I can see why you see a contradiction. However, there really isn’t. My son’s high school years weren’t a pleasant walk in the park, for sure. The greatest challenge for me as a parent was time management and then stress management, both for me and my son’s. I’m sure his fellow musicians at his college – seemingly all with pre-college Juilliard, NEC, Colburn, etc. backgrounds with about a dozen concerto competition wins under each of their belts – and their parents have sacrificed tremendously since young age. All throughout high school, my son’s schedule for his loaded IB school work, community service, EC’s, including Taekwondo competitions and varsity tennis tournaments, and his weekly lessons an hour drive away, another hour drive away for his weekly youth symphony rehearsals and concerts, a daily practicing violin, traveling around the state and the country for violin competitions and other events – they certainly don’t seem to leave any room or even a breathing space to include his social activities. But my son has a gregarious personality, and he just had to have his social life going.
The most frustrating and stressful thing for me was managing his time, especially being sure to get a decent sleep (he eked out extra sleep during our 2-3 trips a week an hour drive away, so he got two hours of sleep during each of my drives), and managing his stress level. He often had to forego his daily violin practice, and I gladly exchanged his violin practice for his maintenance of social life. We often had to apologize to his private teacher for not having prepared at all for the whole preceding week, but he fortunately was very tolerant and understanding. After all, my son wasn’t the only high school student that often showed up to his lessons unprepared. Just about all of his high school students in his studio ended up at HYP or Juilliard and NEC.
Something had to go, of course, and it was often his violin practices. In his middle school years, he practiced about 3-4 hours a day and was able to manage his academics and social life, but once in high school, he only managed about an hour a day of practice at best until he hit his junior year. That’s when he started to “wing it.” He was pretty much a well established violinist by then that he was able to get away with hardly any daily practices. It also helped that he didn’t want to become a career professional violinist by then. Still, in his Jr. and Sr. years, he only managed about 5 hours of sleep a day. When he told me one day in the first semester of his Sr. year that he decided to join the regional volleyball team on top of everything else going on his life, I almost pulled out all of my hair and had a primal scream. Until then, he had never indicated that he was even remotely interested in volleyball. After all, Asians can’t jump. We’re vertically challenged. I relented in the end thinking that the tournaments are going to be held locally. When I found out much later that each tournament was going to be held about an hour drive away… my resentment as his private chauffeur/dad reached an all time high (no, my son still to this day doesn’t have a driver’s license. We didn’t have the time).
Going back to the OP’s topic, yes, Asians are catching up to the changes in the admissions landscape. Many of them are still stuck in the old paradigm but many others are now fully cognizant of what “it takes” to get through the Ivy gates. It’s now a very familiar scene with Asians represented in multiple sports, as you noted. I see more Asians in the music scene, however, especially with string instruments more than any other kind. It’s typical to witness at any youth symphonies to see Asians dominating the string section. In fact, I believe that the National Youth Orchestra of USA (NYO-USA) is actually practicing quota on Asian string players. If the NYO-USA’s audition for string players is done strictly by skill levels alone, i.e., racially blind, then the NYO-USA would look more like NYO-China with the front string section all looking Asian. It’s interesting to see how NYO-USA’s auditioning process works quite similar to the admissions at elite colleges. The state of CA alone has enough talented Asian string players alone to fill the entire NYO-USA, but the organization has a need to fill the orchestra with geographic and racial diversity to make it “look” like the USA, not an Asian country.