[Paleopsych] Model Minority: Asian Ivies

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Asian American Empowerment: ModelMinority.com - Asian Ivies
http://modelminority.com/printout303.html

                   Date: Monday, February 10 @ 10:00:00 EST
                               Topic: Academia

    Editor's Note: This article was submitted in garbled form and has been
    edited somewhat for readability, although some errors of both style
    and substance remain.

    Anonymous
    An Open Email to the Asian American Community
    January 14, 2003

    Asian Americans have come to this country in great numbers for the
    last 30 years. Over time, they gradually realized that they were
    enjoying every benefit from the establishment of the Americans great
    founding father as well as benefits resulting from Martin Luther Kings
    legendary civil rights work and the continuous efforts of the NAACP
    and the American Civil Liberties Union. As the years passed by, most
    of them became settled in this new country and they and their children
    became Asian Americans. Collectively these Asian Americans have become
    a new racial group, regardless of where they came from and whether
    they like it or not. Eventually, they all have found their place in
    the society that they now call home.
    Most Asian Americans, other than refugees, are the cream of the crop
    from their motherlands. Some have immigrated to the US because of
    their wealth and others due to their excellent educations. Those from
    China are within the top 0.1 percent of the Chinese population in
    terms of education. These newest citizens and immigrants to America
    have built their new life on the core value of education. Many state
    universities have benefited from the determination of the Asian
    Americans search for higher education. California has benefited the
    most as Asian Americans academic superiority has propelled its state
    flagship university, Berkeley, to the top spot of American public
    universities and the private Stanford University into the top ten
    universities as ranked by US News. Asian Americans constitute about
    45% of Berkeleys student body--even with a higher admission
    requirement imposed on them. The average SAT score for the admitted
    Asian Americans at Berkeley is approximately 100 points higher than
    that of white Americans and is two to three hundreds points higher
    than that of Hispanic and African-Americans. Five California public
    universities, Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, Irvine and Davis, are ranked
    in the top 20 public universities as a result of Asian American
    majorities in these schools.

    A great number of Asian Americans went to Berkeley and, following in
    their parents footsteps, became engineers. It is perfectly fine for
    those less competitive students if they do not attend a name brand
    college. Many Asian Americans have come to realize that American
    society is dominated and controlled by non-engineers. Seeking a good
    and comfortable life as an engineer no long meets the goal and desire
    for identity of many. In the last twenty years, there have been many
    Asian Americans who have become successful in the public eye,
    including An Wang, Charles B. Wang, Jerry Yang, Bill Lann Lee,
    Margaret Cho, Lucy Liu, Yo-Yo Ma, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan,
    Michael Chang, Helen Zia, and Hoyt H. Zia, to name a few. Now Asian
    American broadcast news anchors are everywhere, especially female ones
    like Connie Chung. Asian Americans now have their first Governor, Gary
    Lock of Washington State, state representatives, David Wu and Mike
    Honda, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Transportation Secretary
    Norman Y. Mineta. Asian Americans have occasional bright spots on TV,
    such as George Takei playing Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek
    series, Bruce Lee as Kato in The Green Hornet, and the films of Jacky
    Chan and John Wu. However, many Asian Americans still have been unable
    to dispel the enduring media image of Asian Americans as Hop Sing, the
    Cartwrights houseboy on Bonanza. The media still does not provide
    Asian Americans with heroes or role models that Asian Americans
    actually could dream of becoming.

    Other than athletes and entertainers, Asian Americans have seen the
    success and leadership of Asian Americans who have graduated from
    highly selective colleges. They learned quickly that there really is
    no difference between the United States and their native lands; the
    combination of a good education and connections with those in power is
    the road to power and success. Asian Americans have come to recognize
    that Harvard and the Ivy League have been the major access roads to
    power in America for white Americans and African-Americans alike.
    Despite many articles questioning the value of an Ivy League school
    education, Asian Americans are now competing for spots at Ivy League
    schools in great numbers.

Ivy League Educations

    (an excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times)

    The Ivy League Schools provide leadership training and a peer learning
    environment through a four-year residential college / liberal arts
    education. The eight Ivy League Schools are Brown, Columbia, Cornell,
    Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and U Penn. In addition, there are
    little Ivies such as Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury,
    Wesleyan, Haverford, and Wellesley. Highly selective schools also
    include quasi-Ivy schools, such as MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago,
    Duke, Northwestern, WASH U (Washington University in St. Louis),
    Georgetown, Rice, John Hopkins, and Tufts, which do not provide a
    comparable residential college experience.

    Top public universities such as Berkeley, Virginia, Illinois,
    Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina provide a solid academic
    education in specific fields compared to a diverse liberal arts
    education at elite schools. Many learned that to attend these public
    schools is as expansive as attending Ivy schools by out-of-state
    students. For non-residents, the cost of the freshman year at these
    public universities can reach over $29,000 and the cost at elite
    schools is approximately $36,000 per year. However, it will cost more
    to attend Berkeley for the remaining years for non-California
    residents. The Berkeley dorms can only accommodate students for their
    freshman year. The annual rents for an off-campus apartment easily can
    cost another $10,000 a year. Many high school graduates quickly
    learned from their peers that those admitted to the elite schools are
    actually paying less than those attending out-of-state public
    universities or even local state universities due to the generous
    financial aid and grants offered by the elite schools.

    Many argue that the halo of attending an elite school may be losing
    its glow, in part, because increasing numbers of people go on to
    graduate or professional schools. A master's degree, law degree, or
    medical degree from a prestigious school can overshadow a bachelor's
    degree, especially because it's often more relevant to a person's
    career.

    Of course, getting into a top-tier graduate or professional school is
    a challenge all its own, although statistically, a bachelor's degree
    from an Ivy League institution confers a certain advantage in that
    competition. Admission officers warn against choosing an elite college
    for that reason; "We don't assign it an automatic weight in the way
    people assume we do," said Jean Webb, the director of admissions at
    Yale Law School. However, Webb and other graduate-level admissions
    officers acknowledge that applicants from less respected institutions
    need much higher grades to compete against those who studied at elite
    colleges.

    If a student wants to become an MD or lawyer with specialties,
    graduating from a top medical or law school is almost a requirement to
    open the door. One would have a better chance of being admitted to a
    top medical or law school by attending an undergraduate college at Ivy
    or little Ivy schools. Berkeley is the number one public university
    and its statistics for matriculation to medical/law schools (as
    reported by Berkeley) are outstanding, as many who graduate from other
    public universities cannot even get an admission from a medical or law
    school. However, it is extremely difficult for Berkeley graduates to
    be admitted to a top 10-ranked medical or law school, or even a top
    twenty-ranked. In the year 2001, there were 87 Berkeley graduates who
    applied to the medical school at John Hopkins University, none were
    admitted. Harvard Law School matriculated 550 first-year law students
    in the year 2001; 62 Berkeley graduates applied and resulted in two
    matriculations. These statistics can be examined on the following web
    pages. Due to multiple applications, one should only read the
    matriculation column.

    [1]UC Berkeley graduate Medical School Matriculation Statistics
    [2]UC Berkeley graduate Law School Matriculation Statistics
    "But there's more to it than that, it's the overall record. It's the
    type of courses. It's so subjective, said Patricia Tobiasen, the
    admissions coordinator for Columbia University's medical school.

    Corporate recruiters may be more impressed than graduate schools with
    Ivy League credentials. When the top investment and consulting firms
    visit campuses in search of young employees, they go first to the
    Ivies, said Sheila Curran, the director of career services at Brown
    University.

    After landing that first job, Curran said, the Ivy League advantage
    continues in the form of connections. "Even though the old boy network
    isn't quite as prevalent as it was before, the ability to get into
    contact with people who have high-level jobs -- and who can network
    you into getting an interview -- is something that may be more
    prevalent at the Ivies than at some of these other places," she said.

    Cynthia B. Lin plans to use those connections. A 1995 graduate of
    Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, she turned down a
    full scholarship to Boston University -- worth about $100,000 -- to
    attend Princeton. "I think it pays off a hundred-fold in the end,"
    said Lin, now a software engineer in suburban Washington, D.C. "If I
    go to parties or receptions and I meet Princeton people, of course
    they're very receptive to helping me out, or giving me their card and
    trying to stay in touch, because Princeton people can rely on other
    Princeton people to be interested or good employees." However, Lin
    said she wasn't thinking of her career when she chose Princeton in the
    spring of 1995. In fact, she originally intended to accept Boston
    University's generous offer. Then she got a glimpse of Princeton's
    tantalizing mix of overachievers, and a decade's worth of debt seemed
    a small sacrifice. "It mattered more to me the quality of the
    education I would get and how comfortable I felt in the environment I
    was in," Lin said. "If I felt that Joe College's environment was even
    closer to what I was looking for, then I would have chosen that."

    Krueger, the economics professor at Lin's alma mater, endorses that
    reasoning. Despite his doubts about the financial payoff of a
    prestigious degree, he believes there are legitimate reasons for going
    to a selective school such as Princeton. But a high salary, he said,
    isn't one of them. "Students need to find the right match," he said.
    "The world is more complicated than just saying, 'The most selective
    school is the best for every student.' I think a student and his or
    her family has to look into what the college offers, what the
    student's interests are, and how those are aligned."

Asian Youngsters Work Much Harder to Get Into Ivy Schools

    Asian Americans have the lowest Ivy School admission rate among all
    applicants. At Ivy Schools, the selectivity is at 1 to 10 on average.
    Asian Americans admission rate to an Ivy School is from 1 to 15 and
    down to 1 to 25 Asian Americans applied. Asian Americans represent 31%
    of the total applicants to U PENN and yet only 23% of the matriculated
    Class of 2005. The numbers are the same for the Class of 2004. Asian
    Americans are accepted at two-thirds rate when compared to the entire
    applicant pool's acceptance rate, despite being the most qualified
    group. Asian Americans must meet higher objective standards such as
    SAT scores and GPAs, and to meet higher subjective or "holistic"
    standards such as motivation, overcoming adversities from poverty,
    prejudice, linguistic and cultural differences from being a racial
    minority, extracurricular, and character than the rest of the
    matriculated entering class at Penn. This is due to the upper-limit
    quota or cap imposed on Asian Americans restricting their numbers at
    Penn. If not for this imposed quota, their numbers would be much
    higher at Penn and they would be accepted, at the very least, at the
    same rate as the rest of the applicants. Yet Penn still has the
    highest percentage (23%) of Asian Americans of all the Ivy League
    schools, which average about 14% Asian Americans, in its entering
    classes. The percentage of White-Jewish students is at 35% at Penn and
    there is no quota imposed on them.
    The upper-limit quotas that existed in the Ivies for Jewish-Americans
    before WW II have been abolished. Now, they exist at Penn and the rest
    of the Ivy League schools for Asian Americans. Asian Americans have
    taken the place of the American Jews in this respect. American Jews
    represent 2.5% and Asian Americans represent 4% of the American
    population.
    Excellence is being sacrificed for the sake of racial diversity with
    the exclusionary upper-limit quotas or caps on the numbers of Asian
    Americans at Penn and the Ivy League schools.
    Another common complaint is that the deck is stacked socially against
    Asian males in a system designed to preserve the princely status quo
    of the scions of WASP families. The Ivies admit a disproportionate
    number of attractive Asian American females, some have observed, while
    far fewer attractive Asian American males are admitted. This subtle
    bias, critics suspect, is implemented in the screening interviews used
    by most Ivy League schools.

Desire to Attend an Ivy School is Shared By All Races

    (Excerpt from an article [3]Where are the Baptists at Harvard? by
    Jonathan Tilove)

    While Ivy League schools have made their mark around the rallying cry
    of diversity, their own enrollment reflects a lack of diversity. In
    short, students at schools like Harvard are far more likely to be
    Jewish or Asian than to be Southern Baptists, conservative evangelical
    Christians or Italian-Americans. Right now at Harvard, America's most
    elite school, an estimated 20 percent of undergraduate students are
    Jewish, and almost the same percentage is Asian. Although Jews and
    Asians together account for only 5 percent of the United States
    population, they make up nearly 40 percent of Harvard's enrollment.
    That's about the same percentage of Harvard students who are
    non-Jewish whites, a group that makes up more than 70 percent of the
    U.S. population. Christian whites are far more under-represented at
    Harvard, relative to their numbers in the general population, than
    even blacks and Hispanics. In rough terms, the combined Jewish and
    Asian representation in Dartmouth's student body is about 18 percent;
    at Princeton, about 25 percent; at Duke, Cornell and Brown, somewhere
    in the 30 percent range; at Yale, about 45 percent; and at Columbia
    and the University of Pennsylvania, about half. In each case,
    non-Jewish whites are equally under-represented at the other end of
    the spectrum.

    Not all white Christians are underrepresented in the Ivy League. The
    old white elite--Episcopalians, for example--are bearing up well,
    abetted a bit by the admissions preference for children of alumni.
    Moreover, it appears that groups like Italian-Americans and Southern
    Baptists do not fare so well. "True diversity would look entirely
    different than it does today," said Brian Burt, who graduated from
    Harvard Law School last spring after three years as a lonely Christian
    conservative activist. This hasn't escaped the notice of conservatives
    like commentator Patrick Buchanan, who wrote in a January column:
    "Let's make the Ivy Leagues look more like America."

    The stakes are high because Ivy League schools are the gateway to
    America's power elite. How these schools define diversity will help
    determine the diversity of those elite. Bill Clinton, a poor Baptist
    boy from Hope, Ark., became president, but only after having his
    ticket punched at Georgetown, Yale and Oxford.

    Likewise, there is nothing diverse in the law school backgrounds of
    the nine justices of the Supreme Court--five Harvard, two Stanford, a
    Yale and a Northwestern. Yet Harvard's admissions director, Marlyn
    McGrath Lewis, says she has little patience with complaints about
    representation. "Whatever you are, you feel there are not enough of
    you," she said. "The Italians are after us. I'm sure the Irish may be
    too. I'm one. The evangelicals are not ones I think have a bone to
    pick. They are a growth industry in the country, and that's reflected
    in what's happening here.  But more than that, she said, it is a
    "foolish notion" even to look at the question of college
    admissions--and the ambition to assemble a class of diverse
    backgrounds, intellects and talents--through the prism of group
    representation.

    The constitutional limits placed on college admissions decisions were
    outlined in the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision. The court agreed
    that race could be a "plus factor" in admissions decisions, as far as
    it contributes to the school's diversity. But, as Justice Lewis Powell
    wrote then, "The file of a particular black applicant may be examined
    for his potential contribution to diversity without the factor of race
    being decisive when compared, for example, with that of an applicant
    identified as an Italian-American if the latter is thought to exhibit
    qualities more likely to promote beneficial educational pluralism."

    According to a UCLA survey of elite schools, the more selective the
    school, the more affluent the students are and the more liberal they
    are. They also tend to be less religious and decidedly less likely to
    be "born-again" Christians. In other words, if diversity is what these
    schools want, they ought to be searching out more Christian
    conservatives.

    To Queens College sociologist Stephen Steinberg, this is the bind that
    many defenders of affirmative action find themselves in for resting
    their case on diversity rather than what he considers the more
    compelling moral logic of reparations for the history of slavery, Jim
    Crow and continued discrimination. "As soon as you take this argument
    outside history, you lose. Only history provides the logic and
    justification for breaking the ordinary rules of admission and
    access," said Steinberg, the author of "Turning Back: The Retreat from
    Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy." The diversity argument
    may have seemed more politically and legally palatable but it is
    ill-prepared to defend itself against the advances of newly
    "underrepresented" groups staking their own claims to diversity's
    mantle, he said. "The whole thing begins to look like pork barrel."

    Kamil Redmond, a Harvard junior from Philadelphia who was just elected
    vice president of the undergraduate council, says she recoils when she
    hears conservatives on campus describe themselves as Harvard's true
    minority. As a black woman at Harvard, "I find that so disturbing. The
    appropriation of the term 'minority' is so powerful." Groups like
    Christian conservatives are only playing at a victimhood they have not
    earned, she said.

    Part of the problem may be reluctance among Southern Baptists,
    Christian conservatives and Italian-Americans to go far from home for
    college. Olivia Hunt, a junior from San Antonio who heads the Baptist
    Campus Ministry at Harvard, said only four of the 600 students in her
    graduating class from Winston Churchill High School went to Ivy League
    schools, and few others left Texas. Most folks back home don't
    understand why her family would want to spend all that money when she
    could get a good education for less and never have to leave Texas, she
    said.

    Over-representation is not new in the Ivy League, of course. For most
    of Harvard's history, the over-represented were white, male and
    Protestant. In 1870, Harvard's student body included seven Roman
    Catholics, three Jews and no blacks. But now, the combined Jewish and
    Asian presence on Ivy League campuses has become "just too big to
    ignore," according to Arthur Hu, a Kirkland, Wash., software engineer
    and writer who has become a sort of Internet pamphleteer on issues of
    diversity and representation. "This huge sleeping monster, the
    Christian right, is the most underrepresented group and they don't
    know it," he said. But, Hu added, it is now only a matter of time
    until the least represented begins sounding the mantra of diversity.

Learning It from American Jews and Those in Power

    (From [4]Arthur Hu and [5]The American Cause)

    Jews were 21 percent of the Ivy League vs. 1.5 percent of the
    college-age population (14 times overrepresentation) and the figure is
    higher at the graduate level (at Yale, for example, 60 percent of
    graduate students are Jewish - an astonishing figure). Asians are
    about 16 percent (4 times overrepresentation) and let's double that
    for Chinese and maybe Indians as well. (1999 Princeton Review Best 331
    Colleges and the Hillel Guide to Jewish Life on Campus.)
    More than a tenth of college professors are Jewish, and that figure
    rises to about 30 percent at elite schools. According to Alan
    Dershowitz in his book, The Vanishing American Jew, 76 percent of the
    200 most influential intellectuals are of Jewish background.
    About 40 percent of the lawyers at the most prestigious New York and
    Washington law firms are Jewish. In addition, 23 percent of the 500
    wealthiest Americans are Jewish and about 85 percent of college-age
    Jews are in college (this is from Seymour Martin Lipset, a highly
    respected, but ridiculously centrist and un-innovative, sociologist).
    George W. Bush opposes "quotas," even though it was fine for him to
    get into Yale with a C average, so that "rich quota" was fine and it
    works for his daughter. Bill Clinton, from an Arkansas single-parent
    family married Hillary Rodham, who attended Yale law School with Bill.
    Hillary was from a wealthy Illinois family and graduated from
    Wellesley College. Not to take any credit from President Clinton of
    his achievements, but Mrs. Clintons family and his roots at Yale and
    Georgetown contributed significantly to his success throughout his
    career. Jack Welsh, the retired CEO and Chairman of one of world's
    largest and most respected companies - General Electric, earned his
    PhD in chemical engineering from Illinois. He handpicked successor,
    Mr. Jeff Immelt, who holds a B.S. degree in Liberal Arts with a major
    in Applied Mathematics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard
    University.

    Harvard and the Ivy League have become the major access roads to power
    in America, and these roads are being closed off to ethnic Catholics
    and white Christians, cried Pat Buchanan.

    A few years back, Pat Buchanans view was echoed by a Harvard graduate,
    Ron Unz, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the admissions
    policies at his alma mater and the student body it produced: With
    affirmative action for preferred minorities and set-asides for
    children of alumni and faculty, foreign students, and athletes,
    Harvard's student body, said Unz, had begun to look like the Greenwich
    Village Democratic Club. According to Unz, 15 percent of Harvard's
    student body is Hispanic or black, 20 percent is Asian, 25 to 33
    percent is Jewish, but only 25 percent comes from that 75 percent of
    America that is white and Christian. Christians are being frozen out
    of the elite schools that control the access to power in a nation that
    Christians, primarily, built.

    However, in challenging this Ivy League bigotry, Republicans have
    shown all the courage of Larry Summers. Nevertheless, Congress ought
    to demand that the Department of Education require all Ivy League
    schools to report annually on the religious and ethnic composition of
    their faculties and student bodies, and, if Unz's percentages hold,
    should be asked what they are doing to end this discrimination. After
    all, if it is illegal for Irish cops to get their kids preferences,
    why is it OK for Harvard professors? Regardless the fact of 70% white
    American presence at Ivy schools, Ron Unzs number on Asian Americans
    Ivy school presence typified todays bashing on Asian Americans. And
    what really matters here is that he is advocating that Ivy schools to
    admit student based on % of population and not by merit. There is
    definitely a confused issue of affirmative action on ivy school
    admissions.

The Trend

    (References:  [6]Attaining Ivy; [7]Asian Americans at Duke; [8]What to
    Do When "Outstanding" Is Average)

    These days, kids feel like they have to be veritable Greek gods and
    goddesses in order to get into college," says Richard Powell, upper
    school director at the private Oak Hall School in Gainesville, Fla.
    Zach Clayton, for example, a senior at Broughton High School in
    Raleigh, N.C., is a top cross-country runner and a former intern at
    the Washington office of Sen. Jesse Helms. He has taken several
    college-level courses and has served as the chair of the National
    Student Council and a statewide teen Republicans organization. He gets
    up at 5 a.m. and goes to bed at 1 a.m., answering e-mails deep into
    the night. Still, the 16-year-old has no illusions about actually
    getting into his triumvirate of hope: Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.
    "Everybody knows that more and more schools are simply impossible to
    get into," Zach says. "It's pretty intimidating."

    Like many private high schools, Roxbury Latin High, with 21.1%
    graduates matriculated at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, strongly
    encourages its students to apply for early decision or early action.
    According to graduate Henry Seton, at least two-thirds of his
    classmates got into college early. For yield reasons, many colleges
    accept a higher percentage of early applicants than regular
    applicants; these are usually guaranteed, "Will come. In the year
    2000, Harvard accepted about 1,000 students of the 6,100 who applied
    early, leaving just 1,000 spots for the other 13,500 students who
    applied during regular admissions.
    Asian Americans with SAT scores less than 1500 have little chance in
    gaining a regular admission to Ivy League Schools. Moreover, many
    Asian Americans with SAT scores higher than 1500 were not admitted by
    any Ivy School. However, those with SAT scores above 1400 if applied
    early may have a good chance to be admitted.

    In addition to applying for [9]early decision, applying to certain
    schools that traditionally lack Asian American applicants (Chicago,
    Duke, WashU-STL, Rice, and Tufts) may increase the odds substantially.
    Duke has difficulty in attracting Asian American students for several
    reasons, particularly its location in the South. "Most Asians don't
    pick Duke as their first choice, the most qualified Asian students
    aren't even bothering to apply." said Patty Chen, president of Asian
    Student Association at Duke University.

    Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions, agreed that
    Duke's location might be a detractor. "Many families do have a problem
    with the fact that we are in the South," he said. Stanford has been a
    favorite for California Asian Americans. However, more and more Asian
    Americans start to realize that the good old boy network and the
    geographic center of culture, education and finance of the northeast
    are important to highly qualified whites.

    Stanfords white American ratio is at 45% of its student body, a number
    somewhat less than the white high school student ratio graduated in
    California, as compared to 70% white at Ivy Schools. This preference
    by the white Americans is even worse at Berkeley, where white
    applicants (no correlation to admission) have dropped 50% in the last
    ten years. Even with a lower admission standard for the white
    Americans on SAT requirement (100 points lower than the Asian
    Americans average scores of 1300), the white students at Berkeley are
    31.7% of total students. While the SAT scores required for African and
    Hispanic Americans are [10]substantially lower than those required for
    the white Americans, Asian Americans are vital to the achievement of
    academic excellence at Stanford and Berkeley. Consequently, Asian
    Americans at those schools [11]are peering with less competitive
    students.

    Most Asian Americans cannot forego the temptation of applying to
    Harvard. Almost all Asian Americans are applying early at Harvard
    regardless of their real chance in getting into Harvard or other Ivy
    Schools. The rule of thumb in getting the Harvard admission is pending
    on the achievement of the 18 year-old high school senior. If the
    applicant has not won a national title, recognition, or
    distinguishable accomplishment, the chance of being admitted is almost
    zero.

    Asian Americans are slow in learning from WASP to apply early to
    increase the odds of being admitted by an Ivy school. They have
    difficult time assessing their qualification and accomplishment
    realistically. However, some have started to work with the high school
    counselors closely to formulate college application strategies.
    Particularly the parents of Asian Americans, in against to their
    tradition of distancing between the teacher and student, are listening
    to the suggestions from school consolers. On average, an applicant
    spent 45 days in filling out their early application form and writing
    that essay. Applicants completed the remaining 6 to 9 applications in
    less than two weeks after their first school of choice (Harvard)
    deferred them. It is evident the quality of the subsequent
    applications have little chance to win. Those who did met with greater
    success with the benefit of the experience of the high school
    counselors, who knows what kinds of students from that high school
    have been admitted by various highly selective colleges in the past.

Determination

    Those being admitted by a highly selective college know that the
    application process alone is worth three credit hours of an advanced
    humanity class. It is actually more than that; it requires years of
    preparation to be admitted by an Ivy League school. It takes a joint
    effort of the parents and children. It takes money, planning,
    determination, and lots of hard work.

    Most Asian Americans are very academically demanding of their
    children, but many give up at the very end due to concern for the cost
    of attending a highly selective college. However, there is no shortage
    of Asian American parents willing to pay that premium to send their
    kids to Ivy schools, as they can easily relay the experience of what
    their parents have done for them to come to America and its relative
    cost associated with their parents income and wealth. The cost does
    not scare many Asian Americans and prevent their children from
    applying to a highly selective college.

    Some people say, Ivy Schools are not for every child or Ivy Schools
    are for nobody but rich and spoiled kids. To Asian Americans, this
    sounds like sour grapes or a strategy to eliminate competitions at
    precious Ivy school admissions. Many Asian American parents with
    graduate degrees truly believe that their achievement was limited to
    lack of Kuan Xi as who you know and concluded that that is where they
    want to make it up for their children. Moreover, they truly believe it
    is their responsibility to give their children the opportunity to grow
    and prosper. Either through their savings, grants, scholarships, or
    loans, they always seem to find a way to pay.
    Just look at those in the Ivy Schools, you know who will be running
    our country tomorrow. We need to ensure the dominance of White
    Christians at Ivy Schools, said by Pat Buchanan, the conservative
    Republican and former presidential candidate. Mr. Buchanan may not
    realize just how much impact that will have on Asian Americans.

References

    1. http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/19972001top20.stm
    2. http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/lawStats.stm
    3. http://www.baptiststandard.com/1999/3_10/pages/harvard.html
    4. http://www.arthurhu.com/99/17/morejew.txt
    5. http://www.theamericancause.org/pathowtoprint.htm
    6. http://www.kustav.com/thoughts/attaining_ivy.html
    7. http://www.asianam.org/asian_americans_at_duke.htm
    8. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1008/p13s01-lehl.html
    9. http://www.collegiatechoice.com/myearlydec.htm
   10. http://www.capolicycenter.org/ct_0495/ctn1_0495.html
   11. http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/09/02/editorial2.html



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