Exactly, gmt.
I think cobrat is correct to point to the public education decline as part of this phenomenon. Asian immigrant parents are accustomed to cram schools and crazy levels of studying for standardized tests back in their home countries, since tests there literally can affect one’s economic fate for life. Thus, they approach testing here in much the same way. Their children prepare for two years for an entrance exam, non-Asians don’t, so guess who is more likely to be admitted?
Native-born parents like me grew up in a system in which it was possible to simply go to school M-F, work hard on the curriculum, and still do well in classes and on exams like the SAT. Outside supplementation was not necessary. We didn’t need our parents to be PhD’s so they could explain AP Chem to us–our teacher did that. We didn’t need to go to school on Saturday mornings, or take classes every summer, or get tutored unless we were literally getting an F. The school was adequate for all that. (Heck, teachers even stayed after school to help us. Now the union forbids them to.) That is no longer the case, even in the better public schools. I am floored by how little teaching goes on in our supposedly top district. This only fuels the cycle of tutoring and extra classes. Non-Asian American parents are slow to figure out the new landscape and adapt, or else they get it but think it’s absurd to have to make their kids study all summer and opt out. Enter the Asians, for whom this is the status quo, or if it’s not, they nonetheless engage in the behavior to combat any prejudice and to ensure success in a foreign country.
Are non-Asian Americans just dumber and lazier? Some are, but I’m kind of sick of that explanation too. It’s not that simple.
^I agree in general but in my D’s HS it was jewish kids starting early on their SATs. I was shocked to find out that one of my D’s classmates started private tutoring for SAT in February of sophomore year! Some of them get into a decent college and get a tutor for their college course work.
Some counterpoints…
The Asian disadvantage (that’s being ignored)
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/14/news/economy/asian-americans-disadvantage/
The “Asian Advantage” is a myth. Plain and simple.
https://medium.com/@NCAPA/the-asian-advantage-is-a-myth-plain-and-simple-6864fd5ea225
Who said anything about adding ECs to an application review? NYC could ID high potential elementary school kids and help them get into better middle schools where they would get better instruction and an atmosphere that it more supportive of good students. The NYC schools also could offer test prep as a pull-out or after school option. In NYC families can choose among middle schools and often in low income neighborhoods the local middle school is not going to help prepare a kid for Stuy, Bronx Science or even a HS like Beacon. The other issue may be that certain Asian groups are more willing to allow their children to travel by public transit to farther away schools than parents in very dangerous neighborhoods. Not saying this is easy, but certainly one path.
The GFG’s comments and the counterpoints in #123 point out that not all Asian immigrant groups are doing well. Students from countries that have high stakes testing for HS or college expect that model. In their country of origin kids are sent to cram schools or their equivalent for those super high stakes tests and follow that model here in the US. Those from other Asian countries are not doing as well.
It is a difficult problem. The test makes it admissions seem completely merit-based. The reality is that kids stuck in very low performing schools often don’t get the level of instruction that will give them even a slight chance of doing well on the admissions test. Those kids get channeled to low performing middle and high schools where their shot at a good college is minimized. So does that make it a fair test? OTOH, kids with poor instruction in the lower grades may not have the background or study habits to succeed at Stuy or equivalent high schools.
Also, the very wealthy kids in NYC are not applying to public high schools because they are at the top prep schools, because their parents can afford the tuition. The racial make-up of the top public and private high schools in NYC may paint a different picture than just looking at the top STEM schools.
The value of prep depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you want to get into Stuy, or into medical school, it’s very important, and it might be worth sacrificing other activities in order to put in the prep time. If you want to get into Harvard, though, spending a lot of prep time on the SAT may backfire, if you have to sacrifice other activities too much. The same is true, as I’ve said many times before, of how much time you have to spend studying in order to get top high school grades. If you have to study so much that you don’t have time for really meaningful ECs, then you will probably do well in college–but the college won’t be Harvard.
They did that for decades in various ways. Sometimes it was race based, sometimes economics based, sometimes available to everyone who wanted to attend. It didn’t help that much.
Re: https://medium.com/@NCAPA/the-asian-advantage-is-a-myth-plain-and-simple-6864fd5ea225
Note that the UCs and CSUs already do this. Not sure about the CCs, though.
I found USNews, high-schools.com, publicschoolreview.com and most other sites report the free/reduced at 20-21%, @jym626 found propublica at 37% (but that was 6 years ago, 2009 school year).
It’s most definitely NOT “vast majority eligible for free or reduced price lunches”. Not even a slim majority. A pretty small percentage, in fact. maybe it was different when you went there in the 90’s or whatever but it is not the case NOW.
If you can find a reputable source that has ANY majority of Stuy kids on f/r lunch currently, please share it.
I don’t decry prep. I might decry excessive focus on an exam over everything else but in NYC where the alternative is a pretty awful high school, I totally get it. FWIW this isn’t the case with college admissions…there are terrific alternatives to the “top 20” schools. (I took the SHSAT myself in the 80’s and got into all 3 schools, though I chose a private with a scholarship in the end. I am sure I did some prep with a book, I know I didn’t take a class.)
Another factor is the fact that the US K-8 academic curriculum…even G & T in most neighborhood middle schools or in my time, SP homerooms targeting academically gifted/above-average achievers tends to go at a slower pace than what’s expected in an average public K-8 in many East Asian countries.
One older Stuy alum who graduated in the early '90s recounted how despite attending a local average neighborhood elementary school in the ROC(Taiwan) that he ended up not learning anything new in math until well into his freshman year of HS. And that’s despite being placed into the most advanced SP homeroom in his NYC neighborhood junior high. He mentioned the math covered on the Stuy exam was covered to some extent in 5th grade right before he emigrated and he continued to go deeper into algebra and geometry partially as a diversion from what he felt was the boring US late elementary and middle school classes which repeated material he learned from K-5 in Taiwan.
Most of the Asian-American students prepping from what I’ve observed are American-born, those who emigrated to the US before finishing the first grade or two of elementary school in their countries of origin, or for the Asian-immigrants…a way to rapidly assimilate English reading comprehension/vocabulary skills to compensate for English not being their first language.
One issue some alums who were volunteer instructors noted was how the programs were offered in a small-scale patchwork manner and due to having few places where such free prep was offered, the majority of students who were motivated enough and parents willing enough to make what can be a long journey by public transportation tended to be Asian-Americans.
Even the ones which tried to be race-based couldn’t exclude Asian-Americans as a prior court ruling in a similar program back in the '70s(Discovery*) stated that limiting eligibility to publicly funded educational programs by race is discriminatory and thus, illegal.
- The Discovery program was a program started sometime in the late '60s/early '70s to at first target URMs and after a lawsuit which tossed out race-based eligibility, low-income students who scored within ~60-90 points of a given SHS cutoff score for a second chance at admission on the condition they attend summer classes in Math and English to see if they can cope with the academic rigor and pace of attending a SHS. If one passed, one ended up getting offered admission despite falling short of that school's cutoff. Unfortunately, it was done away with sometime in the early '00s for Stuy and from what I heard BxSci because the DOE wanted to change the eligibility criteria to be WITHIN ~60-90 points below the cutoff of the school with the lowest cutoff score....not that of the school the student wanted to gain admission to.
The principal and many older alums of Stuy felt agreeing to the DOE’s effective lowering of eligibility criteria would effectively set up many students for failure as 60-90 points below the cutoff of the lowest scoring school means the student trying for Stuy or BxScience could have scores ~100-150+/800 below their respective cutoffs. A far greater gap than 60-90 points.
Thanks@OHmomof2. Didn’t see the date on that data I linked. It seems that fewer and fewer of the Stu students are from low income families.
Test prep by Asian subgroups
http://www.wnyc.org/story/certain-immigrants-tutoring-key-specialized-high-schools-test/
And from the article about other groups:
While certain Asian immigrants have created a pipeline of tutoring centers, educators say black and Latino students often don’t have the same networks in their communities. According to the city’s department of Small Business Services, there are more than 240 private tutoring companies in Brooklyn and Queens combined, where so many Asian communities are based, but just 12 in the Bronx.
A google search indicates there is a public school program for SHSI test prep called DREAM but the info is all from 2013. It is a big commitment of time, including Saturdays, weekends etc for I didn’t see where the classes are offered so not clear how difficult it would be for a kid to participate. If more kids than want a spot meet the criteria, the drawing is random.
Here is an article from 2012 indicating that the success rate of that program for URMs is better than in the past.
http://insideschools.org/blog/item/1000338-black-success-rate-up-in-pilot-hs-prep
Not clear if this is ongoing and not popping up on google, or has been discontinued or replaced.
PS I can’t recall how to quote. Isn’t it [\quote] followed by the quote and then same with unquote at the end??
Like this:
It is probably true. As 2nd generation Chinese, my son was told at young age that he would be fine as long as he tried. He became val in his high school, and obviously not good enough for Harvard, though he was good enough for Stanford and Yale. He then became the val in his major at Stanford and works for Google. Now, he is full time at both Google and full-time at Stanford’s GSB MBA/CS MS, after randomly applied to this dual program and got in.
He did not have meaningful ECs at high school.
Someone upthread cautioned the danger of increased academic intensity that might lead to detrimental effect due to Asian Americans’ focus on academic achievements. While I agree that it is still a long way away American society as a whole would even feel any pressure of the sort, I do have witnessed the kind of changes over the past decade, especially among Asian Americans. A decade ago, in the upper middle class suburbs of non- Boston/Manhattan metros, extensive tutoring in elementary school/middle school was almost unheard of whereas today it becomes more and more commonplace. Ironically, many immigrants from China and Korea like the American K-12 system better than that of their home countries, where cramming for exams and cutthroat competitions are rampant, although they quickly become aware that the academic preparation at least in the regular public schools is not sufficient. On the one hand, they appreciate the fact that kids can have a more balanced and enriched childhood in America. On the other, they feel compelled to add academic enrichment either on their own or relying on tutoring. IMO, the latter is not nearly as bothersome to them. They’d rather choose this model than the alternative.As a matter of fact, some people back in China or Korea may think the immigrants’ kids in America “have it easy” because American kids in general are more laid back and therefore there is less competition, which may have some truth in it. In American schools, it’s such a taboo to “publicize” book smart, and it’s never ever acceptable to award students with best grades like they do best student athletes, if there’s ever an academic related award. I remember in my local elementary school seeing at least 60% of the class standing up for distinguished honor roll and almost all the rest for honor roll. It’s certainly more nurturing a culture but it has its prices.
This may be relevant to this thread. I was looking at STEM grad programs. In most programs, about half of grad students are Asians. It can be very competitive to get into STEM grad programs because of well prepared foreign students competing against “laid-back” domestic students. In STEM grad programs, foreign students are funded as well as domestic students. What was interesting to me was that although there are as many as asian students in a program, there are not as well represented in graduating class. Only about 25-30% got PhD.
There have been plenty of studies that show a connection between high parental involvement and better academic outcomes, and it’s not race specific even though tiger moms get a bad rap for it. Staying on top of your kids ALL THE TIME is exhausting, and weathering the scrutiny of observers who go out of their way to disparage you for “making a robot” is painful. I have the utmost respect for parents who do this well - some of them are Asian, but not all. Parental involvement means making sure your kid is applying him or herself 100% at school, not just doing the minimum requirement. Whether or not the child gets admitted into Harvard is not the point. Hard work is not a bad lesson for children to learn – this is true whether it’s academics or sports or any pursuit. And it’s true no matter the race of the child.
“advantage”? lol what. They just work harder than others