazil’s public universities are free,
but you have to pass an entrance exam called the Vestibular that is very
difficult. What was meant to be a measure to make the country more of a
meritocracy hasn’t exactly worked in practice. Instead what happened is
a bunch of private companies sprung up to tutor people to pass the
exam. So young people often need to pay for the prep courses and also
study full time for about a year in order to pass the exam. Naturally,
it is mostly affluent Brazilian youths with family support who can
afford to do this. So it ends up being less meritocratic- rich kids get
the prep and training they need, and then get the university for free.
When stories like this kid come out, it really captivates the public’s
imagination, because he’s “made it”, the way the system was intended to
work, against all odds. As a bonus, he came in 4th in his desired field,
medicine, and will be studying at (arguably) Brazil’s most prestigious
university.
More
here (in Portuguese).
It's a very similar situation in Japan. Normal state schools will not get you into a good university, the classes are too big and students are allowed to sleep in class. The irony is that they're often tired because they've had to go to prep school until late at night.
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