Since many asian (including south asian) parents are immigrants who didn’t go through the process yourselves, how did you learn about what it entails?
- Through friends?
- On here?
- Other websites?
Not asian, but a legal immigrant. Read: books (mostly outdated but still interesting the advice given), the good old college confidential from about 4 years back, some other web sites.
Most information has gone out the window with the pandemic and the step back from standardized tests, though. My kid has yet to apply, but the pandemic has altered some of the schools that were initially very interesting to us.
The best things to be done are to assure that the high school course load suits your kid; is rigorous so that they don’t get bored; and allows for flexibility so that they can have a shot to apply at different types of programs and colleges.
Not growing up in this country handicaps immigrant parents in the process of college search I’d say. It takes knowledge to acquire new knowledge. So kids of immigrants can be treated as without college-educated (fully) parents, no? : )
I’ll have to disagree. I am an immigrant from Europe, not Asia, and my husband is American. Even though he went through the college application process when he was a teen, the whole process has significantly changed. In fact, it has changed so much (in terms of cost and competitiveness), that I don’t think I had a knowledge gap compared to him when supporting our eldest that just went through the process. I think the goal of an education in general is to teach you how to think and analyze. I would imagine that an educated immigrant parent is in a better position to support their children (as long as they don’t fall into the prestige trap) than a high school educated American parent.
And to answer the OP, the first thing to take care of is figure out what you can afford. In my home country undergraduate education is free to those lucky enough to survive the entrance exams. Once that piece of the puzzle is in place the rest is sure to follow. I read books, talked to friends, and most of all listened to what my kid was interested in. I was also sure to list our family’s financial limitations before she started looking at colleges. And finally, try to remove yourself from the name brand mentality. Nobody here has ever heard the name of my undergrad university (the highest ranked in my country) so why should friends and family back home know the names of the universities that my kids will go to? Just some thoughts for you OP.
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Yes, higher costs mean that a much greater percentage of students and parents must look for affordability, and higher competitiveness means that what parents may think of as an easy to get into college is now difficult to get admitted to.
The prestige trap may more likely affect immigrant parents from countries where those universities which lead to good post-graduation outcomes are all effectively elite-admission.
Another factor is that some countries’ university admission systems are heavily or solely based on standardized tests, which seems to lead to an overemphasis on spending huge amounts of time studying for the SAT and/or ACT to get another 10-40 SAT points or 1 ACT point more.
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I agree with you that educated immigrant parents should be able to learn to understand the US system however difficult. I’m happy with an easy school system and a self-directing kid. I do wish I started paying attention to all of this sooner so the kid could get into a better school. Yes OP can learn from successful parents here or in local schools, early.
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Agreed that the process has changed enough that having applied to college 30 years ago doesn’t give your child much of an advantage. It may be a disadvantage because you think you know what you’re doing and you don’t. (I was unfamiliar with the early admission and early decision options and once I learned about those I still didn’t realize that some school also had priority application deadline for scholarships. In our state, applying early also gives an advantage in admissions to the state schools even though there aren’t set dates.)
In any case, my kid’s high school has many students who are children of Asian immigrants.
Book - Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions by Jeffrey Selingo
The reason I mention this book is that is goes through many of the factors that go into admissions beyond grades and scores.
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