And there is the prognostication that this will all sort itself out in a generation or two as the Asians become fat and lazy like the rest of us duffers. 
@Hunt: But in terms of âleveling the fieldâ for the less affluent (which elite colleges have been 'trying so hard" to do), the difference would be when ECs and other hooks are tipping the scale while academics is a given, the wealthy would be in a more advantageous position. As I said earlier, some smart kids can achieve academically without the expensive support richer kids may have access to but itâs less likely for them to build glamorous ECs, not to mention other hooks that one either had or didnât when they were born.
@Periwinkle: Yes, I know. Frankly, personally I am not sure I am FOR what I seem to be promoting, but itâs an argument about how to skew the elite schoolsâ student body to less wealthy. As for affordability being the major factor of college choice, when the tippy top few started their campaign for first generation and lower SES kids, I thought they were dying to give out more financial aid than they already were. After all, could Harvard afford to be free to all? I think so. And if they are doing a good job, there will be alum donations and their humongous endowment wonât be dried up any time soon.
But in another half generation Asian-Americans should start strongly benefiting from legacy preferences, which really donât benefit them much at all now. Theyâll also have built-up a lot more financial and social capital in the US. I wonder if Asian-Americans will then be 40-50% of selective college enrollments, or if the reaction will be to abolish legacy preference 
@al2simon My gut feel is that Asian Americans will continue to punch above their weight as the Jews as a group punch above theirs. It comes from the people Iâve met. And you could be right that there could actually be a snowball effect from adding income to the cultural valuing of higher education. Interesting angle.
I agree that even as they assimilate, Asian applicants are likely to continue to âpunch above their weight.â However, I also think that as they branch out beyond STEM and get more comfortable with the US college system, the most accomplished Asian students may be less focused on a limited number of colleges.
I think the entire category is not counted in a rigorous fashion. I know quite a few families with one spouse Asian, the other not-Asian. Their children are often very smart. Do they count as Asian-American, or not? In the third generation?
People tend to overlook immigrants from Europe, but as far as I can tell from my circle of acquaintances, their children are also well represented at demanding high schools and colleges.
I think any family which places a priority on education will do well in the future. When we took part in free enrichment offerings in our community, the other participants were more likely to be children of Asian, Jewish, or engineer parents than the norm (and itâs a high-achieving town.) The shared tech/intellectual culture is a Good Thing.
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I know quite a few families with one spouse Asian, the other not-Asian. Their children are often very smart.
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The joke around our neighborhood is the perfect combination is 1 Jewish parent and 1 Asian parent.
(my apology if this sounds offensive because it skates a bit close to the concept of eugenics)
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But in another half generation Asian-Americans should start strongly benefiting from legacy preferences, which really don't benefit them much at all now. They'll also have built-up a lot more financial and social capital in the US.
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Funny - I had the same exact conversation with my dog-walking neighbor the other day. She claimed that her Jewish dad bought her and her sister seats in the Ivies (she seems plenty smart so I am not sure she needs that boost). Over the years, she had nieces and nephews who also went to Ivies. Now, it is the turn for the third generation - recently, couple of her young relatives got into Yale and Princeton. She and I agree that the the URM is but a red-herring. The elephant in the room is the well-to-do, well-connected legacies. If you are middle class white or asians with high stats, you will be competing with these legacies with similar stat. IMO, your chance is not very good. My neighbor made the similar observation that the asianâs time will come when the current crop of asian kids graduate from Ivies and start to make big bucks and donate to these schools. My head hurts just thinking about the competition (and the accompanying unhappiness), say, 15-20 years from now.
The other elephant in the living room is the growing chant of âinstitutional racismâ. If a group is underrepresented then in theory thatâs a sign of institutional racism. And (in theory) success is just a sign that you have more money. But I think the out-sized Asian American success complicates that narrative.
I asked a colleague who is a Chinese immigrant about his opinion on some of the discussion in this thread today during lunch. He brought up the very interesting parallel of the âChinese diasporaâ in Asia (I felt silly for not making this connection myself, but in the US we donât really study Asian history).
This is his take and opinion, not mine â
Many countries in Asia, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, etc. have had a significant Chinese community for over 200 years. In almost all these cases, the Chinese population has done very well relative to the native population in the academic sphere, and this disparity has persisted for many generations. But by far the most visibly important dimension of out-performance is economic, not academic. For example, in some of these countries the Chinese community accounts for something like 3% of the population but has amassed over 60% of the wealth despite facing institutionalized discrimination. This small minority completely dominates business and commerce.
As you can imagine, with this kind of vast difference in wealth a lot of resentment occurs. In addition, the Chinese community is often persecuted, tends to marry within itself, keeps the tradition of speaking Cantonese within the home, and there are ethnic/political tensions as well. Not a good recipe for peace. In Indonesia and Malaysia the native population has rioted many times (sometimes incited by politicians), burning down Chinese businesses and often killing several thousand people.
My colleague thinks/hopes things will be different in the US because the US is much more tolerant and there is much more assimilation. But based on the above parallels, he thinks the academic success of Asian-Americans can sustain itself over centuries. However, heâs worried that 24x7 televising of the Kardashian family will put traditional cultural values to the hardest test that they have faced in over 2000 years 
Haha - if they can stay away from the Kardashians, Fox News and fundamentalist Christianity they have it made!
Donât mean to be pedantic.
More accurately, most of the Chinese in SE asia are Teochew.
Yes, they are from a part of Canton but speak a distinct dialect.
Teochew dialect is actually closer to Hokkien dialect as opposed to Cantonese.
Re: #248
Yes, but did the Chinese immigrants to those southeast Asian countries self-select those with high motivation (to move to another country, especially back when information about other countries was much more limited than is available now) in the first place?
Is Hokkien dialect almost extinct? My coworker from Hong Kong mentioned something similar, but he said it was extinct. How many Chinese dialects are there?
That has already been happening over the last few years, thankfully.
It seems Chinese people are discriminated against in other Asian countries so they cannot get comfortable. But in US they will become comfortable and get lazy. From my own immigrant experience I know how this happens. At some point you discover that you can read New York Times on the train instead of working and it all goes downhill from there. :-* So no 300 years domination is possible.
âTaiwaneseâ (or Min Nan) is a variant of Hokkien.
My understanding is that many ethnic Chinese in Singapore speak Hokkien.
How many dialect - good question - I have no idea. :o)
I think the common ones are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka (similar to Cantonese) Teochew, Shanghailese?
Post 254 cannot be stressed enough. I have seen it happen before my eyes (the laziness). Itâs apparently become a mark of âsmartnessâ to figure out what a minimalist you can be and âstill do well.â I see my students compete with each other (within a classroom, for example) as to how much less they can work than others, yet remain even with them or even slightly outperform them. For many of them their bar has dropped to a very low level, and I feel very sorry for their parents, who very much still hold a very high standard and have expressed great exasperation to me. They tell me that they âcannot figure out what happened and why their S or D doesnât want to work.â Iâm not sure whether many students are reading too many economic success stories and assuming that so-and-so sudden celebrity achieved that easily and they should, too. I sense an adolescent mythology in that direction that is the dominant reality many of them are operating within, even when corrected on the facts by adults.
So the parents come to this country expecting that the powerful cultural expectation to work hard will penetrate their childrenâs brains, only to find that within a few years of arrival, some of these children are thoroughly Americanized, and not in a good way, either. In the cases I know of personally, it has not been a deficiency in parenting, but it has always taken the parents by surprise nevertheless.
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That has already been happening over the last few years, thankfully.
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Many of our asian neighbor kids are in non-STEM areas. Perhaps, our town is a bit atypical?
Re post #256: I have wanted to ask CCâers how many of your kidsâ elementary school rewards the kids who are well behaved in classroom a âvoucherâ which the kids could use before the âexpiration dateâ to skip submitting their homework. Yes, the REWARD is that the good kids will not need to do homework for one day. Isnât it laughable and shocking all at once? You wonder why kids growing up in such a system would try to work as little as possible to get by when homework or just any work is presented as something you should strive to avoid doing!
Iâll tell you why. Itâs because they are not internally motivated. Students with academic curiosity have no problem doing whatever is necessary and more, because they enjoy it and they enjoy the process.
After an initial period of effort, other students lose interest because the gratification isnât there for them. This society has become accustomed to immediate gratification. You can see it in the attitudes. Look at CC. People want to develop a formula for everything. If I do this and this, then Iâll get this. Of course, many things donât work that way and they quickly gravitate to minimum effort.