What are good ECs for Asian kids?

Parents Forum
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<p>I am not saying Asian parents should force anything on their kids. I’m saying that highly selective colleges like to see applicants who, in addition to being academically talented, have given back to their communities on a meaningful level. It’s not exclusively about academic work. And I’m not talking about serving in soup kitchens (although that’s a fine thing to do). I’m talking about leadership roles, which most certainly do not have to be cynically manufactured window dressing. </p>

<p>After all, most math and science majors will wind up doing something in service to society. Colleges want some indicia that prospective math and science major whiz kids have some aptitude for working together with others to address the planet’s fundamental problems. </p>

<p>That’s not to say that every kid needs leadership to get into Harvard! But it helps, and if you want to play the game (which I believe from your other thread you do) it’s a good idea to understand how the game works.</p>

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<p>Colleges are not interested about the EC but rather the lessons learnt from them and the experiences they give. It’s important to find an EC that defines a student and helps the student experience life</p>

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<p>I worried that my oldest, who is naturally a pretty solitary sort, (“I’m not anti-social, I’m just not user friendly” could be his t-shirt), would not look like enough of a plays well with others sort for Harvard, but in fact he didn’t just have the individual events at Science Olympiad, and stuff like AIME in his portfolio, he’d also worked as part of a team in a computer software firm, he’d volunteered at the local senior center, and he’d given time to a project for a chemistry professor that he had no particular interest in, but did it as a favor. Some of these activities we had to nudge him into, because that’s our job as parents, others he went after himself.</p>

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<p>^And that’s a perfect example of the kind of stuff selective schools are looking for. It’s meaningful, not manufactured.</p>

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<p>This thread is ridiculous… Just because an Asian student might face more competition in his application doesn’t mean different rules apply. Good ECs for Asian kids? Are you kidding me? </p>

<p>Sorry, but I’m rather glad you’re not my parent.</p>

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<p>Not foreclosing anything here Bay, just recognizing that each kid is different, and want different things. Force feeding volunteering is wrong in my view. However, if my kid decided to stop piano/math/squash and go for being a community organizer, I would be in full support, as long as that’s the focus. My only position is to not do anything half-arsed, not do anything because of peer pressure, and not do anything because of resume padding.</p>

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<p>IndianParent is just trying to teach us all some big lesson about how unfair elite admissions are to Asians.</p>

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<p>Do Asian kids face more competition in their applications? Really!? Why is that?</p>

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<p>Oh no…here we go again…:(</p>

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<p>Well, I will say what others won’t:</p>

<p>We – I’m speaking for the American Establishment, as of course I have perfect authorization to do – are hypocritical about multiculturalism. We value your differences, yes we do, but we want you to be a little more like us. So, instead of rammer-jammering your kids to be just like you, if you want us to like them and let them date our daughters, etc., why not tell them to work harder at resembling us?</p>

<p>You keep whine-whine-whining about how we are not accepting enough of you at our university, but in the process you keep telling us how stupid and illegitimate all our selection criteria and institutional priorities are. You keep saying you are so intelligent, but how smart is that? If you don’t like our institution, go start your own, and run it how you like. If you like our institution – and from what we can tell you like it way beyond anything reasonable – then why do you mold your kids into people who don’t meet the full criteria for admission? We would be perfectly happy if you didn’t mold them at all – that is, if you let our institutions mold them – but if you are going to get involved (we have this problem with the Jewish parents, too), why don’t you do a good job of it rather than a half-assed one?</p>

<p>So, yeah, we want to see more teamwork, and more team sports. We want to see more rebellion – in our world, a kid who hasn’t rebelled yet is a ticking time bomb. We want to see more diversity of interests. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that left to their own devices everyone wants to be a neuroscientist or neurologist, a biomedical engineer (maybe with an MD), a computational biologist, or an options trader. The neurologists we value – at least some of them – spent a good part of their teen years wanting to make films. And, since ultimately we are looking out for our institution, we want kids who seem like the kind of people who will have institutional loyalties. Finally, we like kids with a social conscience. We don’t have hereditary titles or Burke’s Peerage here; the only way you can tell who is the nobility is by how they act.</p>

<p>One of your other whines is “quota-quota-quota”. We have no quota for Asians – you can’t imagine how insulting that accusation is. We do, however, have a quota for applicants with neuro-anything in their applications, no matter what color they are. It turns out that has a disparate impact on Asians (and so do some of my other quotas). Tough nougies. We’re not admitting a class that decimates itself fighting to get plum spots in the neurolab.</p>

<p>About piano, and violin, and tennis: We love them! Discipline, beauty, intelligence, life pursuits. Great stuff. We play all of them ourselves. We see them, and we check the box . . . the same box we check on 15,000 other applications. Do you know how many kids we admit because of their piano, violin, or tennis skills? Maybe 20 . . . in a good year. If you want to be in that category, you had better have an agent and a career. Otherwise, if you want to be admitted you should have something else that distinguishes you from everyone else we could admit, because piano, violin, and tennis won’t do much. Now, riding a unicycle in a touring circus? That’s intriguing. We want to meet that kid!</p>

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<p>Really IP, are you going to go there? Are we pretending we didn’t just argue the same things for 1000 posts on another thread…really???</p>

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<p>I actually think force feeding volunteering is not a bad idea. I went to a high school that had no classes at all on Wednesdays. Instead we went out and did various things in the community. One of the big lessons I learned from those experiences is that you nearly always get more out of volunteering than you give. So I have no problem nudging my kids into doing things they might not have thought of doing on their own. Whether they made those volunteer experiences worthwhile though was generally up to them.</p>

<p>JHS so true. And you know what when the Jews got tired of not being let into the top schools in big enough numbers they founded Brandeis. Great school. And then they persuaded the HYPs of the world to accept them in greater numbers as well.</p>

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<p>Perhaps it is my arrogance, but since I never had to play any games but still succeeded academically and career-wise, I have no interest in teaching my kid to play games either. I am also lucky, because conservatories don’t care about such things, and that’s where my kid wants to go.</p>

<p>But it was a general question on my part. I think it is answered well. It is not that piano/math/violin/tennis are the wrong ECs. It is that there is a cultural expectation that it should be used to help the community instead of striving for personal brilliance. In other words, Roger Federer is nothing in the eyes of HYPSM if he doesn’t teach 7 year olds how to play tennis. Which is fine, but is also at odds with the Asian culture.</p>

<p>So what we are talking about here Asians should let go of their culture and adopt the culture of the USA. Now I understand why the so-called Asian EC’s are looked down upon.</p>

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<p>Now we all feel much better. Breath.

See, I am more like, if they want to date my daughters, I would want them to be more like us - pay for the wedding, support me in the future and let me live them someday.</p>

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<p>Message #70 said it all. It is the hypocrisy about multi-culturalism. Like Henry Ford before us, we like cars of all colors as long as they are black.</p>

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<p>My daughter would equally happily spend 16 hours a day doing art. At the end doing an architecture portfolio was fairly easy. In her age I would (and did) spend significant amounts of time pursuing my passion (model airplanes). I’m talking coming one sliver of plywood away from representing my country in international competition good… </p>

<p>Apparently, spending hours practicing some guy’s music is a great EC, but spending hours baking a fiberglass mold in the kitchen (bad idea) is not a great EC. Ironically enough, model airplanes were far more of a preparation for my structures, mechanics of materials, and other civil engineering classes (not to mention architecture classes where balsa wood is king :-)) yet no Admission Person worth their expensive Herman Miller furniture would consider that anything other than a ‘hobby’ but kicking a ball for a few hours a week or giving directions in a hospital is a great EC.</p>

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Actually, if you play tennis at Federer level you probably don’t need to teach 7 year olds, but if you’re just a schlub like most of us, then yeah, teaching 7 year olds (or seniors) might be helpful.</p>

<p>turbo, I think you are completely mistaken. My younger son (Mr. Origami) managed to sell his hobby pretty effectively. I really don’t think there is a hierarchy in activities, it’s really what you have to say about it that counts. (Though I think this being the US there is a certain amount of brownie points achievable by doing something more unusual.)</p>

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<p>My school has an Asian club XD they basically get together and order Chinese food lol. So you can do that of you want</p>

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<p>I think force feeding anything is a bad idea. Kids should follow their inner passion. Clearly many here disagree. (And won’t let their daughters date people who follow their inner passion.)</p>

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<p>I don’t understand that. Why is Federer exempted from giving back to society? And why would you want the lesser players - who have far less to give back in the first place - to give back?</p>