While I agree with many of @Mumfromca ’s points, this is the one that rings most true to me in observing our SV friends. What exacerbates it is that the kids may be as academically talented as their parents but face a double whammy, not only have almost all elite colleges (even overseas) become vastly more competitive in the last 30 years, but they are competing in a system that the parents don’t fully understand with holistic admissions that are unpredictable, not to say biased against them. Even the top UCs, which were reasonably predictable admits for strong students 3-4 years ago, now are much less so (partly because they are test blind, which is the area that parents understand best as high stakes testing was key to success in their home country). So unsurprisingly people worry a lot about where their kids will end up at college.
Like others, I’m resigned to the idea that my kids will be forced to go elsewhere after college. That’s perhaps less difficult for parents who also moved thousands of miles for the best opportunities, compared to families whose parents and grandparents grew up in CA. On the other hand, we came to SV to compete with the “best of the best”, and it was “the place where miracles happen” (as I remember from a local TV advert in 1999, the first year we arrived - something that came true for many of us). Not to mention the weather being better than anywhere else in the world.
But the costs now make it hard to imagine our kids achieving the Silicon Valley idyll of a nice house on a suburban street, especially if you don’t have grandparents passing away and leaving you the house they bought for $10K in 1966 that’s worth $5M today.
I think your post captures many truths. But since I am from an immigrant family only one generation away from being refugees, our experience was NOT “quality education is the only way forward”. It was most definitely luck, along with good health which meant who survived and who did not. And if you read up on Holocaust survivor stories, so many were plucked out of the line to the crematorium because they were talented tailors or seamstresses, or graphic designers who could forge documents for the SS, or skilled carpenters, or whatever talent the Nazi’s needed that particular day.
So for SOME immigrant families, the path forward was "whatever you do, do it well and keep a bag packed “just in case”. And staggering success is most definitely not the goal- having a family, giving back, being grateful for living in this country-- and if it means Tulsa Oklahoma and not Atherton, that’s ok too.
Undoubtedly many who come to the US have been lucky just to survive and get here, especially those who’ve come as refugees or to escape poverty. I think almost all immigrants feel lucky to be here, and I know very few who regretted coming, even if they miss family.
One difference is that for those who got here because of their education (which is perhaps more the case in SV than anywhere else in the country), their good fortune is tied up with being educated. I know I’ve been very lucky, with a couple of random meetings changing the course of my career. But those meetings probably wouldn’t have happened without a CV that made the person on the other side of the table take me seriously, because I didn’t have the social network here to provide introductions, references etc. In that context it’s inevitable you will think that education is a route (if not the best route) to success.
Presumably people who are educated can educate themselves on the reality of the Top X or bust myth. Many others who are less educated seem to figure it out.
Twoin- agree 100%. No question that the immigrant population of SV is markedly different from other parts of the country- even affluent and highly educated parts of the country. I am old enough to remember when City College was considered “elite”. It educated entire generations of immigrants (and native born kids, and young adults coming back from WW2 on the GI Bill) who were blocked from the actual “elite” universities due to quotas and racism and all that. It had faculty who had been thrown out from teaching in their home countries and ended up in NYC. It had Nobel prize winners and Pulitzer winners and every other kind of winner- and a talented kid could indeed work his/her way through by living at home, taking the subway, and getting a job at a restaurant or grocery store at night. And the CV’s of graduates which had City College (or Hunter, or one of the other public U’s) on it-- also opened the kinds of doors you are talking about, but in the Northeast, not the rest of the country.
Which is kind of my point. SV is not the rest of the country!!!
SV isn’t the sum total of California let alone the rest of the country. I think when you live in the rarefied environs of places like SV you tend to assume that is the only way to live. Most people, irrespective of their background and education, aren’t going to be able to afford SV. There just aren’t enough careers that pay well enough for that - fortunately, there are still lots of places where people can have a great career and still afford to own a home that is bigger than 1,000 square feet.
Often times that introduction to reality comes when their first kid is applying to college. And that’s not hugely different for immigrants vs those who grew up here and went to UCLA when ~50% were admitted or Stanford when ~20% were admitted. Those who’ve been successful in SV tend to believe it’s a meritocratic industry (though of course that’s only relative to some other industries/locations). It’s inevitable many will assume the same applies in college admissions.
And if the parents had remarkable academic success, then they are more likely to think of it as normal to aspire to the glittering prizes. For example I was good friends in college with a Marshall Prize winner, to me that’s a real person, not some unattainable goal that wouldn’t be worth bothering to compete for (assuming sufficient talent). In fact the most similar attitudes I see amongst US parents are those who are academics at Stanford etc for whom this is also normalized.
The problem is that “meritocracy” means whatever someone wants it to mean.
Is a 1600 scoring, 4.0 GPA kid from Menlo Park who is a terrific tennis player and first violinist in the regional youth symphony, with a doctor and engineer for parents “more meritorious” than a kid from a Housing Project in Minneapolis whose HS only went as far as trig (but he was a standout math student despite the limitations) and ALSO got the 1600 and whose only EC was taking care of a disabled sibling and whose single mom drives a school bus?
Believe me, I grew up in an immigrant family so I know the whole trope “nobody put their finger on the scale for us”. But what is merit, and what is a meritocracy? For many in SV, it means high test scores, high GPA’s, and athletic and musical talent. The fact that professional parents- even if educated abroad- have the social capital to start music lessons young, to model reading for pleasure, etc. doesn’t seem to factor in for these folks.
No college in the US wants a student body comprised of uber-achievers from the same three zip codes, especially if those achievements are in the same three buckets. And THAT’s what gets folks in SV upset- not the so-called meritocracy. Because I could introduce you to kids from small towns in Appalachia, or run down housing projects in Camden NJ (the state took over the school system a decade ago, that’s how horrific the schools were) who are every bit as “meritorious” as the kids from places where small houses cost 2 million dollars.
Meritocracy? Sure. As long as “my group” is out front. I get that. But we can all agree that the adcom’s at U Penn or Yale don’t need to accept our own definition of “merit”.
I always tell my son (our first born) that his sister benefited from mistakes we make with him. That is a reality of parenting.
But I have a hard time finding much sympathy for a parent in SV (particularly not anyone who self identifies as the “best and the brightest”) who is unable to find information on various school options as they exist today. Its all available online. Techie stuff. You know, what SV is famous for. LOL
How do they make other decisions in their lives? Just go with info that they know? Do they research anything?
The world has changed incredibly in the last 30-40 years. If someone with remarkable academic success somehow doesn’t notice that or someone comes to the US from a different country thinking they know everything they need to know about said country, I don’t know what to say for them.
An issue I see that is common on this site is a large number of people who think everyone has the same experience they do. Comes up in threads of pretty much any topic. Maybe they just live in a bubble only with people who are like them. Maybe they just don’t think anyone with a different experience is worth knowing about. Not sure. But when I think of those types of people, the last thing that comes to mind is best and brightest or best educated.
For those educated abroad, it usually means the high test scores and GPAs. The athletic and musical stuff seems mostly about trying to tick those boxes in this peculiar “holistic” US system, but without much insight into picking the “right” sport in the way that legacies do it
But what is a meritocracy indeed? There are lots of rose-tinted spectacles amongst those who succeeded in a given system (whether that’s competitive national exam based college admissions or a SV tech company). Usually they then regard it as a meritocracy, since to do otherwise would be to undermine their own achievements.
However, I expect that for most it would be much more acceptable to tip the scales towards the poor kid from Minneapolis, if colleges weren’t also taking a huge proportion of their class from legacies, donors and athletes, and trying to defend implicit quotas while deemphasizing what were formerly seen as merit-based achievements like test scores.
Then where are the lawsuits challenging the preferences given to recruited athletes, legacies and children of donors? I’ve yet to see that. It’s only the admission of black and brown kids (already present in small numbers at these schools) that is the focus of attention.
“As they exist today” is an interesting phrase. Because admissions have changed dramatically in just the last couple of years. I know lots of parents who spent time and money on test prep from the time their kids started high school, if not before. Now that’s wasted, at least in CA. Even before that, they practiced for high school admissions tests in the hope they could go to Lowell. Now the tests are abolished. I can certainly see how immigrant parents (and not just the rich ones) feel let down by a system that is changing rapidly in ways that are deliberately intended to disadvantage them.
But it’s not illegal at private colleges. So the only way things will change is if colleges are shamed into it. Though undoubtedly those responsible for fundraising will resist.
Things change. That shouldn’t come to a surprise to people. Again especially not for the best and the brightest. How quickly are other aspects of their daily lives changing? Absolutely no reason to think other aspects of life (including college) will change too? There is an expectation that what worked even last year or two years ago will continue to work always? Changes will be made and there has to be cutoffs.
Test prep is often wasted. But to the extent it produced results, its only truly wasted if you buy into the Top X or die myth (and there are no doubt a lot of people on this site who do – much higher percentgage that college age population at large/their parents). Same is true with the system that is supposedly letting them down.
Valuable life lesson: can’t change the hand they are dealt only how they play it. Would imagine that some immigrants may well ignore the changes that were in their favor and focus on those that were not. Common for some non-immigrants as well.
I’m a first gen immigrant and first gen college graduate. While I did attend two tippy top schools, because of my education and experiences, I know that the path to success is not limited to a few schools, which many immigrants educated elsewhere, as posts above indicate, haven’t yet grasped. For that reason, I did not push elite schools on my DD and it has already worked out even better than I expected. My classmates are also not obsessed with a few elite colleges. In fact, one of my friends and former classmates is a professor at a top 5 school and tells everyone to save their money for grad school even when money isn’t a factor. By contrast, I have counseled many Asian families and getting them to look beyond a few colleges and career paths has definitely been very challenging. It really comes down to lack of experience with the numerous fantastic education options in the US and unlimited paths to success.
Would I rather we didn’t have all this emphasis on sports in the US? Sure. It is bizarre that we need to use colleges as the training grounds for professional football and basketball leagues and for Olympic track and swimming stars. But I don’t see that changing.
What to me is less acceptable is when smaller colleges have nearly half their admits based on talent in obscure sports that are largely limited to privileged kids (lacrosse, crew, etc.) or where sport is not a semi-professional training ground (you don’t go to college to become a professional tennis or baseball player) so why should you recruit those students based more on talent in sports than academics? I played five different sports in college. I was useless at all of them. But that wasn’t the point.
Does anyone really believe that it is top X or die? Or that the path to success is limited to a few schools?
Isn’t it more that people are aware of a high correlation between college ranking and future opportunities, and that, while it is hard to tease out how much causation is in that correlation, there is a reasonable belief that attending a top X school will provide some advantages?
While everyone is aware of graduates from schools well outside the top X who have done exceptionally well, and that what college you go to is not determinitive, there is a reasonable belief that it is influential in post-graduate opportunities. Perhaps more so in the US than in other country.
Not sure how long you have been on this site, but yes there are people here who believe its top x or die/bust. And some of those people make x a very small number. And there are people here who believe that say 2 is meaningfully better than say 5. Much less 12 is meaningfully worse than 10.
This is very poignant, Twoin, and thank you for the insight and for posting.
For every coastal college that has “too many Asians” (which of course is not accurate- they have zero Hmong, one token kid with Vietnamese heritage, and the rest from two or three ethnic groups/nationalities) I could point you to 3 fantastic colleges in other parts of the country where the ethnicity would be a positive and not a negative. THAT’s a meritocracy at work. But this will take another generation, I get it.
There was a kid in my neighborhood- two immigrant parents- who wanted a college with a focus on creative writing (parents already horrified and the kid hadn’t applied anywhere yet). i helped him a little informally- just spit-balling to come up with a few places which would represent a compromise- colleges his parents would have heard of, where they could play “don’t ask/don’t tell” about his courses (but pretend it was STEM) AND would give him what he needed and wanted out of college.
He really, really really wanted to go to Sarah Lawrence (and would have been a shoe-in). I thought it might work just because it was close enough geographically to extended family so he could play the “I’ll be with Auntie every weekend” card (i.e. not go to parties). No. He didn’t apply. So I do get it- I can talk until I’m blue in the face about Rhodes and Beloit and even Vanderbilt (better known than the LAC’s) but it will take time for the college list to expand…
This is one reason why I don’t jump on the “abolish the rankings” threads. They are helpful. Just last week I showed a parent that University of Tulsa has a top rated program in Cyber-Security. Parent can’t find Oklahoma on a map- but a top program is a top program. So rankings are useful!
