<p>I yearn to go an Ivy League, to make my guardian, relatives proud of me. Frankly, my intentions are for the prestige and being prosperous in the near future. Being asian merely deteriorates my possiblities of acceptance, thus stress piles on me like 100 pound weights strapped across my skinny legs. I can almost cry, if I compare myself to the most competitive peers, merely comprehending the cruelty of college admissions. Out of sheer desperateness, I try to form ''clubs'' which I'm not even compassionate about, at best. My grades are poor, according to top-tier colleges, and once a college counselor told me I had no absolute chance at any IVY league standard college, that was when I was a freshman. Who knew ''brag sheets'' considerably affected in the admissions process? Excuse me while I cry myself to sleep. </p>
<p>James, you can still go to an Ivy League graduate school. It is not too late. However, I am not sure whether or not you would want to go to an academically competitive Ivy League school. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it seems as if you will be more happy at a less competitive undergraduate institution. College will only be harder.</p>
<p>People you love and respect can be proud of you if you attend ANY of the “top” 90 colleges/universities (if you go by US News ranking for prestige) and do WELL so you end up getting a decent job. After working a few years no one will care where you went to school.</p>
<p>Peer pressure is hard for teenagers, but if you always try to do things based on the expectations of others, you will never be happy and are more likely to have stress which causes heart attacks and cancer.</p>
<p>What I’m even more sorry to hear is that people around you are reinforcing such materialsitic measures of what make people successful. </p>
<p>Please reconsider what it is that you want to do with your life. Is your goal to merely please others? Or is your goal to live your life to the best of your abilities and acheive self fulfillment. If it is to please others, you never will be happy. </p>
<p>I hope you can realize what truly is important in life and that those around you do too.</p>
<p>There’s not much that can be done about Asian relatives who only know about Ivy league schools. You can tell them other schools are equally good, but I think they will not listen (I have personal experience with that). Whoever says that I shouldn’t stereotype Asian relatives.. you don’t know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Anyway, if you don’t get into an Ivy, you may be disappointing your relatives temporarily, but that’s not important. What’s important that you are happy with where you go. Maybe it will be a year before your relatives begin to realize that you are doing well. Maybe they will not realize until you go on to start at a well-paying, competitive job - at least the $$ will convince them that you made the right choice. But don’t live for other people; live for yourself. I know peer pressure is hard to ignore, but you have to try to tune out the Ivy-loving relatives. </p>
<p>Also, remember that the Ivies are not all equally difficult to get into. Cornell is a lot easier to get into than Harvard. Your grades may be too low for the upper Ivies, but are there any other Ivies (Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth..) that you are interested in? They might be more forgiving of lower grades.</p>
<p>This makes me so sad to hear. Parents put so much undue pressure on their kids. I’m a parent now and it makes me sick to hear how kids are suffering. My parents put lots of pressure on me and I rebelled. I want different for my kids and the most important thing is that they have choices and are happy. Choices come from an education (regardless of where you go to college).</p>
<p>I should really be working on my RD apps instead of typing this.</p>
<p>OP, I can totally relate. I, too, aspire to attend an Ivy-caliber school. I, too, am Asian, and I have relatives and family friends who very clearly expect me to go to HYPS. When I got my first SAT’s back, my mom told me the score was “just passable”. The next day, her friend phoned, and their daughter got 80 points above me. My passable score suddenly became “absolutely terrible”. When I told my mom that I was applying ED to a non-HPY ivy, she said, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you apply to a better school like Stanford? XX’s daughter is applying to Yale!”</p>
<p>I know that you’re under a TON of pressure and that the thought of disappointing everyone around you is terrifying. My grades aren’t stellar, my EC’s are mediocre according to HYPS standards, and I used to stay up all night, dreading the humiliating day that I would have to tell everyone how I wasn’t good enough for HYPS. </p>
<p>And then, I realized that I was being stupid. Instead of worrying and moping, I should be concentrating on doing my best in my classes and EC’s. There are always going to be people smarter and more able than you, but that doesn’t mean you won’t succeed. And if you don’t make it into an Ivy, it doesn’t mean you won’t succeed later in life. Turn that pressure into motivation, but don’t make pleasing others a priority. You’re going to college for yourself, not your relatives. And above all, don’t give up if you fail. </p>
<p>Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that, I went through something similar, and if I came out of it stronger, and hopefully wiser, so can you.</p>
<p>my friends parents have forced my very smart friend to take 5 hour sat prep classes every saturday morning since freshmen year. its really sad, they expect so much of her, yet they dont let her do any ec’s because they dont think they are important. while my friend is brilliant, the lack of ec’s will hurt her and she says really resents her parents for not allowing her to have fun.</p>
<p>Dead_Crocodile, I am sorry to displease you, I actually do want to be the smartest person out there, XX is me. I have an aspiration, and I can’t give up. Even though I cry, don’t judge my sensitivity. sigh. My parents are not ‘‘forcing’’ me to go to any HYPS, just for the clarification. Its is I who yearns to go.</p>
<p>Sigh… I don’t want to go to ivy league, but some of my friend’s parents want their kids to go (not surprisingly, they are asian). One friend’s mom grounded her daughter for getting too low SATs (although her score was 300+ points above the nationwide average). Another friend’s parents refuses to let her go out hardly ever as they expect her to go to MIT or UCB, just because she has to “study.” This makes me sick just thinking about it.</p>
<p>SDMS, just exactly why do you feel that the ivy league schools are the only schools for you? Perhaps there are loads of other colleges that have just as good programs compared to ivy league in what you want to study. Just keep this in perspective, and if you don’t get into any ivy league schools, please don’t think your life is over/you are screwed. Make sure you apply to schools that are not practically impossible to get into</p>
<p>Don’t try to sound scholarly (you failed pretty bad in both posts) and try to cheer up. You need to get real – HYPS aren’t the only schools that’ll make you successful. Just try to get into a decent college with what you have, and work your butt off to get into an awesome graduate school.</p>
<p>I am an Asian parent with D1 as a high school senior. D1 submitted 5 applications with 4 more to finish. My husband and I would like her to go to Harvard. Harvard is very high on her list, as well as MIT and Caltech. Her application list includes HYPSMC, plus Duke, Olin and a state university (not the best state univ., but the one in the same city we live and provides large amount scholarship to national merit finalists). She has been accepted by the honors college of this state university and was invited to join its 7-year BS/MD program as well as invited by the engineering college. Boston is her dream place. However, she would love to be financially independent as soon as she tends 18. If she decides to attend the honors college and stays at home, by the time she graduates, she would save enough money from merit scholarship for a down payment of a house. Be able to put your financial condition under control in an early age is a huge success by my definition.</p>
<p>Like most of the Asian parents, we are willing to pay whatever the ticket price of a good school. Talking about pressure, I dont think we put that much pressure on our daughters. They do put pressure on themselves; at least they show the desire of wanting to be the best, even they do not study that hard. I do take my daughters to the mall to play DDR machine almost every weekend. They play lot of computer games. It is natural that kids tend to put pressure on themselves when they realize that they are smart. But that does not necessarily mean that they do not play. They play just like any kids. My D1 never studied SATI (she did SATI in 2006 while she was in her early junior year), only did minimal review on SATII literature and biology (one hour review each day the week before the test) but did not study MathIIc. I made fruitless effort to persuade her to prepare before her PSAT, but she told me theres no need at her level. I backed off.</p>
<p>At certain level (>2100), 100-200 points difference is really no significant difference. In August, we had a party among Asian parents and their collage-bound kids. Most of kids are IB graduates, many of them accepted into ivies, MIT, Duke, but only one accepted into Harvard. The GPA of the Harvard-bound was ranked 10th among 110 IB graduates (our county had about 220 IB graduates distributed in two IB programs; getting into IB is based on academic merit). Our county actually does the ranking in the entire county. A 10th ranked in IB would be around 50th out of 11,000 high school seniors (in the top 1 %). Many parents expressed their surprises and injustice that the top 3 ranked kids (all Asians, all applied EA) from that IB program did not get into Harvard and the 10th ranked did. However, this 10th ranked Asian kid won whatever possibly could be won in piano competitions in our state for years and won the young artist competition. We sometimes are so obsessed with minor difference in SATs and GPAs which has virtually no difference in the big picture, and not realize that that level of piano talent make the difference in the exponential magnitude.</p>
<p>My D1 is waiting for two EAs (MIT, Caltech, great but non-ivy schools). D1 will make her own decision at the end when all her application results are out. She would be happy to attend any schools she applied. There will always be smarter kids there. She knew that she will not be at Brian Laurences level in Math.</p>