I rented “Try Harder!” a couple of months back. It is definitely worth watching and a gripping drama for those parents and children in this particular stage of life.
2 Likes
For reference, here is the previous thread about the Try Harder! movie (with links to the trailer and a panel discussion) that may be helpful background for the Salon page linked here.
I just checked on PBS (and I have passport, so have access to anything allowed by that). All I saw listed was the one minute trailer. Can the actual documentary be viewed now on PBS, and if so, how?
It may show up under Independent Lens.
All times EDT on CET HD
5/2 @ 10 pm
5/4 @ 3 am
5/8 @ 3 am
We’ve lived it, we don’t need to see a documentary about it. Our story had the disappointing ending.
Here’s a clip that was done on local CBS affiliate with the “happy ending”…
Let’s not debate about this individual - let’s give benefit of the doubt that she worked very hard and deserved to get in. The point is to think about what this clips says about the anxiety surrounding applying to Harvard. But even more to think about is how here is news media putting a kid up on a pedestal for getting accepted. This kind of stuff – disturbingly similar to the sports celebrity house of cards that’s used to dupe kids into pursuing sports as a road to fortune and fame – and it’s effect on kids as well as parents, is one of the reasons why the mythos of the Ivy admission continues to drive market failures and gives these schools far more power and influence over decision making than they have any legitimate claim to.
In the case of this young woman, who ostensibly would seem to be qualified for an application fee waiver, the idea that it was a big risk / high cost for her sense of self-worth to apply is something that should give pause about how much stock kids are putting in the decisions of unaccountable AC’s to designate whether they are “worthy” or “not worthy”.
5 Likes
Looks like it is here with a “watch now” button:
1 Like
I watched it tonight on PBS. I thought it did a good job overall. Then I watched about 40 minutes of the panel discussion, which I thought was badly done. One problem was that the 2 students who participated in the panel were the least typical of those they profiled–the biracial black/white girl and the Asian boy whose mom and dad had both gone to Lowell and didn’t want him to overload on APs. I would have enjoyed seeing the others who aligned more closely with the Lowell stereotype.
Wow. Just finished watching this. I thought it was very well done, very powerful. Seemed in lockstep with what we see on here. All these incredible kids, and most of them aren’t getting in. I wanted to scream, when the Stanford college rep asked them to raise their hands if they wanted to go to a school where all the students looked the same, and no one raised their hands. No one dared to speak up, to say, “YES, if that’s who has the highest achievement, if that’s whose record merits admission, YES!” Pretty shocking that the rep used the exact same argument that the antisemite Lowell at Harvard used nearly a century ago in order to justify his antisemitic quota to limit Jews at Harvard in the 1920’s. He claimed that of course the few accepted Jews wouldn’t want to be at a school with a high proportion of Jews, so it was only right that Harvard should strictly limit the number of Jews admitted; it was for the good of the Jewish students themselves, not for the good of the WASP boys whose hereditary spots they were taking. Of course, this wasn’t the actual outcome when the UCs ended racially preferential admissions, even before they also went test-blind, and it wouldn’t be the outcome at Stanford, either, if they stopped factoring race into admissions. Those poor kids. Of course none of them dared to risk their chances by standing up and accusing the Stanford rep of defending a racist admission policy.
Gee, funny how those Asian kids seemed so human, so individual. Could it be that they’re just really smart and wonderful individuals who work incredibly hard, because they are highly motivated, and they know they need to be better, in order to get in? Nah, not possible.
16 Likes
Maybe they were the two out of the five main students in the movie who were most willing and available (they were all college seniors except for one who was a college junior at the time of the panel discussion)?
But then only Alvan fully fit the stereotype you were referring to. Rachael and Ian were on the panel discussion.
| Student | Tiger parent(s) | Race | College |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alvan | Yes | Asian | UCB |
| Shea | No | White | Stanford |
| Rachael | Yes | Black/White | Brown |
| Ian | No | Asian | Emory (Oxford) |
| Sophia | ? | Asian | UCLA |
IMO, Sophia also fit the stereotype.
The film pretty eloquently shows that the the racist stereotype of Asian students as being inanimate, unidimensional machines is just that - a racist stereotype.
12 Likes
My wife graduated valedictorian and got into Yale years back. She was also severely anorexic at 68 lbs during her commencement speech. Fortunately, her parents had the fortitude to get her help and have her go to college closer to home. I’m glad that happened, because I wasn’t smart enough to get into Yale. The kinds of requirements kids put on themselves to get into these schools would challenge a fully grown emotionally mature adult. For a teenager, it’s a ticking time bomb.
Kids needs to understand that these elite schools are not a panacea. In fact, their majors are generally quite limited, and they often end up being popular feeder schools for careers they don’t want, like investment banking, for instance…ugh! State universities generally have a much wider selection of practical employable majors.
9 Likes
There did not seem to be much on her parents, so it is not like we definitely know that they were tiger parents (like with Alvan and Rachael).
1 Like
All we knew about her was that she worked in an ice cream shop, and was of East Asian heritage! The scooping ice cream doesn’t fit, but the rest of the in-depth portrayal of her most definitely does, because she is living while Asian!
1 Like
Two comments. I thought the documentary was gut wrenching.
- Stanford Admissions counselor – I agree. Someone should have spoken up. Maybe that’s why they do not deserve to go to Stanford?
- The scene where the guidance counselors tell them to curb their expectations because they are Asian. I would have asked “Why are all Asians considered identical?”
3 Likes
In Asian culture, “try harder!” signifies when trying is just not good enough, when the test scores or grades fall short of acceptable expectations, when there is no other recourse after reaching the end of all known resources and efforts. It’s also a desperate expression of helplessness, not knowing where the answer lies. The title truly encapsulates the subject matter of the documentary.
As a first-gen immigrant Asian parent having gone through high school in California a few decades ago, my first reaction while watching the documentary was this profound sense of pity for the kids. Times have changed, and not too kindly toward today’s kids. It’s crazy and maddening and horrifying what today’s kids are going through today. Yet, my kids went through it all themselves in recent years, and the thought of I as a parent no longer have to go through this process with them has definitely improved the quality of my sleep. Still, it was gut wrenching watching the documentary that plays more like “Apocalypse Now” with the theme song “The End” running through my ears.
All for what? As one of the students in the documentary ruefully stated after all the college admission dust had settled, paraphrasing, “Why did I have to work so hard for four years to end up at U.C. Santa Cruz when I could have done the same without all the hard work?” A legitimate question to ponder on.
This documentary succeeds in dispelling some of the Asian stereotypes and humanizing them through portrayal of their individual characteristics. Asian students are not monolithic minority role model machines. Alvan, the obedient son of the Tiger Mom yet with a great sense of humor and far wiser than his mom could ever become. Even by the Tiger Mom standard, Alvan’s mom is something else. As a former college interviewer, it was a shocking and cringing moment upon learning about Alvan’s mom slipping two movie tickets and a red envelope to the Brown University interviewer. Alvan had to lecture his mom that such a gesture can be construed as a “bribe.” She’s a Tiger Mom and Helicopter Parent rolled into one. Though Alvan doesn’t want to eat chicken at a restaurant, she commands him to eat it because it’s the Year of the Rooster, following that with, “you eat what I tell you to eat.” As soon as I came to the part where Alvan revealed that he got off the U.C. Berkeley waitlist, I knew he’d have to choose that over U.C.S.D. because of his mom and in spite of Mr. Shapiro’s wise counseling to both about which school to choose. Alvan wanted to move farther away so he could be freed from his overbearing mom. Going to Berkeley meant her frequent visits throughout his college years, a nightmare. Sure enough, Alvan ends up choosing his mom’s Berkeley over his U.C.S.D. At the time of move in at Berkeley, when Alvan’s mom practically takes over the registration process for him, his pained facial expression said it all. She even managed to choose which part of the dorm bunker bed that Alvan should sleep in, “the bottom bed, so he doesn’t fall out.” Who wouldn’t pull for Alvan? He’s funny, likes to dance, possesses a great personality, likeable, and I’m sure, resilient from all the years having to put up with mom if nothing else.
By contrast, Ian’s parents, a breath of fresh air, an outlier to the Tiger Mom stereotype. I was very happy when he got the full scholarship to Emory (Oxford) and to see him so overjoyed by the news.
I was pulling for Rachel. Her mom’s the first African-American Tiger Mom that I came to know, yet not so controlling to over-ride Rachel’s college choice, Brown. A great choice, as it turned out, as Rachel later changed her major from creative writing or journalism to a pre-med related. As a single parent, Rachel’s mom did a tremendous job in raising a very mature and intelligent daughter.
The kid that I was most impressed with was Shea, and it was quite appropriate to end the documentary on a high note with his acceptance to Stanford. His academic performance was below his Asian peers, but the hardship that he’s had to endure in the absence of his divorced mom and living with his drug addict dad who was mostly absent in responsibilities and support, was heart-wrenching.
Even more heart-wrenching is the way one student pretty much summarized the whole high school experience, namely, that today’s high school students’ self-worth is measured by what college accepted them. So much of their dream is placed on which college accepts them that they can’t define who they are otherwise. In another documentary that I recently watched by chance, “Ivy Dream,” a Tiger parent states at one point: “Other than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, everything else is low class.” He drilled this idiocy into his daughter’s brain since she was born, yet she ended up, after years of diligent Tiger drilling, going to a “low class” university. What could have been going through his daughter’s state of being is hard to imagine. I read that she got into trouble with authorities with a case of substance abuse in college.
Judging by the fact that Mr. Shapiro appeared in a YouTube video a few years later about the documentary, I’d very much like to believe that he’s had a successful liver transplant operation and that he has many years ahead of him.
15 Likes
Huh? Because the kids, who want to get into schools, didn’t stand up and aggressively confront the rep for her blatantly racist statement? THAT shows that they don’t DESERVE to go?
The question is not, “Why are all Asians considered identical?” The question is, “Why do Asians have to outperform by a mile all other ethnic groups in order to get in?”
10 Likes
I just saw this.
My two kids went through the elite college application process with great outcomes, so no sour grapes here, but this show reminded me of just how disgusting the holistic admissions process can be.
I fully recognize that there are problems with a pure merit system, particularly high pressure testing as done in some countries. But admissions based upon merit does have the advantage that the process for admission is very well understood. And furthermore because the process is well understood, students and parents can tell what colleges are really in range, so families don’t feel they have to apply to 24 colleges.
Holistic admissions is a game with intentionally vague rules so the admissions office can create the class as it sees fit. It favors two categories of applicants over others with similar talent
- Those that fit the college’s admission preference groups, which often include things that an applicant has no control over, such as legacy or race.
- Families that have the knowledge to know how to how to make their children attractive to colleges. This is not at all Varsity Blues type of fraud, but a legitimate understanding of what activities colleges look favorably upon. This could be certain types of sports, such as lacrosse or fencing, or certain academic competitions. This requires either money, or spending a lot of time on CC.
Most of these families portrayed here were going in blind. I was almost yelling at Sophia “Why don’t you have any matches and safetys?” We in the CC world could recognize their admissions mistakes and offer them advice.
But the inherent unfairness of the system is that it requires knowledge that is not reasonable for middle class or poorer families to expect. And while I was thrilled to see Shea admitted at the end,that doesn’t make up for the overall unfairness of the system.
11 Likes
I just saw this also and Sophia was accepted to Berkeley and UCLA.
Everyone of the students featured was accepted to a great college.
The class President was accepted to Harvard and Stanford. Even if the top colleges just accepted students based on GPA and test scores alone, most students will still be rejected.