@snarlatron is on track when he says “This may be more at work than blunt discrimination.”
If you read the article, it notes several times that there are commonalities in other parts of the applications from Asian-Americans, not the least of which involves the essay, both in quality and in topic. The essay is an important part of the application package.
I’d have to see a better body of data before I’m willing to accept that they suffer from discrimination solely on the basis of race.
Asian Immigrant and American Citizen, father of 4, our Asian household teach our children that they have to score higher than everybody else to get the same opportunities as others. We teach that life isn’t fair so we adjust and adapt as a family. My extended family of cousins and siblings teach the same thing to their kids and to my nephew and nieces.
No Need for Socioeconomic data or studies, we feel it, we see it, and we adjust to it…We as an Asian family do not need a study to read the writing on the wall. We still persevere and we still champion hard work and smart work over these stereotypes.
Now, this country gave us an excellent opportunity to succeed so we do just that…Succeed, end of our story!
@mikanpater at 58 are you inferring that blacks are genetically inferior to asians?
@wvacupuncture , does your Asian family’s “hard work and smart work” consider any advantages like wealth or family structure? Some are saying the fact that you have a strong family is an advantage that some disadvantaged groups tend not to have. Are you encouraging your children to take test review/prep courses, and test mutiple times?
I don’t mean to pick on you, because it is already clear you are not the “typical” Asian family - the simple fact that you are father of 4 means your family size is significantly higher than the stereotypical Asian family.
Forgive me if this comes across as offensive. I am not trying to deny the statistics, I am trying to understand them better. I learned years ago that statistics can often be manipulated and/or presented many different ways to help pursuade people of one position or another.
Ultimately if someone is trying to prove that one group is “better” than another, or if one group isn’t being treated “fairly”, we must agree that these are perhaps inflammatory arguments, or at least some will take it that way. It therefore follows that others may naturally get defensive.
For the most part, I enjoy threads like this (and there have been several on this forum), when users remain respectful, as it gives me opportunity to think outside my own limited perspectives.
We always taught our children to make the most of the cards you’ve been dealt, and be happy that they are fortunate to even be playing in the same game as some others. But I understand some people don’t have the same opportunity to sit at the table, and others will complain that the deck is stacked against them, while still others will say that the devil is dealing his own cards from the bottom of the deck.
@3puppies, I came to this country with a suitcase. Smart work means to go with your innate talents and try not to be something that you are not. My two college kids took the SAT-once, ACT-twice, they did not take preparation course, too expensive, only studied from review books, and I told them that you have 8 semesters to graduate from college and that’s it for support.
Now, we are now aware that there is this same situation of scoring higher than the typical applicants in medical school admissions so again we teach the oldest to adapt and be more broad in your experiences.
As Asian parent, we are hard on our kids compared to majority of US parents because we don’t want our kids to be “soft”. Again, we teach them to adapt and succeed using their innate talents whatever areas that may be. Our parenting style are more like the 1950’s or old school!
A month ago, I, an Asian-American, went to see a renowned college counselor. She flat out said to me that elite colleges stereotype Asians as math and comp-sci geeks, etc. and being Asian puts me at a disadvantage in the college admission due to that stereotype.
@mikanpater: And what are the applicant pools for USD and UCSD like? What are the accepted applicant profiles (not just the profile of the enrollees)? Is there a self-selection effect going on? (And if the last item is a yes, then there are other, perhaps more interesting issues at stake than the rather simplistic one being argued about in this thread.)
Also, @shakespeare12345, don’t take college counselors’ claims as gospel—many of them have a product to sell, and many more of them are, in my observation, really horrible vectors of flat-out false information.
My kids are also Asian, born here in the US, and my oldest now is a high school senior. All are academic honor students. We have been cautioned by college counselors that they will need higher test scores than their white, Hispanic and African-American peers, because racist people will automatically assume that we bought them test prep classes and make them take SATs multiple times to improve their scores. They were also warned not to have dreams in medicine or engineering, and to avoid piano, violin and tennis, because racists will again assume their parents pushed them into those areas. It seems everyone else is allowed to follow their interests and talents, but Asian-American kids can only follow theirs if their natural interests and talents are not in math/science, classical music, tennis, etc.
My oldest took the SAT one time, no prep course. He scored a 2230. But when people see his profile, they immediately ask how may times he took it and which prep course(s) we bought him. My kids also all took piano lessons, as their grandfather is a classical pianist. I can’t count the times I’ve heard people comment about Asian kids taking piano, as if watching their grandfather and parents play and growing up in a house with a piano had nothing to do with it.
Anecdotally we are friends with an Asian American girl with super impressive stats who was rejected from the elites and I can’t believe it was anything other than racial bias. Her ECs were amazing but alas were right in that stereotype. Perhaps if she sang choir instead of playing violin, or did something like cheerleading… who knows? She worked hard her whole life only to be told sorry, we have enough kids like that. I would love to see a study in which researchers submitted applications that are virtually identical except for name and race just to see what happens. They do employment studies like this all the time, so why not for college?
Of course, the self-selection of the applicant pools is likely the biggest reason for the difference.
Note that San Diego State University is only 7.4% Asian.
This has, of course, been discussed a lot of times, but there are a few points that I think should be made each time it comes up:
nevermind
Playing violin is not seen the same as a team sport. It is seen as something that you can improve on by yourself or paying for lessons. I would say there is much more discrimination against someone who plays the violin than someone who is Asian, that is a stronger stereotype of a kid in a room playing for hours on end with no human contact.
It is very sad that all we are seeing is the American lack of accountability, she didn’t get in (post #68) because she was Asian. PERIOD. Let’s just ignore how low the overall admittance rate is.
The valedictorian in my HS class was an excellent equestrian and she was white. She was flat out rejected from Yale early decision (ED at Yale ended 2002 or so), and we were all doomed. The year before, the top Asian student was accepted to Princeton as was the top Jewish student.
I would hazard a guess that if you have 100 candidates who all have the same ECs, GPAs, and SATs, yes most colleges would take the top few and cut the rest. How many kids do you need who play the violin? How many kids do you need who won a state or national competition? Why do colleges have to report to have holistic admissions, but then you have to take the power away from them to say “we have enough kids with 20 hours per week of the same EC”?
Denigrating choir or cheerleading, instead of wondering what her essay looked like or if her ECs were too specialized, is not helping.
Lumping all Asians in together is not helping either. Anyone who thinks that the average Chinese parents is the same as the average Thai or Indian or Malaysian or Japanese parent is insane. Just like the average English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, or Greek parent is the same.
I would say the much harder thing to do is be honest about socioeconomics. Do poor Chinese or Indian kids do the same on the SAT as poor white or poor black kids? Do you have to have a certain minimum socioeconomic parameter to “get” the benefit of a tiger mom or dad, be they Asian or European or South American?
I would like to see:
But then, you would have to consider:
and I have not seen any study do that.
Look, my middle-class, white, male kid attended a private high school on scholarship and he had to deal with the same assumptions, that because he attended “that kind of school,” he must have received all kinds of test prep and private tutoring and had every advantage a helicopter parent could acquire on his behalf. It’s an easy assumption for an adcom to make because it’s true about quite a large percentage of students who attend that school. Tough luck, I told him. That’s life. If you’re not competitive for the most “elite” schools, there are plenty of schools that will be glad to have you and will make it worth your while. And you’ll be in great company wherever you end up because they’ll will be lots of other smart, talented kids who won’t be accepted at the elites.
Most importantly, though, I told him NOBODY can take the terrific education he received in HS from him–that will be his regardless of where he goes to college and will likely have as much to do with his future success as the school name on his college degree.
Rather than try to package your kid for an elite school by encouraging him to give up his true passions, encourage him to pursue them wholeheartedly and to find the school that wants HIM. I guarantee you, there are MANY wonderful schools that would make him feel very special indeed, and, you never know, one or two might even be “elites.”
This is kind of a funny statement, because many of us know Asian kids who were not allowed to follow their interests and talents but were pressured into pursuing math/science, classical music, tennis, etc.–by their parents. I think it is this cultural norm, not natural interests, that has created such a glut of Asian pre-med violinists. I have some hope that the whole problem will begin to fade as Asian highschoolers broaden their interests.
Oh, my S has gone against the grain, given his stats. He applied to only one college – the one he wanted to attend. It is not an Ivy; it is our local in-state flagship. He was accepted three days after he applied and that was the end of that.
My kids all pursue what they want. They always have. They have to live their lives; I’ve already had the chance to make my choices. But I find it very naive to insist that Asian stereotypes aren’t used against Asian-American kids.
Exhibit 1 – see @Hunt’s post above.
That was a bad comparison. Most top HS kids in California don’t apply to USD. If they do, it’s their safety.
FWIW, we are Asian American.
My daughter did some stereo typical Asian American EC’s: piano, Academic League, quiz bowl. But she also did some EC’s that are not “so-Asian”: Field Hockey, Church Choir, Vocalist in a band, Writing.
But she did all of those because she actually enjoyed them.
I don’t think the counselors know much of anything if they are saying that. The top colleges are filled with Asian kids who played Piano or violin, want to be engineers or premeds and so on. That is not stopping them from getting in.
The problem I see is more of distinguishing yourself from other Asians. They need to also be involved in some group activities where violinists are usually part of Orchestras but pianists not always are. They need to join or start more clubs providing social service rather than stay with Robotics and Chess. Meals on wheels is a better club than HOSA for top colleges (this is coming from a parent whose kid started the school HOSA chapter).
This thread has gone far from the original “title” and idea. Dave, once again you have stirred the pot with an article that doesn’t contain any new news or ideas, and just triggers the same old discussion. I wish the mods would close this thread…