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Comment by yuncun | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in a Chinese household, and I swear, Chinese people are way too obsessed with university branding. It's not even about quality of education, it's a cultural status phenomenon. If you take 10 mothers, the dick size of each one is directly proportional to the US News (yes, specifically US News) ranking of the university of her child. And if Timmy, some random kid in school, had a 2380 SAT, then as a fellow Chinese kid, you'd hear about it somehow.

Thankfully my parents weren't this crazy, but I've seen Chinese families spend thousands on SAT preps, or parents discouraging their kids from playing sports to chase a 4.4 GPA. I hear it's even worse in areas like Cupertino.

I mean, I respect the pusuit of education, but this obsession with college is a poisonous byproduct. Those kids aren't even better off after college anyways. It's all pride. Look at Jack Ma. 22.5 Billion dollars, and Harvard is still like Gatsby's Daisy to him.

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Asian-Americans (including Chinese-Americans) have to have better grades and test scores to have the same chance as your average white American to get into an elite university, so I can see why Asian-American parents would think it's necessary for their children to focus so much on improving their test scores.

I think the natural followup question is- why do Asian American parents think their children need to get into elite universities?

Because they were born in China and they learned the rules of the system where they grew up.

"Asian-Americans (including Chinese-Americans) have to have better grades and test scores to have the same chance as your average white American "

It's because Asian-Americans statistically score much higher than white Americans so the competition is fierce.

If you check the "Asian" box when you take the SATs, you actually get points deducted from your overall score.

I'm not sure what started it, but the vicious cycle of over-achieving continues to make it so they need to get extremely high scores to be accepted to many ivy-league universities.

On top of this, most universities in the US have student quotas based on ethnicity, instead of basing admission on merit.

As for perfect SAT test scores equating to a right to get into Harvard... It is pretty clear that SAT scores are not always indicative of merit. When I was a Harvard senior I tutored another Harvard senior in high school algebra. She mentioned she got a perfect SAT score because her elite high school had a really good test prep program. There are many stories of people paying others to take the test, or people taking the test and sharing the questions with others, or people spending a lot of money or time to get a good score. In a way, that high score doesn't show that some students are more worthy to get in as much as it shows that affirmative action students need more affirmative action if the cycle of poverty is to be broken.

Tbh I don't take this for fact. My alternate theory is that schools aren't rejecting Asians for being Asian, but rather they are rejecting profiles that are common to ASians. How many apps do you think Cal receives every year with 4.3 GPA/2200 SAT, 4 yrs key club, no sports, and an essay about being nervous in a piano recital? If you get ten of those, and maybe one application from a kid in Inglewood with an 1850 SAT and a childhood fraught with gang violence, then I can't blame Cal for taking three from Category A and one from Category B, leaving seven families angry that their higher SAT was rejected.

The disconnect for some Asian parents is that they're stuck with the Chinese idea that highest marks always equals best university. As a result they push push push their child to test higher on the SAT, GPA, farm community service hours, play more piano... But they don't realize American schools aren't solely score based, and at the end of the day, there comes a point where the University just isn't impressed by the same profile over and over again.

As a supporting anecode, I'm Chinese, and I was admitted to a competitive department at UCLA with a 3.7 unweighted GPA in 2009, which was far below the average for whites, or asians. So I don't think there's a conspiracy against Asians.

I certainly do think what you have described it's a well accepted stereotype, and it may well be true in your anecdotal experience, but I don't think there's been any real evidence that Asian applicants, as a whole, are nothing but test taking, piano/violin playing robots or are as a whole less well-rounded (by whatever measure) than white applicants.

As for your own experience, prop 209 passed in California banned the state, including state universities, from considering race, so you were not judged by any heightened Asian standard like some other schools.

Yeah, I dont want to accuse asian kids of being robots - that would be unfair, for example, to some non East Asian kids who dont have privileged upbringings. I just want to provide a counterpoint. And I was not aware that the AA ban was a California only prop, but that makes sense.

The real question is, what is the acceptance rate of non-asian with similar profile as you just described. I'd be interested in this piece of data.

Valid point, but there's something to be said for the Asian American community's obsession with education. Is it any surprise that they are the most successful minority group in America?

Not even close to the success of Indian Americans

Who don't have as many PhDs per capita as Nigerian Americans (tops in the US!).

Self-selection bias. The Asian American community is immensely diverse and consists of many different immigrant (and native!) waves. Wealthy, well-educated Taiwanese semiconductor engineers from the '70s and '80s are not the same as LA Korean grocers are not the same as Vietnamese boat people are not the same as Hmong refugees are not the same as recent mainland Chinese nouveau riche are not the same as Nisei and Sansei who have been in the U.S. for decades are not the same as Pacific Islanders or South Asians or Middle Easterners.

Yes, thanks for pointing out that important distinction.

Anecdote: The only Hmong people I ever met were at an Ivy League school.

Well, German Americans are not the same as Irish Americans are not the same as Italians who've just gotten their citizenship are not the same as... but they all get lumped under the category "white people", so it is what it is. Any way you slice up "Asian American" they still far exceed their minority peers (and even whites), so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

Not all of those groups were considered "white" at the same time. A century ago, a hypothetically accurate census would have distinguished between more assimilated, older arrivals (WASPs, Scots-Irish, Germans, etc.) with Catholic immigrants.

Point is, different immigrant groups have different origins. Some have a leg up over other ones in terms of socioeconomic and education backgrounds, leading to different results. Asian-American isn't a monolithic bloc, regardless of what activists might say.

It's not just Chinese-Americans. I live in Fairfax, VA and the entire county is bonkers over GPAs. It's to the point that >20% of my son's high school class had "better than perfect" GPAs (possible because honors/AP come with bonus points).

Many of those same kids spent their afternoons being shuttled from enrichment program to enrichment program. Very little unscheduled time where they could just be kids.

I question the sanity of it all. I didn't have anywhere the level of structured activity as a teen and still managed to gain entry to a top-20 university. Presumably because I was successful in things I enjoyed, not things my parents thought were good application boosters.

> I question the sanity of it all. I didn't have anywhere the level of structured activity as a teen and still managed to gain entry to a top-20 university. Presumably because I was successful in things I enjoyed, not things my parents thought were good application boosters.

It's much more difficult today. The US has unquestionably the best university system in the world, which means American students are competing with students from around the world for entrance into American schools. And of course, everyone only wants to go to the best schools, so they have all these structured activities as a resume-builder.

What I've read is that, ironically, kids with perfect SATs, 80 extracurriculars, who play the violin and speak 5 languages fluently are so common that they don't stand out anymore. The credential inflation has led schools to find alternate methods of evaluating candidates.

>What I've read is that, ironically, kids with perfect SATs, 80 extracurriculars, who play the violin and speak 5 languages fluently are so common that they don't stand out anymore.

Can't wait for the day when traditional parents catch on and we see the mass enrollment of Chinese kids in linebacker camps.

> The US has unquestionably the best university system in the world

A bold assertion. Well-educated Europeans with near-zero debt on graduation might argue otherwise.

Every developed country has long lines of overseas students competing for college places, including very mediocre colleges. It's a route to immigration and not necessarily an endorsement of the university system.

The system may have problems, but the universities themselves are the best in the world in both education and research.

Some of them are, yes indeed. The US dominates the world top-20. The US has lots of the world's best hospitals too, and few would claim it has the world's best health care system.

I'm very happy the extremely good places exist, but I'm sad about crazy student debt and crappy for-profit universities.

While I agree to a point, for most of these students, Harvard isn't an option (and never would have been). These are typical upper-middle-class kids and parents. Smart enough to get a six-figure job, but far from the top tier of thinkers and doers (I don't mean this disparagingly - I'm firmly in that same category).

I wonder how much impact international students have on the prospects of US students applying to US universities? I'm sure at the super-elite schools, there is an effect. But, at the big state schools? I don't know.

I'd also love to see a plot of college "seats" vs overall population. I know all the Virginia state schools have increased enrollment, but probably not enough to keep up with population growth. Is this true across the nation? Probably.

Hyper-competition with over a billion people does weird things to people. Even when they move away from their homes to other places, this leaves a mark.

There is also another important factor people tend to overlook. There were relatively few asians in America before the door of immigration opened a couple decades ago. This is unique compared to African American community or the mainstream European American.

The influx of highly educated immigrants who probably value education more than general public have a large impact to the relatively small community.

>or parents discouraging their kids from playing sports to chase a 4.4 GPA.

Sounds like they could use a class on how to get into a good school. Grades alone aren't it.

But then again, look at the side effect - Jack Ma threw down so damn hard, and one has to guess a lot of it is out of spite for being rejected.

For 1300 years the gateway to great status in China was the imperial examination. That must have left a mark.

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