<p>I have overbearing Asian parents, and they're really starting to take a toll on me. Their expectations are so high, and they always refer to other "better" Asian kids to make me feel bad. For example, I got a 2290 on the SAT in Oct and my mom immediately called me an idiot and said, "_____ got a 2340! Why can't you do that?" Every day, my parents keep telling me to be like some other Asian kids in my school, and I have to deal with BS like "OMG _____ wakes up every day and makes her parents breakfast! Why can't you?" "_______ went to Princeton! Why can't you?" "Look at _______, who has straight As! WHY CAN'T YOU ****ING DO THAT?!!" </p>
<p>And now, the pressure is building even more, since I'm a low GPA/great everything else student and it's very possible that I'll be rejected from most or all of my reaches and have to settle with my state flagship. Today, my mom told me that if I end up going to my state flagship, I will have wasted my entire childhood and be a worthless disgrace. And now that I think of it, I WOULD feel like a disgrace going to my state flagship while a lot of my Asian friends will be going to top 30 schools. </p>
<p>How do I deal with the expectations of my parents and the overwhelming pressure to get into a top school? My ability to write good essays and do well in school is also being hindered because my parents are always ranting about how I'm lazy and useless. Even worse, they give me deadlines to finish essays, which prevents me from thinking of creative ways of writing them (IMO creativity is my strongest trait, but I'm not getting the chance to use it!). How can I get them to leave me alone and be happy with what they have?</p>
<p>Guess what? I’m an asian kid too, and every single asian kid ever in the history of mankind has these problems. They won’t let go, don’t worry.</p>
<p>You have to try and reason with them, but kindly and respectfully. When are the deadlines? I, along with many other asian and white students, am trying to do 1-2 apps a week. Would that work for both of you? Somewhere in there, they want you to do well, but its covered in a lot of wanting to show off to friends and be ridiculously hard on you. Same here. I don’t think the deadlines are that bad.</p>
<p>With going to a state school - might happen here too. I’m not going to get into all the schools my parents think I will. Is your state flagship a good school? Are there LACs you like and might want to go to? Ultimately, you just have to forget what everyone else says (parents, family, asian friends, etc . . ) and just do the best you can. What else can you possibly do?</p>
<p>I am wondering what those parents have to say when the same questions pose to them. Namely, why XYY’s parents live in a million dollar house and we in a quarter million one? Why XYY’s, also from China (for example), went to MIT for graduate school and you to podunk U? What is your definition of success and failure in life and how do you see yourself in those terms? My son asked if I live my dreams through his achievement when he was 8 years old, of all ages. That paused me for a long while. Fortunately, I found out that he asked the same question that a character he was reading asking his parents. He didn’t quite undertand it. But, nevertheless, I learned a big lesson on that day.</p>
<p>OP, I am not going to hug you but you have my full sympathy. Perhaps you should pull a list of accomplished alumni from your state flagship and show it to your parents. Even directional state universities produce many accomplished alumni.</p>
<p>I agree with waitingforivy. While most Americanized families might find this horrible, it’s about par for the course for east-asian families - korean, japanese, chinese, etc. It is a cultural thing, NOT a personal thing. Many Asian parents grew up in a Confucian-influenced culture where their job is to keep pushing their children to be the best they can be. “Coddling” or giving positive encouragement is believed that it will make you not try as hard in the future. In secret, they are proud of you. They keep pointing to the stars so that you will hit the tree tops. It does get better as you get further along as there are less things to directly compare. But there will be more: graduate school, etc. Some kids get burnt out from it and crash and burn. Onlookers point to that as evidence that such methods don’t work, but on the flip side, countless kids have had it work. So you can’t lump them all together. As to creativity, such teaching methods are notoriously dampening on creativity as they are not easily measured. My advice is be respectful but point out how it hurts you. They will likely disagree but you have at least voiced your opinion. Go to school further away, it actually improves relations. 10 years from now, your parents will tell you what they were truly thinking and feeling pushing you so hard.</p>
<p>Reminds me of the Glee episode recently where the kid was freaked out about his Asian F (an A-).</p>
<p>Just curious: What is a “low GPA” for NerdyAsianKid?</p>
<p>edit:
okay, just looked at your post re chances at UCLA. You sound awesome. You will get into an excellent school–maybe not an IVY, but somewhere great. If you are not a CA resident, that may improve your chances at UCLA or other CA public. UC is accepting more out of state students for the tuition money. </p>
<p>Though I really enjoyed jvtDad’s comments, I don’t suggest asking your folks why you don’t live in a 2mil dollar house like so and so, sounds a bit snarky. But definitely fun to think about what their reaction might be. </p>
<p>Hang in there, and pick a school far away from home when you get your acceptances.</p>
<p>It’s not that bad. It just gets overwhelming sometimes. But it creates the attitude that not only can you do it, you will do it. And that’s a good thing. Sometimes when you have to do something, you break a barrier that you thought was there but really wasn’t. I think that’s really helped a lot. Of course it won’t help when its out of your control - getting into ivies, for example, but it does help when in difficult courses.</p>
<p>But yes, momof3greatgirls, when I tell my friends, they say the same thing. When I meet my asian friends, we share mutual survival stories.</p>
<p>Think of it this way. If you were born in China, nobody would be sympathizing with you. Their school system caters to parents’ notions of success. Rankings are “official” government rankings of how “good” you are. How “good” your school is and your academic “worth”. I am not advocating it, but as a glass is half-full kind of person, I thought back then that it could be worse.</p>
<p>Personal anecdote: got 1580 on the SAT in the 1600 days. Parents said you were so close to getting 1600. Was first in my class, parents said but you go to a small school. They stressed me out and had me take the SAT again to get “1600”… I got a 1490. That got them to lay off of me really fast. Of course there was fighting, etc. I applied to colleges without telling them anything. I did not have them look at my applications or anything. They did not even know the deadlines. I got into Harvard early. They view it as their parenting, I view it as I would have done it regardless and they were stressing me out. In the end, I know they care. I will not be raising my own children in the same fashion, but I will pick and choose the good things out of their approach.</p>
<p>“Even worse, they give me deadlines to finish essays, which prevents me from thinking of creative ways of writing them (IMO creativity is my strongest trait, but I’m not getting the chance to use it!)”</p>
<p>regarding deadlines, I have a suggestion:
tell them that the COLLEGES have given you the ONLY deadlines that matter,which is true, and bugging you about their own artificial deadlines WILL only make your essays worse, and lessen your chances of acceptance, so if you dont get in, it will be THEIR fault.
Then put a note on your bedroom door that says- EVERY MOMENT I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU ABOUT COLLEGE, LESSENS THE TIME I HAVE LEFT TO PREPARE FOR COLLEGE. SO BE QUIET.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for the pain your parents are putting you through unnecessarily.</p>
<p>Could you try putting the shoe on the other foot? Maybe gently criticize one of your parents for their English being less than perfect (so-and-so’s mother speaks English better than you…) or some such minor failing…so they can see how it makes you feel.</p>
<p>Also, maybe you could show your parents one of the charts that shows how your excellent score is not any meaningful degree lower than someone else’s? If they realized how little of a difference scores make at the top end of the chart, maybe they would back off.</p>
<p>Another idea…perhaps if you applied to some schools that are not so heavily subscribed to in the Asian community, such as top LACs, you could score some major merit scholarship money that your parents could then brag about…</p>
<p>By the way, I mean all of the above kindly, because it is evident that your parents love and care about you, and you about them. But it is hard to live with parents who are harsh even though they mean well and think they are doing the right thing.</p>
<p>If all else fails, remind your parents that one day you will be choosing their nursing home, because you will not likely want constant critics residing in your household.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for the kind responses! I haven’t even applied to other colleges besides my safety right now, so I have no idea how it’ll end up in 5 months or so. I’m just assuming the worst – that I’ll be denied from all of my reaches and end up going to my safety. However, anything could happen; I could luck out and get accepted to my dream school (that’ll seriously be the best day of my life), but I’m a pessimist (just like my parents) so I’m preparing for the worst.</p>
<p>And I swear I’m not going to be like this to my kids one day haha. Most of my friends have “chill” Asian parents; I’m the only one with crazy ones who fit the Tiger parent stereotype. The thing is, a lot of my Asian friends have been motivated to succeed from the very beginning so they didn’t really need their parents to keep pressuring them. I’m just as motivated as they are now, but my parents still think I need a lot of pressure from them :(</p>
<p>Did you apply to any rolling schools? That might help for your own peace of mind. What about just doing EA somewhere? Are you parents really on top of where you’re applying to college?</p>
<p>^I only applied to my safety as rolling. Everything else is RD, which sucks because I won’t know what my final fate will be until March or April. While I kinda regret not EAing to UVA, UNC, and UMich, I wouldn’t have thought of (imo) a really good idea for my common app essay if I tried to EA. I would have had to stick with my other version, which sucks now that I think of it.</p>
<p>It was not until we got involved in martial arts that my kids got to be close friends with a group of young asians. I found it shocking at first that no hard-won achievement was good enough in these parents’ eyes and a loss in competition was seen as a slap in the face to the parents. I feel for you OP, I really do!</p>
<p>My D goes to a selective enrollment school that is 40% Asian. One of her good friends is one of the top students at this school, with a list of achievements that make my head ache just to think about them. But in the eyes of his parents, he is a complete failure - because he’s not first chair in his section in the student orchestra.</p>
<p>Reading this thread reminds me of some all-Asian gatherings I attend where an equal amount of astonishment and sadness is expressed when a child talks about the behavior of some non-Asian classmate’s parent that’s 180 off the Asian stereotype.</p>
<p>FWIW, I think it’s just a style thing and you have adapt it ot their metric. What I mean is it seems every Asian kid I know has parents saying such things, so you take it with a grain of salt, it’s just their way of motivating you, it doesn’t mean they really mean it. </p>
<p>I have a current PhD student from Beijing. He says his whole life he was told by his mom that he wasn’t as smart as his classmates, so he had to work harder, harder, harder. He was a loser, a failure, a shame to his family, if he wasn’t THE top student of his 60 person class every single time…so much pressure, so much criticism. Yet he says all his classmates had the same parents so 59 kids had to hang their head in shame. But now that he’s successful his mom says, “I always knew you were smart, I just had to say what I did…” I think it’s pretty typical and I"m sure your parents secretly think you are fabulous, it is just their way of trying to get you to reach. But I’m positive that wherever you end up they will actually be proud of you. And keep in mind, every flagship has a ton of Asian kids with similar parents. Everyone adjusts. And many such kids go on to lead very fabulous and conventionally successful lives. At some level I think you know this is true (even if it’s annoying right now).</p>
<p>As an aside, I find it offensive the way some Asian parents only compare their kids to other Asian kids. What the heck is that about?</p>