Asians shouldn’t have to hide their heritage when applying to college. I did—and I’ll always regret it.
Good article. Stereotypes exist for many groups if you want to create them. In case of Asian American applicants, I think adcoms see so many of high stats and similar ECs that after a while their achievements in these fields don’t seem as awesome when they are.
When my Asian American kid applied to top colleges, I told him “you have a better chance to get into one of HYPS than get Regent scholarship from either UCLA/UC Berkeley. I am leaving it up to you to decide if you want to apply to HYPS, but we saved money to pay for tuition although I would encourage you to seriously consider Honors Colleges at state schools outside CA which will offer good scholarships because of your NMF status.” I also told him his 33 ACT and 3.9 GPA makes him a more interesting applicant because of his relatively interesting ECs, so don’t sweat it when applying to Stanford REA because of his hard stats. Once he got 33 in ACT, we told him to stop wasting his time on standardized test and spend time doing more interesting ECs. It turned out to be the right approach for our non STEM Asian American kid.
Even though he chose not to apply to HYP, I feel there was a decent chance he would have gotten into one of HYP if he had applied, but again our kid decided to apply and interview for a good paying summer job rather than waste time applying to HYP after he got into Stanford REA. I am definitely not a fan of applying early to your number one choice, getting in and then applying to more colleges unless there is a financial reason or you no longer want to attend your first choice for some reason.
Great article. Thanks for sharing.
@websensation You nailed it. At a certain point the scores and grades don’t really matter…will a 3.9 uw really be more value to a campus than a 3.8 uw? Most likely not. Will a kid that started an organization to make real change in his/her high school add more value than a kid that just studied all the time? Yup.
My nieces had the same challenge…suburban white girls with excellent grades who played soccer (four years on varsity) and did tons of volunteer work for kids on the autism spectrum (like their older brother). Unfortunately, there are literally tens of thousands of girls that “looked” just like them on paper. Both found their spot (a top school but not Ivy)…the oldest has since graduated and is just killing it on Wall St. The youngest is still at that same school and has started what is now the largest club on campus.
This is all about how do you stand out and show that your very presence will add value.
rather depends upon the arbitrary judgment of what adds value. Not all of us would agree that those who choose to “kill it on Wall St” added much value to their colleges or to the society in general.
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‘Stereotypes exist for many groups if you want to create them.’ ‘rather depends upon the arbitrary judgement of what adds value.’
Both of these. Best to focus on what you can control which is yourself. Do the best you can, perform ECs in the areas that are of interest to you, apply where you wish and not take it personally or blame another group if/when you get a rejection, select your choice from those that do admit you and make the best of your college experience.
@SwimmingDad Agreed. All good comments from other posters. @crimsonmom2019 also. I am a big believer in exposing kids to new experiences when they are young so they can see there are different possibilities. One reason why EC is important is not for the EC resume building itself but because of different perspectives and knowledge gained from those ECs. After each EC/intern/study abroad experience, I noticed different growth in our kid. I truly believe my kid’s essays resonated that much more because he was able to glean experiences/knowledge gained from experiencing his ECs. I also had him participate in athletics for one year (he actually turned out to be pretty good in one sport), but he got so physically drained after training/competing that he often fell asleep without finishing his homework. He dropped out after one year, but after this one year experience to focus more on his non-athletic activities, he gained a deep respect for kids who play sports and study and do both well.
Ugh! That essay is interesting and honest, but unbelievably whiny and self-involved. The author tried to “de-Chinese” himself not because he had to, but because he thought (without any particular evidence) that it would give him an advantage. He feels guilty about it – and he should – but he has no way of knowing whether it got him into Yale (but not Harvard) or almost got him rejected. And the whole project turned on the dubious notion that no one would read his surname “Mak” as Asian. He talks to one – count 'em, one – other Chinese-American kid a lot like himself, but Chinese-positive, who only (only!) got into Penn and Williams, despite winning or nearly winning a bunch of competitions.
He doesn’t address at all what his experience was like at Yale – whether he faced discrimination there when he could no longer hide his facial structure or complexion from the institution he assumed was actively discriminating against him as an applicant. It sounds like he didn’t, but he’s not explicit about it.
I am familiar with all of those moves from the Jewish-American experience. My parents’ generation faced clear quotas and de facto exclusion from various professions. (My grandmother made my father re-take an aptitude test that advised him to study architecture, because at the time people thought there was no chance a Jew could have a career as an architect.) My father was deeply ambivalent about his Jewishness, and certainly tried to “de-Jew” himself, only to find when he got to college it was hopeless. He stuck out like a sore thumb. And then he found it didn’t really matter; he could form relationships based on his personal qualities regardless of all the ethnic and cultural factors. My mother could easily pass as a WASP, but was completely proud of her Jewishness. Both of them thrived at college, notwithstanding the quotas and explicit discrimination. And the discrimination essentially evaporated during their lifetimes. The main effect it had on them was with my father distorting his ambitions out of a fear that would have likely had proved unfounded had he taken a risk.
I have to admit that I would not have read “Aaron Mak” as Asian-American. I would have read him as a descendant of Eastern Europeans who had shortened the name to Anglicize it, at some point.
I agree with much of your post, JHS, except that I do not believe that the discrimination against Jewish-Americans has essentially evaporated, across the US.
This seems to be an issue that has no completely satisfactory solutions, and I really have no idea what the best one is.
In the end, once you begin admitting under-represented groups, whether it is by race, ethnicity, gender, etc., some who are better qualified are not going to get in. Admissions committees are left to decide who should that be?
Currently, the best top college applicants seem to be disproportionately Asians, and Jews. My current understanding is that colleges don’t cap Jewish students, so why cap Asian students?
It seems to me that the long-term solution is to fix the root of the problem by focusing on improving K-12 education outcomes to make underrepresented groups more competitive. Unfortunately, no one seems to be focused on that. That should eventually enable the end of relying on “admissions buckets” to diversify a class.
It is interesting to me that White non-Jewish groups have typically been the most vocal in opposing diversity as a part of the admissions decision, but they are actually an underrepresented group themselves. That is especially true for the White non-Jewish males who seem to have been the most vocal. I think that perhaps they just don’t realize that they are underrepresented?
I don’t have any solutions, only observations. In the short run, all solutions seem to be somewhat unsatisfactory to me.
Interesting article. And interesting parallel in the discussion here to the experience of Jewish Americans too. It is fitting that the current legal fight over the issue which is the background of this article, was brought on and bankrolled by a Jewish businessman Richard Blum. He probably came of age when barriers to Jewish enrollment at elite colleges were being dismantled. Now we can all appreciate that gifted Jewish Americans can reach their full potentials in our society without limit as long as they are the best in their profession----we have a third of Supreme court Jewish, last third years of Fed Chairmen Jewish, and of course more relevant here 20-25% of HYP students identify themselves Jewish. I look forward to the day when we can say the same for our Asian kids.
@Much2learn Agree there seems to be no satisfactory solution. Even if in a utopia, everyone is equally competitive, you still have to make a choice. You still have to decide what buckets you want to put a class together. You will still have to make choices and given students will not have equal stats while all may be equally competitive, someone will be left out. Tough.
@crimsonmom2019 "Even if in a utopia, everyone is equally competitive,…You still have to decide what buckets you want to put a class together. "
My utopian state would be that by doing a better job of educating all students at the K-12 level, admissions offices could end up with a class that looks a lot like America just by admitting the best students without considering race, ethnicity or gender.
The practice by every top school of “bucketing” or “pooling” is essentially segregating kids into different categories based on factors like race and ethnicity. Under the current law this form of racial segregation is still allowed to serve a higher purpose defined as diversity. At some point in a meritocratic society and free market like ours a form of racial segregation no matter how lofty its purpose will become harder to justify.
As an Asian-American with a deep sense of healthy esteem in my cultural and ethnic roots, I detest all forms of denial of one’s own makeup. Yet, I found the author’s attempt to come to terms with his conflicting views and desires to be refreshingly honest. After all, he’s voicing what so many Asian-American college applicants are grappling with themselves today.
As a person who’s experienced through all different expressions of racism and bigotry in this country for the past four decades, I’ve actually embraced my own cultural and ethnic roots ever more strongly as opposed to, as so many do, turning away in order to graft myself into the mainstream. Thus I’ve taught my son, and he had proudly checked off that box indicating his ethnic identity when he applied to colleges last year. Like websensation, I exposed my son to all different activities as stimuli to growth and development and what he decided to continue to pursue while casting aside those he lost interest in became his ECs. It never even occurred to my mind that I needed to stay away from some activities because of the possible association with the Asian stereotype that might hurt his college chances. Funny that those activities that he decided to continue to pursue were those very stereotypical Asian activities: he played violin and piano and did Taekwondo, tennis, etc. We never gave a damn about the associations of his ECs to his college chances, just did what my son naturally liked and drawn to. Perhaps that showed in his essays, who knows. But it’s sad as hell to hear about so many kids trying to be who they are not and indeed, a sellout.
^^^Only for some buckets, @jzducol - and the goal isn’t diversity per se. The basis of these admissions policies is the fact that these universities are looking for the mix of candidates that will be leaders across all areas of society and the world, which is what the universities see as being in their best interest.
The 200 or so recruited athletes per Ivy per year are bucketed on the basis of athletic ability, not race and ethnicity. The kids who get admitted in part because they come from square states are bucketed on the basis of geography, not race and ethnicity (and, conversely, while many more kids will be admitted from, say, New York, New Jersey, California and Massachusetts than from many other states, the numbers will be capped and the academic standards will be higher - and this isn’t based on race or ethnicity either). While some proportion of the class is admitted because they’re the absolute academic creme de la creme, there’s no incentive to admit more or fewer of any race or ethnicity - the schools want the best candidates of this type, no matter who they are - but this bucket is a surprisingly small part of the class. The desire to have a mix of different majors, and bucket applicants accordingly, has nothing to do with race and ethnicity. You’d get the same second look because your parent is an alumnus, making you a candidate for the legacy bucket, no matter your race and ethnicity. If your parents are celebrities, your race and ethnicity are all but irrelevant (Harvard would have admitted Malia Obama whatever the race/ethnicity of her parents). Finally, the only color that matters for development cases is the color green.
If you’re talking about the buckets that drive the filling of ~15 - ~20% of the class at a typical Ivy with URMs, sure - race and ethnicity are part of the point because the universities want leaders in those segments of society. Not for the other buckets and most of the class, though.
When/if we start seeing greater numbers of Asian-Americans in the buckets where they’re underrepresented (recruited athletes, from states like Idaho rather than ones with big cities on the coasts, legacies, children of celebrities and development cases), you’ll see the number of Asian-American admits go up, all things equal. Except that this can be expected to be counteracted by assimilation - after the second generation in this country, many Asian-Americans will start thinking and acting a lot more like everyone else, and the proportion of academic superstars may be expected to decline to a level closer to that of the broader population.
It’s completely not a valid sample, but my kids’ (east) Asian friends who were accepted at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford were, at least at the level of their resumes, absolutely stereotypical: STEM-oriented, individual achievement-oriented, violin-playing, non-boat-rockers. What they were also was, in some cases, not just great at taking tests, but universally regarded as brilliant and insightful, and in other cases supremely good people. None had any hooks or legacy status, or played any sports (beyond the level of bare competence). And this was a decade ago, when Asians were being admitted at those schools in meaningfully smaller numbers.
Now, maybe my high-testing, extremely studious, Indian-classical-dancing daughter-in-law should have gotten into some more selective colleges, too. But I’m glad she didn’t, because if she had she probably wouldn’t be my daughter-in-law. In any event, she had a great college experience, and is pursuing both the career and the life she wants with dedication and gusto. I don’t think she ever spent any time figuring out how to present herself as something other than who she was. Which of course includes all sorts of individual elements that have nothing to do with ethnic stereotypes.
In the case of Asian Americans, that is likely because a very large percentage of Asian Americans are or are descended from skilled worker or PhD student immigrants*. But race/ethnicity is more visible than other characteristics, so the educational attainment tends to be viewed in terms of race/ethnicity, rather than other characteristics.
*Note that recent Indian and Chinese immigrants are heavily skewed toward high educational attainment, but that is not true of some smaller groups like Filipino or Vietnamese. Also, Hawaii’s Asian American population is heavily descended from immigrants of lower educational attainment, so that Hawaii is not known for educational elitism despite a very high Asian American population.
If that is true, then it may be due to greater visibility.
For their own marketability, colleges may have target ranges of each major race/ethnicity, based on the assumed comfort level of students of each. For example, they may want “enough” students of each minority race/ethnicity so that prospective students of such minority race/ethnicity do not feel like they are the only one. They may also prefer that white students be the majority, or at least the plurality, of students, since at least some white prospective students may be uncomfortable being in a visible minority group. But whether and how they actually act on such targets in their admissions processes is another story.
However, educational attainment transmits strongly across generations. Whether you see it as nature or nurture is not really relevant, since both are to one’s advantage if one has highly educated parents. Educational attainment of parents is probably the strongest correlating factor to K-12 school performance, and commonly overrides the usual other correlations (SES, race/ethnicity) when they are in conflict.
I think the troubling part here is the perception that Asian-American kids are cookie-cutter and will just do whatever ECs their parents told them will get them into HYPSM. And that’s very unfair to these kids. But I’m sure there are cultural issues and parental pressure for a lot of them. We are immigrants from the former Soviet Union and there was a lot of pressure from my MIL against DS participating in sports and debate as she grew up thinking the only worthwhile activities are in STEM. We tried to let him do whatever he likes (I did insist on some sports for health reasons) but I’m sure he got a lot if not all of the same cultural attitudes by osmosis.
Maybe schools should try talking to parents more. Our large public school is very competitive and the principal says at every single meeting that kids shouldn’t try to take all the AP classes in the world (this falls on deaf ears.) On the other side, what they do is obviously working. Many Asian-Americans are working extremely hard in school and college and getting to the best schools if not always Harvard. Right, maybe playing a banjo instead of a piano will give you an edge, but not playing anything probably won’t. So the race will continue.