UC Berkeley vs Stanford Asian Americans

nosering
Tue, 04 Dec 2012 04:02:47 +0000

@beebthe1:

It’s not that 18% of Asians are enrolled at top private colleges, but that about 18% of the students at Ivies and Ivy-equivalent schools are Asian. Just want to make that clear!

Also, many of the parents of the top Asian students at my daughter’s high school have the attitude that if their child is not admitted to an Ivy or Ivy equivalent school, he or she should go to Berkeley or UCLA. Many do not apply to the top LACs, because their parents have never heard of them and won’t allow them to attend. As a fan of LACs, I find this sad. At least one top LAC, Carleton College, would like to increase their Asian population, but I don’t know about the others.

Last year, one Asian student at my daughter’s high school was rejected from all the Ivies and Ivy equivalents except Northwestern, and it took a while for him to convince his parents to allow him to attend. They had wanted him to turn down Northwestern to go to Berkeley. Although they had the money, they did not originally feel Northwestern was worth it.

The Jewish students at my daughter’s school are much more likely to apply to LACs and attend. But in my daughter’s senior class, only one white student (not Jewish) is academically competitive for Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, etc and has already been recruited. (He’s a scholar/athlete who had a chance of being admitted off academics alone.) This is in contrast to probably at least 25 Asian students who are considered his academic equals. The long list of NMSQT semi-finalists from the school each year is nearly entirely composed of Asian names with only a few non-Asian names, often Jewish-sounding ones, listed.

In answer to the question above about demographics, my daughter’s school is probably between 25% and 30% Asian with most of the remainder being white. There are a small number of Hispanic students, and an even smaller number of black students, at least some of whom are upper class and are honors students. I would categorize the area surrounding the school as upper middle class. The school also draws students from a very wealthy area fully of multi-million dollar homes in gated communities that is nearly all white.

My sense from my daughter is that many of the Asian (Chinese, mostly) parents share information with each other about how to help their children succeed in school, whether it’s SAT tutoring or which classes to take. The assistance begins at a very young age. A friend of mine who tutors in English told me that in white families, tutors are hired for students who struggle. In Asian families, tutors are hired to nurture smart children from a young age. At least, that’s her experience. Some classes at my daughter’s school, such as the college level math classes, are nearly all Asian.

One point, in fairness, I should add that I forgot to mention yesterday. My daughter is expecting top recommendations from teachers, much better than you would think given her academic performance, because she speaks up regularly in class and makes a point of getting to know her teachers. The Asian students at her academic level never speak up in class. In her AP English class in 11th grade, about 4 students could be counted on to keep a conversation about the current reading going. Three of them were among the top students in the school. The fourth one was my daughter, who is not in the same league academically as the others. The English teacher kept saying all year that he’ll write college recommendations for anyone who asks him, but the students would make it much easier for him to write recommendations if only they would speak up in class.

To the extent that teacher recommendations are an important consideration in college admissions, many of the Asian students at my daughter’s school might not be getting the recommendations they need, because the teachers don’t really know them. It’s a cultural phenomenon.

I am white, Jewish, and from the east coast. As a California resident, I still feel I am making observations as an outsider. My comments only refer to my daughter’s observations at her school. Yet, I suspect her experiences are common. The question about demographics above is an interesting one. While many of my daughter’s Asian classmates are the children of the best and the brightest who left China to pursue graduate studies in the US, I doubt the same is necessarily true of the majority of Asian students at Stuyvesant High School in NYC. I bet that most of the top Asian students at Stuyvesant are from a different demographic than the students my daughter knows at her high school. They probably travel to Stuyvesant HS from middle class communities in Brooklyn and Queens, particularly places like Flushing, NY. Yet, they still succeed at the highest levels.

I never would have thought a few years ago that I’d write a post like this one. Stereotypes are ugly. While my daughter suspects that very, very few Asian students at her school are in the bottom 25%, not all of them are superstars. Some struggle and get Cs in AP classes. It’s just that you’ll find only an occasional white student among the top 10% at her high school. The Asian students at Stuyvesant and other elite public high schools in NYC are only a small fraction of the Asian student population in NYC.