I was talking to some of my friends today, who were white and our conversation drifted to the topic of how we got into college. Then they mentioned to me that their parents actually went on CC to search for college admission information and even buy them books to read on it. Since I’m an immigrant from Vietnam, my parents never did that, so I find it surprising. If you’re Asian (American), too, did your parents research college information online to help you in the admission process?
Speaking as an Asian-American (mom from Indonesia, dad from Iraq), I don’t think that being Asian pertains a whole lot to college research. Most parents, white, black, Latinx, or Asian, have done at least some research for their children. I know that some of my Asian friends have parents that micro-manage and others that are just super chill and just want their kid to be content with their life in the present. I haven’t come to the admissions process just yet, but my parents have done minimal research and are, to some extent, clueless to the American education system. When the time comes, they probably will be doing some research and will definitely be helping with admissions but, for the most part, I do my own research on college and high school (and I am perfectly content with that 
). Really, it just depends on the parents’ concerns and ideals, regardless of whether they’re Asian or not.
My family isn’t Asian but we are immigrants to the US and they didn’t do any college research until I asked them for help in choosing between two schools. To be honest, I don’t think they even knew all the classes I was taking at any given time in HS. The level to which parents micromanage has more to do with the individual that the ethnicity.
I have an American dad, and a mom from the Asian side of Russia. My mom is definitely a tiger mom in some regards, she expects me to have a 4.0 and perfect standardized test scores she usually doesn’t step in and micromanage unless I’ve demonstrated that I’ve been procrastinating a lot or something. (That happened in my online engish class where I was failing for most of the semester bc I hated doing the work and was saving it till the last possible minute.) I feel like she’d be the same way with college, although she really doesnt care if I go to a good school or not as long as I do well. She’d actually prefer I’d stay at home but I reallly dont want to do that. On one other note, she has opened some of my college junk mail then got mad when it didnt say anything useful, so if that counts as college research?
My dad on the other hand, wants me to go to the place that will be cheapest for him, and that also involves staying at home. He’s the one I’m taking with me to visit some colleges on the east coast during spring break bc I know he’ll be way less judgmental of them and wont ask as many embarrassing questions. He did help me in doing some reasearch about a dual enrollment class I want to take, but partly because it would save him money and partly because I took him to my counsling appointment so he knew about it.
Honestly, both my parents expect me to be independent in the college process, but as college graduates themselves college is seen as an expectation, not an option.
I’m Indian and my parents expect me to do the majority of research and work on my own. They’ll help me out when I have questions or ask for their opinion but other than they claim that their responsibility is really to just “pay the fees”
I’m Indian as well. My Dad didn’t research any colleges for me, but everytime I happen to mention one, he’ll either say “that’s a good school” or “never heard of it”. His data comes from when he was applying to masters/PhD programs in computer science. This was 20 years ago, and he told me he literally went down a list of the schools in the US and sent an application to the first 30. Of course this means, that he doesn’t recognize any liberal arts colleges and the colleges he considers “good” sometimes only have a strong c.s. program and not a biology one like I want.