<p>Hey, I’m an Asian. I’ve just recently moved from Vietnam. No boasting, but I’m the highest grade holder at school. I got a 95 in Math in total ( I was slacking off after the first several tests because they were too easy). I can’t believe those American kids cannot solve a grade school equation 5+x=19??? And there I got onto my honor Math class since I complained to the teacher lol. In English I also am the highest grade holder. My school is a Bull S***** school so people are not competitive at all. That may be why I so am excelling.
BTW, I made like a 7Xin Math over in Viet Nam. But here I keep on bombarding 9X lol</p>
<p>schritzo and Millancad are right - read Gladwell’s Outliers. There’s an entire chapter explaining it, though I must add that it <em>mainly</em> explains why native asians are good at math, not asian immigrants.</p>
<p>There is a book that explains it. It’s called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. read it</p>
<p>edit: oh i just read the other posts. looks like someone beat me to it… ^^ it does acutally explain why asian immigrants are good. it’s a small section though like a paragraph</p>
<p>People tend to either be very humanities/creativity/fine-arts or logic/math/science oriented. That of course is a massive generalization, but it has its basis in genetics/physiology. My guess is that Asians are just ‘wired’ in a manner that favors the latter ‘programming’, so to speak.</p>
<p>lol I don’t know about Asians, but I am above average at math (800 SAT 2), yet am not at all inclined towards science (680 SAT2 in bio). I guess I’m just that much of a nonconformist.</p>
<p>My school only has like 4 asians in the school 
But the two that I know personally are really good at math.</p>
<p>We have a very biased sample in Asian Americans. Most Asians here are the children/grandchildren of immigrants. As it is very hard for most non-educated Asians to immigrate from Asia to America, a good chunk of immigrants are the cream of the crop so to speak. They also generally have a very strong work ethic that they pass down to their children. Additionally, there is a much stronger emphasis on math and science in Asia than there is in America. </p>
<p>Also, there is a cultural gap between Asians and Americans. In America, when you fail in school then you fail yourself or you blame the teacher or some crap like that. However, in a lot of Asian cultures, if you do poorly in school then it is a reflection of the failure of the family (and vice versa if you do well). Since you never want to bring shame to your family, you do as well as you possibly can. Most American children have no intention of pleasing their parents.</p>
<p>Most other Americans are either long since established here in America or their ancestors came over as laborers rather than very highly educated people. It is also a lot easier to immigrate to America from most other countries and therefore we have a march larger mix of people from all walks of life instead of just (as I said before, generally) the most educated people from Asia. </p>
<p>If you look at Asians that have been here for 4-5 generations like most of us non Asians, they score much lower than the children of Asian immigrants. </p>
<p>There is also evidence that bilingual/multilingual children score higher overall. Since nearly 100% of recent immigrants still speak their native language in their home at least some of the time, their children would naturally know their native language as well as English and any other third language they are learning in school. </p>
<p>With all of these factors together, it really is no wonder that Asian Americans tend to do better than others.</p>
<p>Gladwell’s book is such a sham. I can’t say much about the other chapters since I’m no expert in the information it presents, but his “Why Asians are Good at Math”? His explanation is basically that South Asians spend way too much effort growing rice and that directly translates into a culture rooted in hard work and determination producing beautiful results which translates into … being good at math! Wow, what an intelligent argument. Because South Asians are the only ones who end up doing better than average on the math portion of the SAT, right.</p>
<p>Anyway … I couldn’t give you a legit reason why. Like others before me have said, I think it’s probably just the way we were raised. Unlike previous waves of immigrants, the Asian parents of the current generation got here based on merit, and in China your intellectual merit is measured by how well you do in mathematics (and science, I suppose). Naturally this is interpreted by the immigrants as hey, being good at math will get you places, and that’s what they teach their children from a young age … the same ones who’ll end up taking the SAT.</p>
<p>there were a bunch of Asians in my physics class but none of them were better than me at physics</p>
<p>it was the same for my algebra 2 class</p>
<p>I’m white</p>
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<p>My computer is about to cut off and I don’t know where my mother put the charger, so the following may not be my best writing.
I think it’s pretty hard to say that most Americans have no goal of pleasing their parents. That seems to be highly valued by humans the world over. But not important.</p>
<p>The thing is, you can’t say as a whole that Asian Americans succeed. Cambodian-Americans have a HS grad rate in the high 60 percentage area. Laotian-Americans have a lower grad rate, 62%, I think. And the Hmong-American rate is in the 50s (I do realize that Hmong is an ethnicity while the other two are nationalities, but most Laotians are ethnically Lao and most Cambodians are ethnically Khmer). I don’t think your explanation, which I think is the best and probably truest one, could cover why they don’t do well in comparison with other Americans in general, other immigrants, and other Asian-Americans. There’s possibly data, though, that I don’t know and don’t have time, in terms of how little battery power I have left, to try to look up.</p>
<p>Sorry, should have restricted it to Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese(?) etc Asians. I was going with the stereotypical smart Asians, and was not trying to be offensive to ethnicities by excluding them if they should have been included. I was just giving some reasons why, I don’t necessarily know if they are the right reasons. They’re just theories.</p>
<p>haha im an asian that sucks at math. yay i break the chain! im actually really good in CR and writing and english classes though… alota people think im whitewashed so i guess maybe i dont count…? i like english better cause there can be many right answers. theres only 1 right answer in math.</p>
<p>im getting a B in my precalc class with a teacher that is rated a 4/5 on the easiness scale on ratemyprofessor.com but i worked my butt off and got a 740 in math iic to kinda redeem myself for all the B-'s for math on my transcript.</p>
<p>^^that’s still good. I got a C in precalc and a 520 on math II,can’t get any lower than that.</p>
<p>well, alot of our parents tested into the US to attend college/grad school/ do phd’s here, so the asians in the US aren’t exactly the average joes in Asia</p>
<p>yeah, i’ve wondered this for a long time, as well. my school is probably 40% asian & my honors/AP classes are always at least 60% asian [including indian]. so, yeah, it was always pretty bad for my self-esteem having to work against really smart asians : P</p>
<p>but i always kind of just figured they have like a genetic pre-disposition to learning things easier. that sounds weird, but half the kids in class would be staring off into space/sleeping during the lesson, whereas i/a few other kids would be frantically trying to understand the material. not cool.</p>
<p>my dad is convinced that it’s because asians value hard work. not that i don’t believe that, but i sure as hell don’t buy it as the only reason…</p>
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<p>where do you live? most asian parents i know either own a restaurant or a drycleaning store.</p>
<p>another vote for reading gladwell’s outliers…</p>
<p>also, its easier for immigrants to “make it” to, and in, america with hard sciences than with humanities. so a larger than usual portion of the asians in schools have parents that excel in sciences, so they naturally pick that up as well.</p>
<p>"where do you live? most asian parents i know either own a restaurant or a drycleaning store. "
lolwut that’s only in Chinatown? All of our family friends are doctors/ college professors in science.</p>