Ah, but among a large part of the Asian community, "lawyer" is less favorably looked upon, and the name of the game is doctor or engineer. So the "nice Asian engineer" can be a good position to be in, I think. "Asian" being relatively encompassing.
I warn, at this point, that I will be using phrases like "classic *insert some encompassing group of people* mentality" a little liberally, and this is for a purpose other than stereotyping -- rather, perhaps, a byproduct of how others pride themselves on stereotypes traditionally placed on them.
I had a conversation with a friend of Asian background, and in fact his parents explicitly frowned on the idea of becoming either a lawyer or doing some sort of economics and then going for one of the high-paying jobs there. Normally, many Asian parents would like their sons and daughters to do generally anything high-paying, but with my friend's case, there was an implicit suggestion that the mentality needed to work in some professions "aren't in his blood." Or, they'd rather that that mentality weren't there! The parents favored engineering on the grounds that many high-paying careers weren't based on a fundamentally "noble" goal, while engineering is supposed to be producing something to better some situation (oh, and no doubt, they would have preferences on what kind of engineering as well, given some forms are more noble than others!).
I imagine that there are some similarities among the standard Asian mentality and the Jewish one -- there is an emphasis on pursuing certain careers, with a combination of going for well-paying and prestigious positions. One can see from what I wrote before, though, that there's one certain way an engineer could occupy a high status within certain societies.
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My friends who wanted to head on to medical school *loved* to make fun of my less prestigious choice, calling the engineer "the doctor's sidekick."
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When it comes to the mentality in part of my family (I will say, much less so in my immediate family), someone who studies physics, mathematics or engineering would dismiss those going on to medical school by saying "Ah, they probably work hard but aren't that smart, so they went to medical school." I obviously don't think this way myself, but it's hardly uncommon among my people a few generations above me.
Oh, and (sorry Mollie!!!!) I just recently spoke with an elderly man, pretty old-timer, who asked whether this long time friend of mine was graduating, and what his plans were; I said he just got his degree in some form of biology, and might head on to medical school. The man quite literally shook his head and shuddered, saying he was completely unimpressed by the biology major. While I was more than a little vexed in my first response, the reason for this is almost certainly that most people who did biology in his time went nowhere, and weren't even very happy with their choices. The same man would rejoice if someone claimed to be into a good engineering school (though he wasn't an engineer himself).
In the U.S., though, I still think many engineers at some schools are arrogant about their choice of major, and live by the "My major is for the no-BS, smart people.." and not a few parents seem to feed this attitude.
In other news LauraN, I think you'd have few problems among certain groups of people! Except that you may hate the reasons they give for appreciating your engineering major.
