I usually hear the English words “sports” and “volunteering” in the Asian language conversations when I am near Asian parents. I guess they probably practice English.
I also might add to post #119, even if such students didnt get into HYPS, but doing well at top 50 schools, however you define the rankings, he or she will be alright, more than alright.
I mean there’s always complaints but the Asians that get shut out of top colleges are also the Asians that lead in income among other Asians and others in household income.
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/asian-americans-lead-all-others-in-household-income/
So I dont get where the complaints from Asians, as if these top colleges are a measure of self worth.
The association of higher household income with Asian race/ethnicity is also likely an effect of immigration selection of those with high educational attainment.
“also might add to post #119, even if such students didnt get into HYPS, but doing well at top 50 schools, however you define the rankings, he or she will be alright, more than alright”
I know that and you know that.
And yet every single year, without fail, we have students on CC who tell us that they are desperate to get into HYPSM and only those schools, because their parents will consider them failures and all their aunts and uncles and cousins will be ashamed of them. And they themselves say “I’m the product of typical Asian parents who think that way.” And of course coupled with many of them being forced into certain careers that they don’t want. So who am I going to believe? You, or my lying eyes? Obviously the lesson that the kids will be alright ISN’T getting through.
A counter example in a sample of size one:
The student (DS) in our family was not desperate to get into such schools. We would not consider him failures if he went to other school. Opinions of extended family members do not matter a bit.
When he was already sophomore in college, he actually wondered at one time what college life he might have if he had gone to another school. He knew he had the freedom to choose to attend other school back then.
We once asked him whether he thinks we are tiger parents, he said we are not. He had a lot of freedom to choose what he wanted to do.
A case in point: In the summer between his freshman year and the sophomore in college, he decided to forfeit a paid summer research opportunity (which he originally got right after he had admitted to this college based on his “qualifications” of his college application alone. This was coupled with a “seminar” -like class in his freshman year. He took the yearlong class but decided against staying on campus doing research.) We totally respected his decision. I think he came back home and then decided to take some fun class at a community college. (A few years later, he actually needed to catch up with others because he joined the research track later than the majority of his peers – maybe including his current GF who likely has had more UG research experience than him. The parents of his suitemate once “teased” him that he really needed to catch up on this with the rest of them. His college (and now grad school) has many students who are perpetually in the never-ending “rat race”. But the point here is that we as his parents never asked him to do these.)
We did require him to graduate in four years due to our financial constraint.
“But this is the system that Asian immigrants are familiar with from their home countries. People are right that they need to adapt more to the US system, but that’s probably much easier said than done. Most people in this forum haven’t experienced the trials and tribulations of being a first generation immigrant and having to adopt a new language and culture.”
No. But if I went to China, tried to get my kid into a university there, and said, “Well, his test scores aren’t great, but I’m confident he’ll get in because he paints great watercolors on the side, plays the drums, and helps little old ladies across the street,” I’d justifiably be an idiot for not picking up on the cultural context around me. What’s the difference?
PART OF INTELLIGENCE IS BEING ABLE TO PICK UP ON SURROUNDINGS. And yes, I’m shouting. Because I don’t care if you have a 2400 SAT blah blah blah - if you can’t open your mind to “gee, I’m standing in a different space from where I grew up,” you aren’t intelligent at all.
@epiphany & @Pizzagirl - Do you believe that if more of Asian-American applicants to HYPS would suddenly start playing drums, paint watercolors, help old ladies across the street, play baseball and exhibit unconditional love for humanities their total admission rate would increase?
@mcat2
I do occasionally meet the kind of parent you are among my (largely) Asian cohort, and it’s a delight to work with any such parent. With regard to college admissions (not specifically to the “achievement” theme of this thread), it makes the process work so much more smoothly because it involves an actual coherent team instead of antagonistic in-fighting. On an even more concrete level, it allows the student’s college application essay to read sincerely, whatever the eventual outcome of the application effort. (Very difficult to muster up convincing enthusiasm about what someone else wants you to do.)
Regarding the achievement angle, I covered that earlier in this thread (with regard to my non-Asian household of birth), so I won’t repeat myself, but will only add that one of my daughters once “accused” me of “being almost as strict as” the parent of her one Asian classmate. She meant it as a lamentation; I took it as a unintended compliment and said “Thank you.” I never chose anything for my children, academically or activity-wise; it all came from them. I only insisted on commitment to whatever they had chosen, if and as long as they were enjoying that, and naturally to the priority of academics within the existing, formal structures of those. Obviously, one needn’t be of a particular origin or identity to do that.
The problem in this country is that so many people, including many Anglo Caucasians, equate academic achievement with a particular college outcome, even assuming some kind of proportionality to it, and even extending to the effort to achieve, not the result. (The harder you work, the higher level college should be the end result.) Lots of people work very, very hard, but the results of that hard work differ. Generally the people who work hardest of all are those with diagnosed or diagnosable Learning Disabilities; what they tangibly achieve is, to put it mildly, not always in proportion to their effort.
Hmmmn, and some say, if you aren’t able and willing to take care of your elders (as is with most Asian families), and have them live and die in dignity, you are not only not in tune with the universe, you are not really a great person and son/daughter. My point–let’s not promulgate sweeping judgements on divergent value systems…
I agree with you on most of the points in your post above. In our family, we emphasize on what you can put in for a task, not what the outcome would be. For example, for every small recital or major competition in DS’s EC (which is music), he would work hard on that (thanks mostly to his rigorous teacher - who is not Asian, not us.) But right after the event, we would go out to “celebrate”, to celebrate that he had put in the efforts, not how well (or poorly) he had performed.
When he was young, the teacher (who is not an Asian) happened to get involved with the "Suzuki method.) The parents were encouraged to learn the philosophy of this learning method. So I read many those “booklets” then. I remember Dr. Suzuki said the question from parents he hated the most is: Do you think my child has the talent? The reason is that nobody, including himself, would know. Also, the fruit/benefit of learning is the high quality process itself, not the achievement as an end result. So every kid, no matter what his/her talent is, could benefit from it independent of the level of his/her innate capability. His ultimate goal, in this education method, is to bring out the “fine” quality of a person. (Nevertheless, with a high probability, most students who receive education via this method tend to reach the above average achievement level, if the attitude is right.) /Now, get off the soap box.
When our child was growing up, we always thought he would go to our in-state public. It is only when he had been “doing great” in the first year or two in high school (and the financial status had been improved somewhat) that we thought he might have a chance to attend a private college and the goal was that good private college in our state ( which takes up to about a dozen of kids from his high school year after year.) It is only when the actual application had been started that he started to put in some of those “big name” colleges out of our state. So he had really never suffered for being overly enthusiastic to get into one of these big name colleges.
Now, back to the controversal topic –
I apologize for the long cut-and-paste below (because I hate to read this again and extract the relevant part.)
But I want to emphasize that, nobody has to get into such an elite institution (elite MBA programs here, but also applicable to elite colleges) in order to be moderately successful in their future career and have a satisfying life (isn’t this what most parents hope their children could have: being moderately successful and have a satisfying life in the end? At least this is my wish for my child.) So, why the “rat race” to somewhere when it could be an uphill battle for you in your limited and precious life span of less than, say, 80 something years?!
Also, some views of this author could be outdated and biased. Be forewarned!
"THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: RACE AND PRESTIGE
Consider this:
You walk into a college classroom where most of the faces are Indian and Chinese (or “South Asian” and “East Asian” for the more broad term – and in this context, it’s not really a question of citizenship i.e. Indian-American vs Indian but of race).
If you were a recruiter for Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Apple or any global company, would you perceive this school to be MORE or LESS prestigious? If you were a recruiter where post-MBA jobs are managerial and become more relationship-based (not analytical/technical), and where the key contacts your company corresponds with (investors, Board members, clients, customers, government officials) are mostly white (American or European), or at least a sprinkling of various nationalities and cultures (but still mostly white), would you be more willing to hire students from this classroom, or would you be more inclined to recruit from a similar caliber of school where there were more white faces in the class?
Now, if you were an applicant and walked into this very same classroom, would you perceive this school to be more prestigious or have an “exclusive” brand compared to a class that is more diverse (or where at least half were white)? As an applicant, would your opinions be different depending on your own race or nationality (which gets into the ugly truth that even in non-white countries, the perception of prestige and exclusivity is still defined by whether white people will buy it). And if b-school classrooms looked more like MS-Engineering programs (where the overwhelming majority are Indian/Chinese), would that increase or decrease the likelihood of you applying to a highly selective business school? (Note that “highly selective” and “prestigious” can be related but are not synonymous.)
And herein lies the ugly truth of race, prestige and admissions.
For business schools, and especially those in the very top tier like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, and so forth – a big part of ensuring that their MBA programs stay relevant is to maintain their perceived prestige (exclusivity), because as we all know – while having an MBA can be of value, it’s not necessary for success in business, as amply shown by countless examples of incredibly successful entrepreneurs and executives out there without any formal business education. The perception of exclusivity for b-schools is rooted in the assumption that blue chip white males/females are the people others (regardless of background) want to be associated with. And that feeds on itself – the more of these people who apply, the more it will attract others to apply (including Asians), which creates a “network” which b-schools will then trumpet as something invaluable to its students (who are then networking with each other).
That’s why b-school admissions is more like the selection process for a private club: a country club, the freemasons, a hot nightclub (bring in all the hot girls, groups of guys are left standing in line), motorcycle club, or any sort of private organization. They can admit and reject whomever they want, and constantly change the parameters for admission to suit their needs (which isn’t to graduate the “best and brightest” but to maintain that perception of prestige). Business school admissions is NOT a meritocracy, and it never really was, since the admissions process by nature is subjective and a “black box” if there ever was one.
When it comes to race and admissions, it’s not about trying to marginalize white or Asian applicants in the name of diversity – that seems to be a common refrain from many detractors who feel that adcoms are on some socialist, pinko, leftist agenda to admit as many “blacks, Hispanics and lesbian paraplegics” (of course, all mentioned in a derogatory tone by these very detractors) into b-school over more qualified white and Asian candidates –which is simply not the case because that is not what recruiters want, and it’s not what will ensure that applicants see these b-schools as “prestigious” (which will ensure that these schools continue to receive a crapload of applications each year).
In short, top MBA programs want their schools to be diverse (read: mostly or at least half white) rather than ethnic (read: mostly non-white) – that helps to ensure perceived prestige and exclusivity in our current culture of how we view the relationship between race and status symbols, which then helps to attract the maximum number of applicants as well as the most “exclusive” (read: highest paying) corporate recruiters. That is partly why they also are looking at younger candidates: it’s a way of reaching into the blue chip American pool (white kids with Ivy/equivalent backgrounds) to ensure that their numbers don’t drop off to the point where b-school has to start looking like an MS-Engineering program – the less white people in the applicant pool, the more “ethnic” they have to go. This is ugly to say, but it’s what is bubbling underneath all of this.
The one big silver lining to all this is that how we perceive race changes over time – it’s not static, but fluid. Even now, for many b-schools, the incoming classes are no longer overwhelmingly white, but again, the schools are “diverse” and not “ethnic”.
One example of how perceptions changed is that of the Jewish community – from “ethnic” to “mainstream.” Ivy League schools in the post-WWII era had a reputation for an unspoken two tiered admissions standard as a way to stem the influx of Jewish students for the very same reason: the perception of prestige. Many of these Jewish kids had as strong if not stronger credentials than their white counterparts to the Ivy League’s law and medical schools (b-schools back then were a bit of a backwater), but would still be underrepresented in these classrooms relative to the applicant pool. And yet, within a generation, that bias (at least when it comes to university admissions) has all but disappeared by the early 1980s.
With race and prestige today, I am confident it will change as the economic and cultural input of non-Western communities is considered mainstream, but this is where we’re at right now. So who knows, maybe in 10-15 years time, these biases may disappear altogether at least in this context of university admissions."
The United States tends to receive highly educated people from Asian countries. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/06/19/the-rise-of-asian-americans/
Note that immigrants from Asia to the US (in the aggregate) are almost three times as likely to have a bachelor’s degree than the populations of their countries of birth. On top of that, the H-1B visas are intended to draw people in specialized, technical fields to the US, so the legal immigrant population as a whole is very highly educated. As the H-1B visas must be sponsored by an employer, the recipients are a selected population.
If we could define a population of American-born families with the same characteristics, I’d predict their children would do just as well in educational attainment.
MCAT, that doesn’t sound like you in writing.
“Do you believe that if more of Asian-American applicants to HYPS would suddenly start playing drums, paint watercolors, help old ladies across the street, play baseball and * exhibit unconditional love for humanities * their total admission rate would increase?”
Well, if indeed (as many of us hypothesize and observe) many / most Asian-American students “overcluster” in the sciences / engineering, then yes, if more of them showed interest in humanities they might have higher acceptance rates overall because they’d be competing for a broader number of spaces. As annoying as it may be to those who think that the students’ interests should determine the makeup of the university, great universities still want to have art history and Renaissance literature and the classics and philosophy and all other kinds of humanities.
But, of course, it’s entirely the wrong question in the first place, because who in their right mind says “my goal is getting into HYPS”? Isn’t the goal “let me get into a great school where I can get a great education” instead of acting as though a handful of schools are like the Pinnacle of Human Existence? Good lord, my nephew who graduated from Princeton still puts his pants legs on one at a time just like the rest of us mere mortals.
Do you believe that if more of Asian-American applicants to HYPS would suddenly start playing drums, paint watercolors, help old ladies across the street, play baseball and exhibit unconditional love for humanities their total admission rate would increase?"\
You’ve missed the point.
If I moved to China and said, “My kid will get in because he plays the drums and paints watercolors and helps little old ladies,” you would rightly consider me stupid - because I didn’t look around to try to gain any insight into the culture in which I was now placed. Well, I don’t see why there’s a pass the other way. Epiphany has very much described people who deliberately choose to ignore / not to hear messages they don’t want to, despite repeated attempts to counsel them otherwise.
"THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: RACE AND PRESTIGE
Consider this:
You walk into a college classroom where most of the faces are Indian and Chinese (or “South Asian” and “East Asian” for the more broad term – and in this context, it’s not really a question of citizenship i.e. Indian-American vs Indian but of race).
If you were a recruiter for Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Apple or any global company, would you perceive this school to be MORE or LESS prestigious?"
This is sourced from some anonymous blog by someone who is just making up stuff as they go along. This has zero validity.
Look, people, if there were a deliberate effort to keep Asians out because We Don’t Like Their Kind, remind me again why my kids’ elite schools are probably 25% - 35% Asian? If they’re trying to keep them out, they’re doing a notoriously poor job of it.
If there isn’t a deliberate effort to restrict the percentage of Asians, why wouldn’t admissions be race-blind? Why do so many people who say that Asians are misreading the admissions process and have no reason to complain object when there is a move to remove race from the selection process? There are laws in many other areas that specifically prohibit factoring race in the selection process - why aren’t there laws to this effect in the college admission process?
I always felt my effort and hardwork are downplayed simply because I am born smart as an Asian.
Being born with good brain is one thing but honing your innate intelligence is another thing, right?
I would agree at this. I do not buy into the notion that one ethnic could be superior than other ethnic group. If anything, it is mostly due to the fact that it is a special group that is not a representation of the general population from their country of origin.
You seriously don’t get the difference between “we want to ensure all races are represented” and “we want to limit the number of Asians because we don’t like them”?
Do you get the difference between " we want to ensure all states are represented" and."we want to limit the number of kids from Massachusetts "?