Why do Asians care about scores so much?

Parents Forum
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<p>No. Mainly that folks like you who do make adjustments and make an effort to different assumptions are often the exception, not the rule. Many more people have a hard time shifting gears to adjust to a different environment. </p>

<p>There’s also the factor that Americans/Westerners who relocate to live abroad often do not have to make as severe an adjustment as they can and do often avail themselves of American/Western oriented expat environments…including International Schools run along American/Western lines. Some take it to such extremes they could get away with spending decades in a foreign country without even learning basic greetings in the local language(s). </p>

<p>Not to mention the fact if they choose to enter an East Asian university, even an elite one, the admission procedures are often far less arduous than for the applicants applying domestically. Know this from family and from a HS classmate with dual-citizenship who ended up going to National Taiwan U as an engineering major. </p>

<p>Some even offer programs taught in English such as the University of Tokyo Computer Science/IS PhD program an American friend attended on full fellowship.</p>

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<p>Many national college entrance exams or ones for specific schools like the IITs have exams which test on many more subjects taught over a longer period. </p>

<p>There’s also the exam length factor. The East Asian national college entrance exams I know of are given over a matter of DAYS, not hours.</p>

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<p>They probably discovered the importance of ethnicity in America:</p>

<p>[Do</a> employers care about a university’s reputation? - The Globe and Mail](<a href=“http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/frances-woolley/do-employers-care-about-a-universitys-reputation/article2313152/]Do”>http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/frances-woolley/do-employers-care-about-a-universitys-reputation/article2313152/)</p>

<p>If this is true, and I don’t have any reason not to believe it, then what they are doing is perfectly rational.</p>

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<p>Let’s imagine that you are an employer or school, and two candidates have exactly the same background, EC etc. Which candidate would you pick – the one with higher grades or the one with the lower.</p>

<p>That is the answer to the OP question.</p>

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<p>" I can’t even wrap my head around what I’d even give my daughter each week if she wanted to devour that much content. Are they just memorizing things for hours on end?</p>

<p>What is a “Dalit candidate”? Does it mean this child was trying to study his way out of poverty? "</p>

<p>Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I help support (at my Indian home) a hostel for 40 “Dalit” (“untouchable”) girls. Most of them are daughters of migrant laborers (long story about how that happened.) They study constantly - go to bed around 10:30, after three hours of evening study. The first one gets up at 3:30 a.m. to start studying again. The cook gets them all a hot drink at 4:30 a.m. Their curriculum is much advanced of most things studied here in “high school”.</p>

<p>Last time I was there, I taught them ancient memory tricks (discovered by the Greeks in the 5th Century B.C. - you can read about lots of them in “Moonwalking with Einstein”.) I can remember a 30-item shopping list, and, if I choose, parrot it back in three weeks. It’s a teachable school (amazing to me that we make folks memorize stuff here, and don’t teach them how.) They can all now do that with hundreds and hundreds of discrete “factoids”. </p>

<p>This is their one chance out of poverty. In the case of my adopted nephew (that I cited above), both of his parents were doctors, but their parents (whom I knew) were landless laborers.</p>

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<p>"They probably discovered the importance of ethnicity in America:</p>

<p>Do employers care about a university’s reputation? - The Globe and Mai"</p>

<p>Employers are not some monolithic group. Some employers care very much about brand name schools. Others don’t. Some give preference to regional schools that everybody’s heard of. Some employers care passionately about GPA. Some don’t. Some give preference to people who worked their way through school, Some care very much about a diverse workplace, others don’t. Anyone who talks about “employers” as a monolithic whole isn’t thinking very critically.</p>

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<p>Good reference, Mini. I am going to order that book, if I don’t forget to do so tomorrow. :)</p>

<p>What I want to know if given how hard “asian” students supposedly work how come, for example, India is such a poor county? If American students studied as hard as Indian students we would own the entire world and then some.</p>

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<p>Considering where the US ranks in terms of high school education it would be intelligent to be open minded and actually listen to those people from “the old world” and how they did things back home.</p>

<p>I don’t know why people want to have them dumb themselves down just because they are now in America. Studying and encouraging them to live to their potential instead of creating useless charities to help little old ladies cross the street to get into college is a lot better for this country.</p>

<p>It is sad that people perpetuate the myth that people who strive to do well are some how odd because they are studying a lot.</p>

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<p>“What I want to know if given how hard “asian” students supposedly work how come, for example, India is such a poor county? If American students studied as hard as Indian students we would own the entire world and then som”</p>

<p>There are now more middle class people in India than in the U.S., and the gulf is widening rapidly. It is by no means a poor country. But the poor are very, very, very poor. (I will be there in late January/February working on water projects with REALLY poor people.) There are huge power shortages, as certain industries, notably technology, have grown so quickly, there is a major catchup to do. In Chennai, for example, apartments cost more than in New York City. But go 10 hours a way, where I live, and electricity supply is down from 20 hours a day back in 1981, to 4-6 today. (It has created a huge industry for home generators.)</p>

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<p>Our household is very interesting. I’m 4 them or 5 th generation American with my family coming from Eastern Europe. My wife is 1 st generation, being born in Taiwan with Mandarin as her 1 st language. </p>

<p>Our D’s American cousins, my brothers kids, are typical American kids - one is a sophomore in college the other a HS senior. Her Chinese cousins are all very very smart, go to Chinese school on Saturdays to learn and speak the language, study very hard and attend the best high schools and colleges - one attended Harvard on a full ride academic scholarship and in his spare time just performed at Avery Fischer Hall at Lincoln Center. </p>

<p>Te Dbis a complete hybrid of the the two families. She has some lof the qualities of both sides, which makes for very interesting family get togethers.</p>

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<p>It’s said over and over here on CC that Harvard and other Ivies do not give “academic” i.e. merit scholarships, only financial aid. Is this not true?</p>

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Yes, you’re correct. For example, see Harvard <a href=“https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works[/url][quote]We”>How Aid Works

For many Asian, merit-based scholarship sounds a lot better than need-based financial aid.</p>

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<p>Asians care about scores for pragmatic reasons. Academic achievement is a consistent, high likelihood path to a comfortable middle or upper-middle class lifestyle. NFL, NBA, Hollywood careers are high risk, and not many asian kids, who are statistically smaller in stature, are going to be competitive for NFL or NBA careers, nor are going to be cast into Hollywood roles written w white or black characters in mind. </p>

<p>Then there is culture. Asians do not have an anti-academic culture where being smart = acting white.</p>

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I must have been a “bad” student who did not get a good score back then, as I did not get into one of these majors. LOL. (Got into EE only.)</p>

<p>Seriously, one of the reasons why we immigrated here was that we do not want our child (DS) to get through that kind of education system.</p>

<p>DS still did well in the US education system. But he still occasionally complained why he has to work so hard academically since his birth here, even though he himself kind of said that those asian american students who got into HYPMS are those who put 200% of their efforts into everything. He has met many students who are naturally very intense in whatever they do. (like a (non-asian-american) student who could study like 14 hours a day very regularly in the post-college education setting. Granted, their in-class time each day is shorter. But 14 hours of studying a day year round is darn “impressive”.)</p>

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<p>Why is it acceptable for so many people here to make these generalizations about Asians?</p>

<p>I can’t imagine that other threads which would comment about other minorities would be acceptable.</p>

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<p>There’s also a cultural component to this as sports obsession to the extent existing in our society or other Western societies was considered “uncouth” and contrary to the more civilized scholar-gentry ideal many Chinese and to some extent, other East Asian societies with the notable exception of Japan* emulated to some extent during the pre-modern era. </p>

<p>Acting had negative cultural associations because it was identified closely with prostitution and ritual pollution because many actors in China were used for ritual purification rites** in local areas. This meant they ended up being spiritually polluted and thus, it wasn’t something most, especially those in elite scholar-gentry families or those aspiring to be part of that ruling elite.*** </p>

<p>While this is most likely not a conscious reason for most Asian immigrant parents with such negative mindsets, the above explains the origins behind the negative cultural associations associated with sport and acting. Keep in mind that in the midst of this, there has been a long ongoing contestation within the Asians back home and Asian-American communities between those who held on to those negative cultural associations and those who feel they should rightly be consigned to the dustbin of history. </p>

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<li>The Japanese by contrast venerated various sports in the form of various military arts as they venerated the samurai and thus, more militaristic-oriented values during the same pre-modern period. However, it wasn’t to the extreme the Imperial Japanese militarists took it. Especially from the 1930’s till the end of WWII.<br></li>
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<p>** E.g. Chinese Opera performances were used for both entertainment and for ritual spiritual purification of a given local area.</p>

<p>*** Actors and prostitutes and male descendants down at least 2 generations were among those treated as “Mean Peoples”…similar in many ways to the the Indian “untouchable” caste in many areas…including regarding eligibility to take the Imperial Chinese Civil Service exam during the period when the exams were in effect. </p>

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<p>For some reason, engineering wasn’t considered as desirable back in the '50s. Then again, law wasn’t either according to extended family who were among the national college examinees back then. </p>

<p>However, as of the last few decades, engineering along with medical majors now do require some of the highest national exam scores. </p>

<p>The dual-citizen HS classmate who ended up doing engineering at NTU admitted that it’s highly unlikely he’d have scored high enough to pursue engineering at NTU if his overseas status hadn’t permitted him to take the much easier overseas Chinese/international student exams for admission.</p>

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<p>For college admission, until the day that Asian American families are not so obsessed with getting into HYPSM, they will continue to work extremely hard on scores on SAT/ACT as well as on the class rank.</p>

<p>Why? At least in DS’s high school graduation class many years ago, only those students whose SAT and class rank were among the top 0.5% of the high school graduating class at his high school got into one of these colleges. (with good ECs also.) Where is the “holistic approach” of evaluation here, given this fact? The holistic evaluation happens only after the numeric merit criteria have been met! These colleges rarely gave these ORM students any break on scores as they could only admit less than 20% of their students from this unhooked group.</p>

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<p>Wow 10char 10char</p>

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<p>Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but there is a widespread belief among Asian students that Asian applicants have to be better (in terms of grades and test scores at least) than those of other race or ethnicity. Whether or not it is actually true at any given college or university does not really matter (and this is not the thread to rehash that); the belief that it is true at at least some of the desirable colleges or universities can influence the student’s behavior with respect to chasing grades and test scores.</p>

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<p>Why is there this widespread belief, though, that only HYPSM or a vanishingly small subset of schools are the only ones “worth” going to, when that is simply not the case in the US, at all? And yes, to GMT’s point, academic achievement is a good path to a middle or upper middle class lifestyle - but it’s bizarre to think that such academic achievement is only relevant if at HYPSM et al. The vast, vast majority of people living comfortable lives in this country didn’t go to elite schools. Why is that reality so difficult to acknowledge and accept?</p>

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<p>@cobrat My Asian American family really enjoys watching the Cowboys and Mavericks play, and has done so for over 15 years… I’m not sure your ‘uncouth’ view on sports extends to all Asian families in general. </p>

<p>I too once thought test scores were of paramount importance, and though its certainly helpful if they are high and not helpful if they are low, they aren’t the make it or break it factor. I received admission to one of these buzzed about schools with normal scores and none of my classmates ask each other about - God forbid- our SAT scores when introducing each other… Just a thought</p>