Remember when you had to apply for college?

I do.

When I applied for college back in 2007, all I can remember now was how frantic and stressed out I was about making sure the package I had, as a student, was PERFECT. As a Korean-American student, born into the 2nd generation category with parents who immigrated to the States years ago, I definitely felt the pressure.

Were my SAT scores good enough? Was my GPA high enough? Did I take the best number of AP classes? Could I have taken more? Did I enroll in Kaplan SAT prep courses in time? Did I spend enough hours studying not only for school but for these frustrating SATs? A party you said? CAN’T. GOTTA STUDY.

Now let’s hone in on the Asian American stereotype. Let’s just say that if I were to actually try and make myself comparable to what I perceive to be the stereotypical level of achievement, looking back now, I don’t think I was good enough. Sure I studied hard, practiced hard, worked hard over all. But maybe my writing skills could have been better. Maybe I could have fit more AP classes. Maybe I could’ve volunteered for more hours. Maybe I could’ve, oh, I don’t know, founded some kind of organization or something.

I’m going to risk it and put myself out there, and admit that I applied to nearly 13 universities, a few of which included some of those “top-tier” schools (like Brown and Columbia). Did I even think I was good enough to? NOT AT ALL. But what was more important for me at the time was to have hope that I was even at all good enough to be considered, considering how much I studied for school, how much I studied for SATs, how much I practiced piano (yes, piano) to win local piano competitions, and even how much i could pack in with helping lead an a-cappella group, a political-interest club that I BARELY had time for, volunteering, an “experiential learning” requirement, my involvement with yearbook, and teaching piano. I’m not saying that I’m looking at myself pessimistically, but, for the sake of writing this, that’s my own personal outlook.

“But what about those students who get straight A’s, nail their SATs and still don’t get into elite universities like Harvard and Yale because… well, they’re Asian-American?”

This is exactly what Radio Boston touched upon just a few minutes ago on their show entitled, "Sometimes, Admission Odds Stacked Against Asian-American Students.“

Guests on the show included Jon Marcus, a reporter for the Boston Globe, NY Times and various other publications, and Sam Museus, a professor of Higher Education and Asian American studies at UMass Boston. Check out his article, Competitive Disadvantage, where one of the people he interviewed is an Asian woman from Massachusetts who changed her son’s last name to avoid the threat of a lack of consideration by admissions by top-tier universities. 

"Even though the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that universities can continue to consider race in admissions in the interest of diversity, admissions officers deny they’re screening out Asian-Americans. However, in researching their 2009 book No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African-Americans who got 1100. Whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian-Americans.”

The host went even further to mention and play an excerpt of Alexandra Wallace’s infamous YouTube rant about the “hoards of Asians” being accepted into UCLA, “our school." 

OUR school? When did it become acceptable for a certain group of people to consider a school theirs? WHO owns? Is this use of the word "our” a reflection of some sort of fear of this “other,” “other-izing” the Asian American student population who might be reflecting not only the possible Asian stereotype of over-achievement, but also the value of the American dream, that no matter who you are, you earn what you worked hard for in the end?

In fact, if I’m correct (as I was typing furiously to record the discussion conversation), Marcus mentioned that in 2006, the National Association for College Admissions Counseling had a panel at a conference directed to this issue, a panel that might have been called “Too Many Asians,” which gained considerable exposure in Canada, with a responding article on Macleans (http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/10/too-asian/). Too many Asians? Really?

One optimistic caller from Salem, MA, called into the talk show, saying, “It just bothers me when a group does exactly that - work hard and over-achieve, and then finds it a backlash against that very success. It just seems a little weird there would be this kind of viciousness about it. It’s a motivation for ME to work harder.”

Another caller named Yuchi of Lexington, MA, was a former professor of Harvard originally from China, who claims his life to be an example of the American dream. “Lots of people believe that if you have good academic scores, perfect SATs, you get admitted. That’s not really true. The college admission committee, at least when I served at Harvard, there were 20 something factors” - one of which includes being a Legacy, which statistically showed to provide a 45% greater chance of admission, occurring in private universities (not allowed at public universities, even though University of Illinois was caught doing it sometime ago). 

“What would you tell parents then, parents and kids who throw their hands up in the air, asking what else can we do?!”

Yuchi replied, “Get their students to be not just one-dimensional, not just academic. Do sports, volunteer, do public service - those are things that the committee looks at.”

I have a feeling we’ve all heard this before, and perhaps there are those of you out there who tried to jam-pack your high school lives with such activities while STILL even trying to fit any kind of social life…

Even though people often assume there is an equal-level field, really, NOTHING is equal-ized about this process. Schools of all levels provide only so much resources, people come from all different backgrounds, and the university admissions process is a mystery.

So what CAN be done? The last caller, a young woman named Ocean with an Asian accent, strongly suggested, “We should be careful about the future, facing global competition, not just the USA. Let’s not be tiger mothers; let children do what they love and what they are good at, Being creative, solving problems, and [being] useful for the future society is way more important than a GPA!”

“It’s a major disservice that we create these expectations, and then conclude that the students just did TOO well, and that’s what they were being told to do all along,” said Professor Museus.

Thank goodness I got the college application process part of my life over with. For those of you reading who are in the process and are hearing back from colleges now, or are facing the college application process in the future… I’m no wise woman but, coming from my own experience, I suggest you do the best you can and that the decision for you to push yourself above and beyond is ultimately YOUR decision. If your parents are funding your education, I highly suggest you maintain a close relationship with them about your college decisions - and that you respect them. After all, they are paying for your education, and they need to understand what they are investing in. But at the end of the day, it is YOUR future. As for being well-rounded students, of course things like volunteering, sports, leadership, etc. are all important… and why? The way I see it is that college admissions officers want to see that you aren’t simply academic robots, but real people who have faced real-life, valuable, lesson-learning experiences that you can’t learn in the classroom. But, please, balance, and leave room to be able to breathe and eat!

Oh and sleep too.

Time to get back to my own studying.

In California’s current debates over affirmative action, we see a familiar deployment of the model minority myth as a tool for division and competition between groups of color. Worst of all, we see this rhetoric coming from members and supposed representatives of the Asian American (and specifically, Chinese American) community themselves. 

Conservative Asian American organizations and individuals not only create pernicious and non-productive divisions between people of color (as well as perpetuate negative stereotypes of Asian Americans as “wannabe whites”), they obscure the lived experiences of marginalized communities within the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities who would benefit from the re-implementation of affirmative action in California. 

These conservative Asian American groups are the EXCEPTION TO THE RULE. They DO NOT speak for us. Polls have shown that 75% of Asian Americans support affirmative action legislation. As progressive Asian Pacific Americans, we must raise our voices in support of affirmative action, and policies that seek equity for all people of color. 

For a more extensive analysis of the current affirmative action debate within California’s Asian American community, see this thoughtful piece from Colorlines. 

“If our oppression is linked, so must be our liberation.”

*Cross-posted from the Asian Pacific American Student Collective. 

In celebration of Asian Pacific American month, Know Your History presents a series of profiles of prominent Asian/Pacific/Americans, chronicling an American history too often overlooked. Far from being “perpetual foreigners”, our collective history has shaped this country’s trajectory in important ways.

To be born in America is to be American - to enjoy the full rights and protections conferred by United States citizenship. This much we know. That this birthright of American citizenship is the legacy of a 19th century American born Chinese man named Wong Kim Ark is a fact that is much more frequently overlooked. Wong Kim Ark fought the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype when it was still in its infancy, and in doing so, confirmed what we all know–that Asian Americans are American by right. 

Keep reading

Japanese American and civil rights icon Fred Korematsu was born 85 years ago today. He is remembered for his decades-long fight against the proclaimed legality of Japanese internment during the Second World War. While Korematsu charges for evading internment were finally vacated in 1983, the Supreme Court case Korematsu vs. United States, which ruled that internment was constitutionally justifiable, has yet to be formally overturned.

As Arab and South Asian Americans face extralegal surveillance in our heightened post-9/11 context, as urban police forces indiscriminately stop/question/frisk in communities of color, and as immigrants of all backgrounds are threatened by anti-immigrant and “show your papers” legislation, the legacy of Japanese internment casts a long shadow over the present. 

As we continue the fight for civil rights in the 21st century, today we remember Fred Korematsu and the countless unsung heroes who challenged, evaded, and endured internment. 

Last weekend, I had the pleasure to be one of the 400-some students who attended the 9th annual New York City Asian American Student Conference, held at the Kimmel Center at NYU. NYCAASC is a student run intercollegiate program  dedicated to addressing issues pertinent to Asian/Pacific/Americans on local, national and global scales. It was founded in 2007 as a collaboration between New York University and Columbia University but has since grown to include students from Fordham University, Hunter College, Baruch College, City College and Brooklyn College and School of Visual Arts. 

This year’s theme was Critical Mass: Collective Bodies for Action, directly addressing the current events in America such as #BlackLivesMatter. “The goal of this year’s conference is for the Asian/Pacific/American community to reach that critical mass: a point of large scale rupture, but also of creation.”

The keynote speaker was Asian American journalist and cultural critic Jeff Chang. He called for us to further examine the nuances of what it means to have “representation;” he looked at A/P/A solidarity for other minority voices such as the Black and Latino communities. Spoken word poet Paul Tran opened the conference with his powerful poems that examine his Vietnamese heritage. Jess X. Chen also performed spoken word that ranged from topics like the Tienanmen Square Massacre to questions of sexuality matched up to personal art pieces displayed from above. Magnetic North & Taiyo Na brought down the roof with their honest rhymes, organic beats and one sick saxophone. 

The 17 workshops in total all looked to address questions of colonized minds and bodies. One workshop,  “Your Parents are White?” Transnational Adoption: Thinking from Their Perspectives and Histories looked at personal and academic perspectives on transnational adoption, discussing the cultural historicity and the psychological impact of adoption. Another workshop #JusticeforAkaiGurley: Asian-Americans on the Indictment of Officer Liang dealt with developing an understanding of the issues of police brutality and the tensions and solidarity between Black and A/P/A communities. The last few workshops focused on concrete strategies to spur attendees into action.  Digital Storytelling: How to Create Your Own Web Series set the stage to inspire students to do their own storytelling. 

By the end of the day, I, along with the other students, organizers and speakers, was left exhausted, my head crammed with new information and perspectives to later wrestle and process. But I was also left oddly moved by the energy and the motivation pulsing throughout the conference. The A/P/A community is not often recognized as one with a voice; often times, we are silenced with the dismissing “model minority” label. But here, I saw hundreds of voices speaking up, yearning to reach out. I’m listening. We’re listening. 

The DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act narrowly passed in the House Wednesday evening by 216-198. Early Thursday morning, Democrats decided to postpone voting on the Act in the Senate, so for now the debates have settled down.

The DREAM Act is, simply put, a proposal to allow undocumented students “in good moral standing” who were brought to America under the age of 15 (and has lived here for at least 5 years) the right to have a conditional legal status (for six years)  while attending university or serving in the military. After filling these requirements, they will be able to apply for a permanent legal status. 

I logged onto Facebook on Wednesday night and a few enthusiasts were proclaiming the good news on the statuses. I liked all of them. I don’t mean to push people to think one way or another about this proposal but I can’t help but be stirred in towards the supporting side because this issue of undocumented students really hits home for me. Home, as in my high school back in Southern California. I distinctly remember towards college application season, I would be complaining about CollegeBoard, the annoying generic questions, etc. etc. and certain classmates of mine would silently mutter how they couldn’t even apply for any financial aid and thus might not be able to attend college.

You can guess that shut me right up. A lot of these classmates, friends, stayed strong nonetheless. They tried applying for scholarships but many scholarships required they must be a U.S. Citizen. They spent hours on the phone with financial aid reps from different universities but the result was ultimately a growing frustration and a dwindling hope. Many of these friends of mine are attending college now, but a great portion if not all are paying full tuition because they have to apply as an international student. And these friends are smart. They were the ones everyone went to during lunch when word got around about a pop quiz the following class period.

But there is one particular friend of mine who is in danger of having to move back to Korea (due to complicated issues regarding his status), although he is a high school graduate and has hopes of going to college like everyone else. Isn’t it surreal that I have to ask him if I’m going to be able to see him when I go back to California for winter break? This uncertainty of having to go back to a country in which he feels no familiarity to is heartbreaking, even for me. Like many undocumented students today, he didn’t come to America by choice - he came with his parents. As far as he’s concerned, America’s his home. He even shuts his ears every time I play a little k-pop - heck, he’s more American than me. 

“Let’s give the dream kids an opportunity. They are American in every way but a piece of paper.”

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, D-Ill

There are lots of arguments being thrown around. Supporters say that passing the DREAM Act would improve our economy, promote good behavior from students, and put well-able, talented, and educated people in our work field. Opponents say this Act gives validity to an illegal act, increases competition in an already tough job industry, messes with taxpayers’ money, and floods community colleges. 

“Any program like this is going to be a magnet that attracts people here illegally. It’s enough that we’re providing a full school education at taxpayers’ expense. Now we’re supposed to provide college education? Our colleges are already overcrowded. People who’re trying to get their kids through school save their money and take out expensive loans. And now we’re supposed to provide subsidised, taxpayer-funded secondary education college for people who don’t have a right to be here?” 

Dan Stein of the Federation of American Immigration Reform 

I suppose we can go on and on about this side and that side, as in many cases involving a controversial piece of legislation. But I keep thinking of my friend who keeps reassuring me that all our friends will have a get-together this winter through smiley face emoticons when he’s not even sure if he will be forced to be halfway across the world by then. He mentioned that if the DREAM Act passed, there would be some sort of hope for him being able to stay here.

You don’t have to know an undocumented student to feel a connection to this issue. As college students, we take a lot of what we have for granted. As NYU students especially, it’s probably easy to forget that not everyone can live in New York City, get an education, apply for internships and jobs, and perhaps most importantly, have hopes and ambitions for what we can achieve in a country we call home among the people we love.

Amen. Especially for my friend and many others in his situation, his American dream can’t wait any longer. Time is running out.