<p>I honestly cannot agree that Asians as a group just happen to have higher intelligence in math/engineering/science etc. My russian son (who is actually quite excellent in math/science/engineering) plays cello in the most advanced orchestra in his school. 90% of students in the group are Asians. Does that mean that they are genetically pre-desposed to music just as they pre-desposed to math?
No, practice makes it perfect, hours and hours of it, in music and in math. They are just willing to work hard. Because they understand that success in physics/math does not necessary come from intelligence, it can also come from hours and hours and hours of problem solving. And they are willing to do it. That simple. I know, I teach them physics.</p>
<p>Any (legal) immigrant to the United States needs to have their future employer prove that no one else in the US can do the same job, which usually means the person brought over has very high skills and education, typically in a subset of science or engineering. As a result education is very important to all new immigrants, not just Asians, as it’s the means to success… you notice it most in Asians because they are often first generation kids.<br>
There is also the fact that any ethnic group that is known for producing a particular type of role model usually has kids follow it. Take Kenya as an example: they have a disproportionate numbers of great long-distance runners, but that’s due to the fact that there are a lot of role models for Kenyan kids to become runners. Same goes with Asian kids and role models in math and science.</p>
<p>It’s not just azn, any one can be good, north americans just aren’t beaten to do every single problem in the textbook+extra study guide
In asia, students in hs and elementary schools are forced!(beaten!) to do every single questions in the book, study guide, forced to go to school on saturday and sunday (extra classes!), so they pretty much have seen almost every single problem out there, no matter which way you ask a concept, they got all the concepts cemented that it doesn’t matter how they are asked, they don’t even have to think about the question!</p>
<p>so just do every single problem in textbook, buy extra study guides, do all of them and you can master math/physics/chm etc</p>
<p>It’s amazing what kids can achieve when the parents make their expectations crystal clear from day one.</p>
<p>The role model theory is very interesting stargirl. I think that could explain the reason why white americans are under-represented in math, science, and engineering. It’s likely we could prove that our culture dictates, to a degree, what we aspire to be later in life.</p>
<p>Coming from a predominantly white upper-middleclass background, the people who are seen as role models are mostly leaders. Movies, television, and books portray leaders as the epitome of success. As a result, occupations that have a disproportionate amount of power are more sought after. This would include lawyers, government officials, and business executives. Those three positions also focus on traits that are completely different from the traits necessary for engineers and scientists.</p>
<p>Your average lawyer, government official, or executive will need to have great interpersonal communication skills, both written and verbal, and relationships with other powerful people (in these professions, generally white men). Of course intelligence is also very important, but to succeed you must have the social aspect as well.</p>
<p>On the other hand science and math focused careers generally are based entirely upon intelligence and a great work ethic. You can be an amazing engineer and still have difficulty with communication. </p>
<p>I would say it’s also much easier to become successful, or at least make a decent amount by working in engineering or a science/math related job. Not that the job itself or the education is simple, but at least there are clear goals and necessities, while in business and politics you’ll often hear “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.</p>
<p>So for a parent who wants their child to be successful (as all parents do I’m sure), the clearest path to a great career is a good work ethic, intelligence, and a math/science related career in which they won’t be held back if they aren’t the most social person or are introverted.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is only that. I think that, as star girl pointed out, the immigrants from asian countires tend to value education because they have to be highly educated in order to immigrate. But to be highly educated, they also have to be somewhat smarter than average. Thus, their children in the United States are somewhat smarter than average. Combine that with the educational expectations and you have a large number of highly successful Asian American students, making it seem like “asians are inherently smarter” or whatever.</p>
<p>collegehelp:</p>
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<p>We were wondering the same thing at my S’s graduation last year, also in a math/science intensive field. We too are Western European, the CMU-CS class might not have been 80% but certainly some percentage above 50% were Asian American or international, mostly Asian. In master’s program S also got it was probably 90% Asian American/international (mostly Asian) or Middle Eastern. He was truly a minority, even down to having English as his primary language.</p>
<p>What I have wondered actually is not so much why are so many Asians (reasons have been given here) but why are so few Caucasians in programs like these? I don’t think Asians are taking the places of non-Asians…I don’t think Caucasians are applying to these programs at all in any significant numbers. My theory is they can study business and other fields, that are less demanding and can often make more $$ than engineering etc esp if the personality and communication skills are good.</p>
<p>2331clk-
My impression is that western european Americans (the ones who have been here for generations) have been victimized by the negative forces in American culture and all the things that tear families apart and that waste time and energy. Consequently, as a group, we become less intelligent and do poorly in school, especially math. As a group, so-called “traditional” Americans are simply not as bright as we used to be. We have gotten dumber. We can’t succeed in the math/engineering/science fields, so we go into less math-intensive areas. I don’t think it is the money. The problem starts to show up in elementary school.</p>
<p>Asians have dedication in terms of studying, etc. I don’t think genetics helps too much, if you gave these asian engineering prodigies the study habits of your “average whiteboy” I think their GPA would take a hard hit. </p>
<p>I think they’re dedication,study habits, encouragement and education from parents helps them to succeed in these difficult fields.</p>
<p>I don’t think that white americans are innately worse at math, there are just many other fields of study they can go into and potentially make more money and have more power (lawyer, business, government). Smart asians are generally concentrated only in a few fields, while smart white americans are more evenly distributed.</p>
<p>Another thing you could look at is if asians and whites are fairly equally represented in certain universities or majors, compare that to the percentage of population that is at a specific level of intelligence. If 13.5% of asians are very smart, and 50% of the asians that are in the US are from this group, while 13.5% of white americans are smart, but only 13.5% of white americans in the US are from this group, then it would make a lot of sense that the asians are over-represented as compared to how many of them there are. It’d be an interesting economic study to do.</p>
<p>“No, practice makes it perfect, hours and hours of it, in music and in math. They are just willing to work hard. Because they understand that success in physics/math does not necessary come from intelligence, it can also come from hours and hours and hours of problem solving. And they are willing to do it. That simple. I know, I teach them physics.”</p>
<p>Best statement on here so far…I’ve to schools where many of my classmates were asian and it wasn’t that they were just naturally smarter than any other students…it was just that when we (the non-asians) were having fun playing soccer, playing video games, etc. they were studying, getting extra work from the teachers, and just working (either because they wanted to or were forced by their parents…I knew a kid once whose parents would always ask the teacher for extra work and on the weekends his parents forced him to do 8 hours of problems per day).</p>
<p>and if you notice the things that asians are good at like music, math, science, etc. are all fields in which the more you practice the better you do. For example, in my h.s. AP english class the asian students tended to do much worse on their essays as compared to non-asian students.</p>
<p>that IS SO TRUEEE</p>
<p>this is absolutely hard working asian student at my high school–now at Yale</p>
<p>constantly did research, math, physics, etc…and was very “average” in english</p>
<p>Because we were not born into a culture that takes everything, especially education, for granted.</p>
<p>I lived in India for 11 years before I moved here, and I can assure you that we were not beaten to work and we did not do all the problems in a textbook. A lot of it is self drive, and some of us are genuinely interested.</p>
<p>Someone was talking about what happens with generations, and I’d like to say this.</p>
<p>One of my best friends graduated first in his class, and is at Penn for a dual degree program (M&T). He was and is, by all means, an overachiever destined for success at what he wants to do (IBanking) because of how driven he is and because he’s actually interested in it.
His younger brother, however, is pretty content playing counterstrike and other video games and isn’t anywhere near as driven as he is.
It goes like that.</p>
<p>Also, moving here in middle school I found things to be a lot easier. I felt stupid if i didn’t do a lot better than everyone else, just because of how much harder it was in India. Now, that feeling passed in high school, but I still kept working (- senioritis :-P). </p>
<p>Truth be told, some people are just more willing to take advantage of opportunities afforded to them.</p>
<p>EDIT: I haven’t seen the ‘being average at english’ thing in effect much. Most Asians tend to be better at Math/Science, but i’d wager that they’re far from average at english.</p>
<p>Asians have more top scorers on both Math and Verbal for the SATS, their average verbal score however is a little less than white people because of more sub 500 scores</p>
<p>Because they tried to follow the model set by the Jews, of course! Check out the Nobel laureautes. A ridiculous percentage of them are Jewish, while the world’s population is less than 1% so. Or look at the number of Jews in top schools. You’ll find they comprise huge sections of “white” people.</p>
<p>ok, its usually the fobs…</p>
<p>stop asian immigration and give it 60 years and you’ll see the asian-americans making a fool of their once academically respected ancestors lol…same happens with the indians, japanese, arabs, iranians…when they come over, they’re motivated and ready to excel…after a few generations, something about american culture takes over and their academics usually fall (not always but iono, just an observation)</p>
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<p>You can significantly improve your essay writing through practice. Practicing writing is very similar to practicing music. Based on my experience, asians just place a greater emphasis on music than Caucasians. I hear many asian parents putting their children through violin and piano lessons. Why is it that there are more asians in orchestra than in band?</p>
<p>Ilovecalifornia, there’s a certain truth to what you’re saying.
That really needs to change though…
As a country we’re starting to lag behind in just about everything :-/</p>
<p>“You can significantly improve your essay writing through practice. Practicing writing is very similar to practicing music. Based on my experience…”</p>
<p>you can improve on the formatting, structure, vocabulary, grammar, etc. but you really can’t improve something like creativity, literary interpretation, style, etc. which were the things that I noticed dropped their grades. </p>
<p>DRab: I agree with you…it’s the same model as with Asians they are much more motivated than your average person and thus work that much harder leading them to succeed at higher rates…</p>
<p>It’d be interesting to see how they motivate their children so effectively. Other parents might worry that their kid is off drinking or smoking, but Asian parents might worry that their kid is <em>gasp</em> not doing their homework.</p>
<p>Too bad we all can’t be that motivated in school, but it’d still be enlightening to see how it happens.</p>