"Chinese aim for the Ivy League" (International Herald Tribune)

College Search & Lists
101

<p>While the stereotype holds true a certain extent (I knew a Chinese kid whose parents made him draw math problems in the sand when on vacation at the beach), but it’s not all like that. Perhaps my case is an outlier, but I come from an Asian family (I am first gen. to be born in America), where my parents are pretty much supportive of whatever my brother and I do. Proof of this, my brother graduated from an ART college majoring in film a few years back, and neither parents suffered from cardiac arrest. They’d probably prefer for him to become a world-class heart surgeon, engineer or business attorney–but they didn’t try to force or groom him to become one.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, I’m looking into social sciences/English and have an interest in teaching. While I have a few Ivy league aspirations (mainly Brown and Columbia), it’s completely self-motivated. I just feel like these institutions would be pretty ballin’–for the education and for the experience.</p>

102

<p>Generalization is not the way to go, obviously. But I think one can see the trends. I spent one year in the U.S. as an exchange student, and met different east-Asians. The ones that came from mainland, were more reserved, less happy, a little not confident. The ones who were Asian Americans had hardly different character from the Americans themselves.</p>

<p>As I said, I come from post-USSR country, (west Asia, I guess), and my parents and lots of people in my country have the same mentality. When I was in the U.S., I got a 92 for my second quarter on AP USH. I was thinking what will I tell to my host family, and how badly they will react. When I came home and told them, they laughed, and said that I am such a brilliant kid that I will definitely end up with a 100 in a class, and that I should not worry about this 92, or anything else. It is fine. You are great. Encouragement helped a lot. Our families are different, and extremes are bad in everything – if you beat up your child every time he gets 99, or ‘encourage him’ when he gets all F’s, saying that he will be ok and it’s not his fault - it is probably not great. But if you can balance it, you are fine. And once again, it is a stereotype, and does not cover everyone. I think it is just majority of people. </p>

<p>P.S. In our culture, we even have a saying - beats? It means loves. So parents love us, and want us to be better. They just differ in methods.</p>

<p>Concerning the studying part… A number of my Chinese and Korean friends told me that back in their countries they sleep about 5 hours, and study a lot. I found it interesting that our families had similar trends - they want us to get in ‘name colleges’, and cannot see how one can turn down Princeton for ‘something ranked 30 on U.S. news ranking’, because I we might like it better… Or selecting Amherst/Williams over an Ivy. etc. </p>

<p>And the creativity part… In the U.S. there are tons of extracurriculars to do, things to devote yourself to, and so on… I had lots of classmates who had extremely high ambitions. Well, I had them too… But they were buried under ‘go-to-school-go-to-university-get-good-job-earn-a-lot-of-money-now-be-happy’. I am not sure about east Asians on this one… But in my country you are considered AWESOME, if you are basically a nerd (wake up in the morning, school, eat, study study study, eat, sleep, and so on)</p>

103

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<p>Please keep your racist and supremacist comments to yourself, namert.</p>

104

<p>y’all are so warm and friendly around here.</p>

105

<p>Namurt seems right to me; he’s definitely being sarcastic.</p>

<p>And consider this: A white guy playing piano is creative & music-loving. An Asian playing piano ostensibly doesn’t actually like piano and is “not creative” but practices a lot. I find this viewpoint high offensive - that Asians are basically “soul-less Mentats/working ants” [I hear that one a lot, jokingly].</p>