<p>Hey, folks out here. Reading through the admission thread depresses me. As an asian dad with 3 boys (all pre high school), I wonder what kind of credentials and achievements an asian male student needs to have to get into top tier schools (ivies, MIT, Caltech, etc.). Some applicants here seem to have near perfect academic record and yet couldn't get into top schools. Why race still matters in college admission in this day and age is really beyond me...but let's leave it for another day. </p>
<p>As an asian student, what EC or anything other than academic stuff should be looked at to gain entrance into top schools? What does an asian applicant need to achieve (be it sports or community service, etc.)? What is the winning strategy if there is one? I hope the schools are not looking for the perfect asians. </p>
<p>Be different. The top schools get more than enough applications from straight-A, 2300-SAT, piano-and-tennis-playing asians. Maybe play guitar, or play piano in a rock band. Play lacrosse instead of tennis. Be passionate about something other than academics, something showing you are unique and special, and reflect that passion in your essays.</p>
<p>It’s not that race matters, it’s that schools want diversity. They could easily admit all those qualified asians (or whatever group), but they would end up with a student body lacking diversity.</p>
<p>The deliberate racial selection process will be with us for a long time. Remember the Harvard admissions policy towards the Jews back in the 30’s? It will only change when Asian are as powerful (politically as well as economically) as Jews in this society.</p>
<p>Note that “diversity” is not just race or ethnicity. If a school gets 1,000 Asian applicants from major metro areas in California and New York whose primary extracurricular is piano or violin, and 1 from rural Indiana whose primary extracurricular is playing linebacker on the high school football team, which do you think the university admissions committees will be more interested in for the sake of “diversity” (assuming similar academic credentials)?</p>
<p>My advice would be to encourage your sons to find things that interest them. Don’t push specific extracurricular activities on them, but help them to identify things they genuinely enjoy doing or learning about. Nurture these interests; motivate them to persevere and excel in the activities they pick.</p>
<p>I think this is something you should do as a parent, for the sake of your children. It also happens to be something that would help them in admissions.</p>
<p>Tigerdad, my son is white, but I believe the specifics of his experience can help you plan a successful strategy for your 3 sons.</p>
<p>Great stats, even perfect stats, are not enough. But combine great stats with leadership roles in a couple of ECs and some innovative community service work, and your kids should have a strong shot. By “innovative community service work,” I mean identify a unmet local need and find a way to fill that need. Students who exclusively follow the pre-packaged cookie-cutter opportunities that one’s high school offers fail to stand out from the crowd of top applicants. As Chardo said, “Be different.”</p>
<p>My son had perfect stats (36.0 ACT, 240 PSAT, dual 800 SAT IIs, and a 1/400 class rank). He was rejected by MIT, Princeton and Yale. However, he was accepted by 4 top-20 colleges and 3 of them (Brown, Williams and Amherst) actually wrote customized letters to him mentioning what the admissions committee found especially appealing. In Brown’s case, the letter came from his advocate on the committee; from both Williams and Amherst, he was accepted “early write,” where he was officially accepted about 3 weeks before the actual acceptance date.</p>
<p>None of these 3 schools mentioned his stats. All three mentioned his innovative community service project. Brown specifically also mentioned his initiative in self-studying for 4 additional AP tests. It’s clear that wandering off the traditional path is more likely to make a positive impression than merely excelling at what is conventionally offered.</p>
<p>I should note that my son is a 3-year high school graduate and that tended to work against him – a lot of “free time” (15-20 hrs/week) was spent in earning extra outside credits and that left little time to develop his ECs and community service work as far as he would have liked. The community service project was in fact a work-in-progress and it’s quite possible that it would have made a stronger impression on MIT, Princeton and Yale, had it been more fully realized.</p>
<p>Competing in state-level or national-level competitions would help your sons; to a large extent, one needs to research and prepare for these opportunities BEFORE beginning high school – unless one happens to attend a high school that already offers such opportunities. As far as community service goes, if your children speak an Asian language fluently, one possibility might be to organize ESL classes for recent immigrants in your community – and then write about the experience in one of the essays.</p>
<p>Well the fact that your sons are still not in high school, and you’re already looking to push them into certain ‘helpful’ activities, shows that you are a very worried father. But honestly, any extracurricular activity which you can offer to them, be it sports, community service, or rigorous studying, will NOT be impressive in the college admissions process. </p>
<p>The best accomplishments in their high school years will be ones which they conceived and worked for themselves. All you can do as a father is act as a catalyst and perhaps try to introduce them to different fields of study, or something that may pertain to their interests. It doesn’t matter how well they do in a certain activity, because if they’re not passionate about it, their accomplishments won’t shine, and they won’t be able to write about it sincerely.</p>
<p>Tigerdad; I can only speak to two Asian males with whom DD is acquainted. One is a freshman at Harvard and was also accepted at Stanford and Brown. The other is now a sophomore at Brown but was also accepted at Dartmouth, UCLA, and a number of other top schools.</p>
<p>Neither had top SAT scores or perfect GPAs. Both come from low income immigrant families and attended an inner city public school that has some great challenging programs for some but is a drop-out factory for others. The Brown student comes from a single parent household, is bisexual, and spent countless hours on community service, the most notable was putting on a conference on LGBT issues, not sure whether that was for Asians or not. He also did some type of traditional ethnic dance. The Harvard student gave my daughter a call on her birthday because he said that email, texting, and posting on her FaceBook wall was too impersonal – so he’s a sweet kid. They never dated or anything, and they just met in the school library where he was peer tutoring after school.</p>
<p>No magic trick; no magic formula unless you want to count being a first generation college attendee in a non-English speaking low income Vietnamese household headed by a single parent living in a low income neighborhood in a crime-riddled city and graduating from a school with some bright spots amongst a lot of mediocrity. . . .I hope your sons are growing up in much less challenging circumstances.</p>
<p>As to ECs: Don’t discourage your sons to explore options of the beaten (Asian) path and outside YOUR comfort zone. I am Asian American, and issues that I see need to be addressed because they are so taboo have to do with mental health and anything to do with sex/sexuality such as HIV and LGBT/sexual identity. If these are too edgy, then hepatitis awareness and politics/political campaigning are other non-traditional areas. If a ton of Asians are there, think how difficult it will be for your boys to distinguish themselves. So for example, if one of your boys is athletic and likes to tumble and wants to be on the cheerleading squad, it really isn’t the end of the world and he will gain a perspective not shared by most boys, much less Asian ones.</p>
<p>Also, please try to keep in mind which schools would be the best match for each of them.</p>
<p>Tigerdad99:
You have an awesome name. Just sayin’.
As I graduate this year with many Ivy bound Asian Americans, I can tell you that Asian Americans who are different from the pack do the best. (I’m 30% Asian). My Asian friend starred with me on the varsity team for the past 3 years, (3 years of varsity for me). There are plenty of biology bound, 2300, math and science Asian kids who get into Ivies because they are so passionate. Passion is always helpful.
But while smaller in numbers, the poli-sci bound, 2300, english and history Asians have slightly better shot of making the Ivies, mainly because they are so rare.
In a nutshell, tell your kids to do what they want and excel at that, but nudge them in an activity that isn’t “Asian”.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say “stay away” to a student who is genuinely passionate about them. But the parent and student should be aware that if the student looks too much like a 1,000 other “tiger child” applicants whose ECs are math club and piano/violin, that is unlikely to impress the admissions committee as much as more “unusual” ECs. (Which may not be very good for the Asian student who is genuinely passionate about piano, violin, math competitions, etc., rather than doing them to satisfy a “tiger parent”.)</p>
<p>^Agreed.
My parents raised me with an altered version of Tiger mentality. Do whatever the heck you want, but do it with a passion. That’s the best mentality. Tell your kids to do what they want, but push them at it. I would have never gotten anywhere in sports had not my parents pushed me.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. Please don’t take my tigerdad name too seriously. It meant to be playful, not serious. Tigermom isn’t my wife either although I do share some of her asian parenting values to some extent. And I am not apologetic for it.</p>
<p>Personally I got admitted to UPenn’s graduate school of design almost 20 years ago. But being a poor international student, which means I was not qualified for any student loan, I had to give up my expensive ivy dream. I always wonder if an ivy degree would make a difference to my career (even I have a pretty successful one). </p>
<p>Many of you suggested being different makes one stand out. I agree. But why we assume people who play piano are all the same? Can we assume all the great pianists share the same characters, personalities and creativities? Just being different for the sake of different is shallow in my view. But unfortunately this is part of the American culture. Certainly forcing kids to do something they have no passion is equally shallow and counterproductive. I agree, as parents, we should encourage kids to pursue their dreams whatever they might be. The problem is most of them don’t know what their passions are other than playing video games, such as many my son’s friends in 8th grade. So how do you foster your kid’s passion for something? And what if they change passion every year or every a couple of years? Do you encourage that too? </p>
<p>I think it’s difficult to quantify an answer for this and, being a part of this board for 2 years now, I’ve seen some spectacular kids on here. Being in the university setting (though not at an ivy league caliber school, albeit) has made me begin considering (seriously) a form of higher education (graduate school, med school, what have you), and with that comes the same question. “What can I do to get into med school?” Because this draws a similar parallel to your question I feel comfortable answering with some introspection that I’ve gained as an applying student (and as a student having been on the accepted side of thing). There is no “one formula” as mentioned previously. I think what’s really difficult, especially in highschool (I know, for example, I wasn’t mature enough for the independent work that was required when it came time for me to apply to schools or to take my education seriously…this showing principally in the fact that I never self-studied any APs, had practically no extra curriculars, no leadership positions, or anything that great about my record excepting my standardized test scores). The best thing you can do for your kids academically, in my opinion, is instill a sense of autonomy in them required for success on their own - from there they will be able to find what they are genuinely interested in and what they’re good at. For me, this realization came a little later (and on my own, withou help from my parents, but had they catalyzed the process I think my admissions outlook would’ve been better as a senior in high school)…I now am involved in a lab that I took the initiative of finding and I work part time (about 16-20 hours a week) doing research and working on my own project.
TO SUM IT UP: Should I be able to offer any valid advice to pre-highschool parents branching off of my own experiences as a student/child:<br>
A) Foster a sense of autonomy and instill a sense of being able to succeed in what he/she enjoys doing.
B) If your kid scores reasonably well in a Talent Search program, take advantage of that. Send him/her to the respective camp, for example, and encourage him/her to get involved in opportunities outside of school during the summer!
C) Encourage consistent uptake of a sport outside of school (whether it be dancing, tennis, football, what have you). That’s one thing I think my parents did properly - they encouraged me to stick with ballroom dancing, and I was a able to compete in a statewide competiion, placing first in my division.)
Also by doing the above you show it’s possible to succeed and be proficient and a skill - which prepares them not only for the workplace, but also for pre-professional training (something very very pertinent to me now).</p>
<p>We don’t assume that. It’s just that if you don’t want to look like a stereotypical Asian college applicant, do something beyond the stereotypical Asian kid ECs, which are piano, violin, tennis, etc.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I agree and probably so do the universities. But if you can spark a genuine interest in your young sons in something unusual, and they pick it up and run with it, by time they finish high school they will probably be stronger, or at least more memorable, college candidates than someone who is firmly entrenched in a stereotype.</p>
<p>PS: Never think that perfect SATs or grades are a bad thing even if they are part of the Asian stereotype. Higher stats are always better than lower stats no matter what your race.</p>
although I do share some of her asian parenting values to some extent. And I am not apologetic for it.</p>