Essays On Gender Competition And Educational Outcomes: Fill & Download for Free

Your hunch is right. I've lived in Japan for over a decade, and in China for almost eight years now. And here're some of my observations about the two cultures:Family Structure, Japan versus ChinaWhen I lived in Japan, I also got the sense that siblings are not so interdependent on each other. And the same goes for parents and children, except for the chonan, or the eldest sons, who still have the responsibilities to care for the parents and inherit the family name, business and properties. My impressions about the Japanese are formed by watching my Japanese friends and my brother-in-law, who happens to be Japanese. When my brother-in-law got into financial difficulties, neither his parents nor his siblings would help him (he is not a chonan). So he had to take out private loans to handle the crisis. (The outcome wasn't good, but that's another story.)As Chinese, I don't think my siblings and I could get away with not helping each other out if we have the means. Our parents would give us so much pressure to help each other. Similarly, parent-child-grandchild relationships in the Chinese context are so much stronger, which is why many retired Chinese parents think it's absolutely natural that they should help with household chores and childcare when their grown children need to go out to work or play. Meanwhile, grown children dutifully take their retired parents on vacations as a large extended family so the grandparents can experience the "domestic bliss." This kind of interdependence is encouraged by the Confucian emphasis on family relationships and the Chinese ideal of "Three Generations Under One Roof." After decades of being vilified under Mao's regime, Confucius and his thoughts, in fact, are making a major comeback in China under the auspices of Mr. Xi.Now, I can't imagine very many Japanese parents in their 50s or 60s would want to bother with taking care of their grandchildren and mess with cleaning the apartments of their grown children. They'd much rather go play golf or travel overseas and enjoy life in their retirement. Japan's family model is really more of a nuclear family, whereby there's a much greater emphasis on individuals taking care of himself or herself once they're grown ups. (Perhaps this model was greatly influenced by the Western ideal and adopted during Meiji Restoration.) Of course the chonan, as I mention earlier, is the only exception to this rule because he's the chosen one in a family to succeed the household name, family business and the health care of parents. So his ties to his parents would be somewhat stronger than what his siblings might have with the parents.Women's Attitudes Towards Work.There's a traditional pattern in Japan whereby Japanese women tend to stay at home once they're married and have kids, provided the family household income can allow this.Japan Inc. for many decades since 1960s, has also encouraged the wives of their employees to stay home by providing special family subsidies, as long as the wives can prove they don't have a sizable separate income. (Although things may be changing a bit, now that many companies are not doing so well.) They do this as a way to ensure their male employees would devote 120 percent on their work and loyalty to their companies. As long as the wives can handle all domestic affairs, (and they're compensated for their "trouble" by Japan Inc.), the male employees would have no more excuses to refuse zangyo, or overtime work. In so doing, Japan Inc. has created the so-called "salaryman family," where the gender roles are clearly divided and enforced.Add on top of this is rigid gender role division is also this myth in Japan that no women should ever leave the childcare to anybody else. I remember a Japanese friend of mine who lived in a rather posh neighborhood near Yoyogi Uehara once told me even though she could afford to hire a domestic help, she couldn't entertain the thought of hiring a Filipino maid to help care for her three kids because she was fearful of what the neighbors and her mother-in-law might say behind of back. So she struggled to do everything herself.Chinese women, on the other hand, are very ambitious in their pursuit of jobs and careers. Many educated women don't believe in being full-time housewives even after they've married and become parents (okay, I admit, there are a few ernai, or concubine types of wealthy businessmen and political figures, who make a career of doing nothing but go shopping and visiting nail salons every day. But these are more of an exception. And most of them are young uneducated women from poorer backgrounds trying to find a short-cut to a good life). In fact, many Chinese women despise those who sit at home and eat bon-bons. This attitude is a remanent from the decades under Mao who famously said that "Women Hold up Half the Skies." Though, one more contributing factor is also China's 1-child policy since 1979, which, ironically, helps to usher in many well-educated young women from single-child families, as least in big cities. (As I said else-where, when kids come from 1-child families, where there's no competition for resources, the parents naturally would put all their investments on the one child, whether the kid is a boy or girl. This is an irony not well recognized by many, at least not yet.)What's not fully acknowledged, however, is also the fact that many Chinese women can afford to continue to work outside and hold up half of the skies even after they have become parents of young kids precisely because they know their own parents would be on hand to help care for their children. Not to mention in China, given the large supply of migrant workers, affordable domestic helpers are readily available even if their own parents, for whatever reason, can't help them out.Below are a couple of links about the family structures of Japan and China. I found Imamura's essay on the changes of Japanese family structure to be particularly helpful.http://www.columbia.edu/cu/weai/exeas/resources/pdf/japanese-family-imamura.pdfFAMILIES IN CHINA: LINEAGES, MARRIED LIFE, EXTENDED FAMILIES AND GENDER ROLES

Great question. You're welcome to read my article on Forbes.com where I discuss this issue: http://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2011/05/13/chinas-growing-problem-of-too-many-single-men/***In reply for requests to repost my original article, here you can read it below:China's Growing Problem Of Too Many Single MenIn the Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, there is a fantastic article entitled “The Demographic Future” by Nicholas Eberstadt, where he introduces what the world of 2030 will look like from a demographic standpoint. As he explains:“It is already possible to draw a reasonably reliable profile of the world’s population in 2030. This is, of course, because the overwhelming majority of those who will inhabit the world 20 years from now are already alive. As a result, one can make some fairly confident estimates of important demographic trends, including manpower availability, the growth in the number of senior citizens, and the resulting support burden on workers.”Mr. Eberstadt spends a portion of his essay on China’s future situation, and he paints an outlook most people familiar with China’s demographic trends have known for some time: a doubling of the number of senior citizens, a shrinking of the younger working class, and rudimentary social welfare and pension systems incapable of coping with the massive imbalance.This coming reality is shared by the U.S. and all developed nations, except China’s is pushed to the extremes because of its much larger population, much poorer per capita income, much lower education levels and a more ill-equipped pension system.Yet, for all these colossal national challenges, Eberstadt’s essay adds one more demographic trend unique to China that will have significant social and cultural implications:“…China will face a growing number of young men who will never marry due to the country’s one-child policy, which has resulted in a reported birth ratio of almost 120 boys for every 100 girls…By 2030, projections suggest that more than 25% of Chinese men in their late 30s will never have married. The coming marriage squeeze will likely be even more acute in the Chinese countryside, since the poor, uneducated and rural population will be more likely to lose out in the competition for brides.”Can you even begin to comprehend living in a society where 1 in every 4 adult men you meet will have never married, and not by choice? How could this change the social and cultural dynamics of China?Here are some ideas to get you pondering:Men Marrying Younger WomenIf a man cannot find a woman to marry in his peer group, perhaps he will find greater opportunity to marry a girl of a younger generation. By then, perhaps this man will have saved a little more money and may be desirable enough for a younger woman (and that young woman’s family) to consider. In fact, this is already a part of China’s reality today. It is quite common to meet Chinese couples where the man is 10, 20 or 30 years older than his wife. Chinese men are already putting off marriage until they can properly afford to provide for a wife and family. Chinese pragmatism and a continued income-imbalance based on gender play roles here. Perhaps the demographics of 2030 will show this trend to strengthen and become even more commonplace in the population instead of shrinking.Sexuality in QuestionThere is great support on both sides of the argument as to whether homosexuality is a genetic or social outcome. However, if you are persuaded that homosexuality is in part influenced by social factors, then it is worthwhile to explore what impact such a large population of unmarried men might have on the issue of sexual orientation. There is already a thriving LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community and subculture in China, but as ‘coming out’ continues to find acceptance and support in the younger generations, will this significant gender imbalance have any effect on the perspective of the LGBT community in the China’s future mainstream consciousness?Anger and FrustrationThe prospect of never finding a life partner can be one of the greatest fears in a person’s life. In a culture like China’s, where the mainstream societal expectation continues to put heavy emphasis on progeny, family network strength and family unit establishment as a benefit to status-building, for these one in four adult Chinese males, being single adds extra dimensions of undesirability. Deep personal anger and frustrations must inevitably be a byproduct of these societal pressures.If these single men will be found predominantly in a single demographic–namely rural, poor and uneducated men–what we might see is the emergence of a distinct subgroup of people, or a new class segregation. An entire class of potentially angry, frustrated, relatively poor and uneducated single men can mean serious threats to societal stability, if this group builds a class identity that feels antagonized by society as a whole. China’s history is full of examples when a group lashes out in defiance and/or violence. This potential new class of single, frustrated men will number in the tens of millions in 2030.Resilience of Chinese EnduranceThere are also a number of examples in history of the Chinese (and other Asian cultures) enduring harsh, distressed, unfair circumstances for generations. It speaks to the resilience and strength of Chinese culture in helping the particular afflicted group align its interests with the general collective society, enabling them to live out their lives enduring the pains of their life situation.Perhaps this group of single men will not affect anything socially or culturally, but instead stay silent and endure their circumstance as other groups of Chinese have done in the past. For this to happen though will depend on the state and strength of China’s collective culture in the coming 20 years.——-The Chinese government has been aware of these demographic trends for some time now. They have known, likely before the rest of the world did, that China’s fertility rate fell below the minimum population-replacement fertility rate (2.1 children per family) more than two decades ago. So why hasn’t the government done anything if it can see the problems that may lie ahead?The more immediate challenges China faces must be addressed first. Enacting and maintaining the one-child policy alleviated growing pressures on agriculture and natural resources to give China a chance to shift industries and redirect capital into transforming China into an industrial nation and then a privatized economy. Without first accomplishing the short-term goals, China will never be in a position with the right resources to solve any longer-term issues.Second, having a unified, single-minded governing body and a mass society that generally trusts and believes in the decisions of its government does have its unique advantages. And one of those is the ability to enact sweeping and often extreme changes very quickly. The Chinese government thirty years ago asked a nation to limit child bearing to one per family. It is not inconceivable that the same government can ask this same nation thirty years later to double its children–for the betterment of society.While the official government rhetoric up until now has shown no changes in the One Child Policy, we are starting to see experimentation in a few selected demographics, and the creation of small policy loopholes that are allowing more Chinese families to legally have more than one child. A good friend of mine, who is a former U.N. officer working on the issue of China’s birth and fertility, concurs with the expectation that China will sooner rather than later reverse its stance on the one-child policy and devise some new form of incentive to drive birthrates up.The question is whether the incentives will be enough. One of the biggest concerns facing Chinese families today is how to afford raising one child, let alone two. As a recent article from Reuters explains, some couples who have the opportunity to have a second child still choose only to have one as the costs of living and education are so substantial. In our own research work at China Youthology, we observe an increasing number of young post-80’s and 90’s kids who say they have no desire to have any children at all. They’re simply not interested in a life with parenting responsibilities.What this could all mean for the Chinese government is that something a bit stronger than incentives may be needed in order for fertility rates to rise again. But if there is any country that has the political audacity and ability to implement something so drastic, it is China.However, for this coming generation of frustrated, single men, any policy changes now are too little too late. This emerging reality is almost here. The only thing we can do now is develop a richer and stronger Chinese culture so they can find some relief from any feelings of alienation or frustration. New initiatives that will help cohesion of family, community and collective social units will be integral in enabling those unable to find a life-partner to cope and have other life-meanings to pursue.*****As post-script I'll also add another possibility that I learned about after having written this article - actually two occurrences some of my peers are seeing already:1) The importing of wives:There are Chinese men opting to 'buy' wives from impoverished south east asian countries, as their affordability is acceptable to these Chinese men.2) The sharing of one wife:A group of men may pool their money together to afford one wife, to perform the duties of wife for a group of men together.

I am one of those data points. One of the plaintiffs sounds exactly like me: an Asian-American valedictorian applying to the Class of 2014 with a 36 ACT and several extracurriculars.Emotional anecdotes and knee-jerk responses are tempting. I indulged earlier (unwisely?), because if there is anything I feel I can anecdote about, it’s being an Chinese-American applicant to the Harvard Class of 2014, and growing up in an immigrant subculture that that is intensely focused on education and top schools.But now I want graphs. Tables. Numbers. A news article, while nice, is not much better than emotional anecdotes or stereotypes.It took me some time, but I found them!Primarily from the plaintiffs’ Statement of Material Facts and other documents. Harvard has some too. These sources are obviously biased — there’s some fighting about what subsets and controls to use in the regressions — but they include a lot of actual admissions data, so let’s dig into the numbers, shall we?Warning: Long answer with tables and charts. I have largely avoided the contested regressions and stuck to the actual data, though the plaintiffs have excluded legacies, recruited athletes, and Dean’s List applicants from their tables of deciles and Personal scores.(This answer is subject to obsolescence if new information is released in the ongoing litigation.)Here’s how Asian-American and White applicants stack up in four “Profile” categories, which are intended to be race-neutral (that’s right, this isn’t even the “Affirmative Action” part of the lawsuit):As you can see, a higher percentage of Asian-Americans than white applicants excel in Academic and Extracurricular, while the opposite is true in Personal and Athletic. Slightly more white applicants are “well-rounded” in three or more categories.What do these categories mean? Here’s what we know:Academic: “grades, test scores, and other typical measures of academic achievement, such as nationally recognized competitions or awards”1: “has submitted academic work of some kind that is reviewed by a faculty member”Only ~100 applicants per year receive a rating of 1.Aside: enough applicants have academic publications there’s a separate category for them?! This must be quite rare for a high schooler if they haven’t been coached by their PhD parents. On the other hand, I know a first-gen college student who joined a scientific mailing list out of personal interest and drew the attention of a local researcher, leading to first-author publications, so it can be done. A well-earned 1 right there.2: has “perfect, or near-perfect, grades and testing, but no evidence of substantial scholarship or academic creativity.”Interesting choice of words, “academic creativity”.Plaintiff and I are probably 2s. I scored better on some tests than them and other plaintiffs, but at Harvard, perfect and near-perfect merit the same Academic score. Tragic.Extracurricular: “extracurricular activities, community employment, and family commitments”1: [redacted, but probably international and national-level accomplishments]2: “significant school, and possibly regional accomplishments” — for example, “student body president or captain of the debate team and the leader of multiple additional clubs.”Athletic: “athletic achievements” [scores redacted, but 1 is probably Olympic- and international-level athletes; recruited athletes can’t be far behind]Personal: “a variety of ‘subjective’ factors,” including… “character traits”, “positive personality,” … “humor, sensitivity, grit, leadership, integrity, helpfulness, courage, kindness and many other qualities”1: “outstanding” personal skills2: “very strong” skills3: “generally positive” skills4: “bland or somewhat negative or immature”5: “questionable personal qualities”6: “worrisome personal qualities”There are case studies used by the Admissions Office and interviewers as examples of “distinguishing excellences” and how to evaluate candidates in the context of their circumstances. The Casebook excerpts have been redacted, to protect the applicants and stymie zealous college preppers, but they reflect an obsession with using context and personal qualities “to distinguish among the many academically strong candidates in its pool”:Definitions out of the way, here’s the data.This a table of the percentages of applicants with “outstanding” and “very strong” Personal scores. You can see both the Personal scores assigned by the alumni interviewers, as well as those of the admissions office, which is based on the interview report (if available), personal essays, teacher recommendations, school background, and more. The data is arranged by race (columns) and academic index decile (top to bottom, worst to best). The academic index used here is not the Academic score, but calculated from only GPA and test scores, then used to separate the applicants into 10 deciles of about 13,000 students each.For reference, applicants of different races are not equally distributed across academic deciles, so the overall Personal scores are skewed accordingly:I also got really tired of squinting at these numbers, so I squinted at them one last time and made graphs:Takeaway points from this data:Academic index (used by the plaintiffs) is very different from Academic score (used by Harvard admissions).Comparing the first bar graph to last line graph, an Academic score of 2 (“perfect or near-perfect”) corresponds roughly to Academic index 6. That is, about half of all applicants have “perfect or near-perfect” GPA and test scores.You could almost fill the entering class (~1,600) by admitting only applicants with Academic index 10 (~4,000 applicants over 4 years). That group is a bit more than 50% Asian, 35% white, 3% Hispanic, less than 1% black, and the rest “other/decline to state”, presumably also white and Asian applicants.Harvard admissions does not officially distinguish between perfect and near-perfect GPA/SAT/ACT. Everyone over decile 6 is lumped into Academic score 2. (Academic score 1 is reserved for faculty-reviewed academic submissions.) Asian Americans are over-represented in deciles 8+, edging ever closer to “perfect”.Academic index and Personal scores are positively correlated for all races. Surprising — not what I expected from Harvard’s description. This suggests that Personal may actually mean something like “inspirational” and “talks/writes like an intellectual”. Personal != personality, unless you believe kindness somehow tracks with SAT score.Speculation: Is the bonus to black and Hispanic applicants in higher deciles in part due to “Wow, you’re so articulate”-style prejudice? Black and Hispanic applicants are less common in those deciles; they must really stand out to application readers.Speculation: Perhaps more whites and Asians “study to the test” to attain higher standardized test scores. This strategy can improve your SAT score but is unlikely to improve your ability to “talk/write like an intellectual”. Disproportionate hard work may put less-talented students in the upper academic deciles, where they drag down the Personal scores of everyone else. (Use of test prep services is not reported in application data, but in one of the voluntary freshman surveys, it was highest in Asians, then whites.)Oh alumni interviewers. I love you and your grade inflation. You basically gave half of all interviewees the highest possible scores on the Personal rating. The Admission Office was not nearly so kind.Most people are more personable in person. It probably takes a lot of writing skill to be personable in an essay.Different sources of data: The interviewer is evaluating their in-person experience, while the office is reading essays, recommendation letters, and the interview report. The office also has access to financial and high school quality information.Asian Americans have great Academic scores, better than whites — how can their average Personal score be lower?At almost every academic decile, alumni interviewers gave top scores to fewer Asian-American applicants than applicants of other races. (They come out slightly ahead overall because they have a high average academic index.)It was reported that the in-person interviewers gave Asian Americans better scores than the admissions office. While that is true, they also gave everyone better scores. They actually show the same trend as the admissions office.At almost every academic decile, the admissions office gave top scores to fewer Asian-American applicants than applicants of other races. The differences between races is more apparent in the admissions office.Taken together, there were ~4% more whites with high Personal scores from the Admissions Office than Asian Americans, while there are ~1% more among Asian Americans in the interviews. In the highest decile, the disparity is ~7% and 1%, respectively, in favor of whites.Racial disparities are larger in the higher academic deciles — the ones where Asian Americans dominate, and the ones where the serious culling of applicants will take place. The lower deciles are less important because almost no applicants (of any race) in those deciles had a chance at admission in the first place.I’d like to appreciate for a moment what an interesting strategy it was to publicly cast this as a battle between Asian-American and white applicants.When you look at those graphs, is it really the red and blue lines that seem the most different? This data is clearly far more damning to African American and Hispanic applicants.Edward Blum must have realized after the #BeckyWithTheBadGrades case that Asian Americans have great grades and white people are an acceptable target. Better to have a weakly supported narrative about rescuing Asians from elitist racist white people than a stronger case pitting Asians against black people. No one wants to be rejected in favor of some rich white private school kid.Whatever. That’s not the point.The point is, they’re biased against Asian Americans and in favor of African Americans (and Hispanics and finally whites, in that order).Well, I could think of other reasons than bias.We don’t know what “Personal” means. Harvard’s redacted all those juicy details and suggested vague but value-laden traits like “kindness” and “humor”, which are very odd traits to be positively correlated with SAT score. Of course, they have to be vague, or they’ll see a sudden influx of applicants remarkably like the ones in the documents, but it sure looks bad if all you can say to defend yourself is [redacted].In the absence of confirmation from internal Harvard documents, but in line with what everyone already knows about writing a college personal essay, Personal probably owes a lot to Interesting or Unusual.This means you’re screwed if your profile (and background) looks too much like anyone else’s. That’s not fair. It’s especially unfair to immigrants and children thereof, whose characteristics tend to cluster tightly around the requirements for US visas and the cultural values of their communities.I don’t think the admissions office could ever own up to that. At least Americans generally agree on what it looks like to be artistic, humorous, confident, etc. Those things are usually considered important positive traits. Virtuous, even.But Interesting? How is it fair to use something so arbitrary to determine who deserves entry into the Hallowed Halls of Our Greatest and Most August Institutions of Learning™?Can’t you just buy Interesting, like going on a backpacking trip through South America while creating a documentary about migrant farm workers’ orphaned children? Woe to the ordinary, who lack the connections for an internship with a leader in [Something Cool], the money to go gallivanting off in pursuit of adventure, or the poverty for a heartwarming tale of persevering against all odds!What even is Interesting?Maybe an unusual sport or extracurricular, something that causes the reader to think, “I’ve never met anyone who _____ before.”It could mean rural or from an underrepresented state:It could mean that you’re interested in doing something other than the Asian-American favorite, “Medicine or health”, perhaps even expressing interest in the whiter “Government or law” and “Arts, communications, design, or social service”:While we’re at it, being an Asian who is dismissive of liberal arts education is probably not a very good way to get into a liberal arts school. It may reflect a fundamental disconnect[1][2] between what Harvard thinks a Harvard education should be and what the average Asian thinks (any) education should be. You’ll have an easier time getting in if your educational philosophy matches the school you want to get into. While laser-focused math/science types abound, they are much less common (and may have been subjected to more stringent selection) than well-lopsided students with a few different strengths.Or maybe they’re taking your family background into account, too, when trying to gauge your passion for medicine or science:But… Why are those things bad?Isn’t it crazy that the advantages our parents fought so hard for — getting STEM jobs to support us, buying a more expensive house in the right school district, making sure we did extracurriculars, cultivating our interest in STEM, paying for enrichment programs and all the activities we could fit in our schedules — that all those supposed advantages are counted against us, because they’re stereotypical, and we didn’t have as many barriers to overcome on our path to excellence? Is Asian American academic achievement less valuable because it doesn’t reflect innate intelligence, but parental involvement and hard work?Don’t you value parental involvement and hard work?It’s almost like Harvard favors people who excel despite their background more than people who excel because of it. Parental involvement and a good upbringing mask the underlying talent of the student. Meanwhile, the rest of the world usually cares about performance, regardless of the cause.Would the same characteristics be praised if they belonged to an African-American student? A white student?And after all that, then you have to prove that you’re unique and special, but if your application reader has already seen too many people like you, your specialness goes down.But surely there can’t be that many Asian Americans with similar profiles?These racial categories are so broad and artificial, they don’t even capture all the relevant stereotypes/archetypes.There is huge diversity in Asian Americans, though in conversational American English it tends to mean the plurality East Asian group, and in college admissions, tends to focus on Chinese Americans. (Thanks, Amy Chua.) So, are South Asians treated the same way as East Asians? Southeast Asians? (Data on Filipino-American representation suggests no: Filipinos are underrepresented at most selective of UC campuses, after the removal of race from admissions.)Almost 80% of Asian American adults are foreign-born[3], so their children will dominate aggregate statistics like these, but what about Asian Americans who have lived in the US for multiple generations? Are assimilated Asians scored similarly to white Americans?Are white applicants more diverse in life background and interests than Asian-American applicants?Don’t wealthy white kids have access to the same advantages Asians are often cited for using, like pricey prep schools and SAT tutors? Is the admissions office also docking their points on Personal?What about children of African immigrants, who have similar opinions about education and STEM careers as Asian immigrants? Do people just assume that every African-American applicant had to overcome larger life obstacles by default, and thus get a higher Personal score?The statistician for Harvard added those “life background” variables (rural/urban, type of extracurriculars, parental occupation, school quality, neighborhood income, intended career) to his analysis, and came away with the conclusion that once you take those into account, race doesn’t explain the difference between white and Asian-American admission rates. It does still strongly affect African Americans and Hispanics, but apparently we’re not talking about them.But… when does using those “life background” variables cross the line into discriminating against a specific group (racial or otherwise) disproportionately representing a particular “life background”?What else?Culture shapes your personality, either in conforming to or rejecting it, as anyone familiar with the long history of Asian-American angst literature can tell you.Pictured above: prelude to Chinese-Canadian angst. See also the extremely heavy-handed application of Chinese-American angst in Paper Menagerie.I don’t attribute these differences to genetics or “race”. We know very well how upbringing can shape academic outcomes and personality. Anyone can be a Tiger Parent. We just have more of them.We’re also aware that stereotype also includes low sociability/creativity, even as we know many friends who don’t fit that stereotype at all.We can point to charts and surveys about differences in values[4], personality[5], social anxiety[6] , self-esteem[7][8], motivation[9][10], and so on. None of this Academic vs. Personal debate is new. I recall a lot of people being upset by Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, which I interpreted as “superior in some ways but not in others”.Those factors are also part of the ~4% difference in the average Admissions Office Personal score. At the same time, those factors might be an excuse.Here is what I sometimes suspect my face signifies to other Americans: an invisible person, barely distinguishable from a mass of faces that resemble it. A conspicuous person standing apart from the crowd and yet devoid of any individuality. An icon of so much that the culture pretends to honor but that it in fact patronizes and exploits. Not just people “who are good at math” and play the violin, but a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots who simply do not matter, socially or culturally.I’ve always been of two minds about this sequence of stereotypes. On the one hand, it offends me greatly that anyone would think to apply them to me, or to anyone else, simply on the basis of facial characteristics. On the other hand, it also seems to me that there are a lot of Asian people to whom they apply…“There is this automatic assumption in any legal environment that Asians will have a particular talent for bitter labor,” he says, and then goes on to define the word coolie, a Chinese term for “bitter labor.” “There was this weird self-selection where the Asians would migrate toward the most brutal part of the labor.”By contrast, the white lawyers he encountered had a knack for portraying themselves as above all that. “White people have this instinct that is really important: to give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. You’re a quarterback. It’s a kind of arrogance that Asians are trained not to have. Someone told me not long after I moved to New York that in order to succeed, you have to understand which rules you’re supposed to break. If you break the wrong rules, you’re finished. And so the easiest thing to do is follow all the rules. But then you consign yourself to a lower status. The real trick is understanding what rules are not meant for you.- Paper Tigers, one of the most prominent post-Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother thinkpieces of the Asian-American angst genre.Give off the impression that they’re only going to do the really important work. It occurs to me that it’s the kind of naive arrogance that could go over really well in a college essay. A shibboleth for the elite.Just because something is more common in one group [of surveyed college students] doesn’t mean you can make assumptions about individuals. If there are 4% more white applicants given the top Personal score, that doesn’t mean that all white people have 4% more “personality” than all Asian Americans. A statistical statement is not a categorical statement.We can’t make assumptions about people based on their race, gender, or any other adjective. We have to look at them as whole people, with their own backgrounds and unique circumstances. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking — those “unique” circumstances that overlap with other H1B visa holders — and all that space for subjective personal judgment and cultural preferences — is what got us in this mess in the first place. Even if you consider every person as an individual, without stereotyping, if there are average differences by race, the aggregate outcome will show average differences by race.Maybe we should just judge students based on the most meritocratic, objective, and unbiased measurements: grades and test scores [that my racial group is really good at, and correlate with income].But that just pushes the problem further down the road. Those subjective things like “leadership potential” and “communication skills” are important in real life. They will come back as a bamboo ceiling. We’ll have to deal with people giving us low Personal scores for the rest of our lives if we don’t have the cultural intelligence to improve those skills or advocate for our own cultural values[11].This reminds me of the gender wage gap[12], which can be explained by women’s job choices, personal values, childcare, work experience, flexible hours, maternity leave, and so on. We have a culture that shapes women’s personalities, leading to aggregate inequalities. Maybe the 20% gap isn’t entirely sexism. But biased attitudes are real, especially in institutions that feel no pressure to change.“Lean in” by understanding how your social behaviors will be perceived by others, and how to change them. But if you’re being judged by your stereotype, not your actual attributes, sue the hell out of them. (Bonus: This will demonstrate your assimilation to the ancient American tradition of litigation.)The two legal filings are basically in agreement that there are non-quantitative factors affecting Asian-American admission. The plaintiffs say the non-quantitative part is a racial quota enforced in part by artificially deflating Personal scores by race. The defendants come just shy of saying that the Personal score is a reflection of things like the above tables and that “uniqueness” is negatively correlated to the number of other applicants with the same background.It’s funny how they edge around it. Maybe they can’t explain themselves, because the explanation itself would sound racist. Or it’d mess up their legal strategy.This Personal score is just the tip of an iceberg. I don’t know how much can be attributed to bias rather than underlying differences in cultural values, or overvaluing unusual backgrounds. But if you’re worried about race in Personal, worry even more about race in the Overall score, where it’s explicitly allowed to be taken into consideration.I’ll be quite honest: my education would have been worse without intelligent classmates of all different perspectives. African Americans, South Asians, Europeans, and so on, but also people who were Republican, communist, atheist, poet, Buddhist, Jewish, evangelical, farmer, military, queer, Muslim, dancer, Kentuckian, Texan, homeless, sled dog caretaker, BDSM enthusiast*, whatever. (I met all of them and more.) *maybe not a good topic for your essay thoughAsian Americans have the rare opportunity to learn from the best of two cultures, if we manage to evade the worst of both. As a result, I believe that exposing students to different cultures is part of a world-class education. That means admissions will subjectively judge students on what their personalities and values might bring to the campus environment.But geez, Harvard, I wish you could do that without implying that our culture is the least special of all of them.Footnotes[1] Whither the Liberal Arts at Harvard? | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson[2] As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry[3] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2015/05/21/113690/asian-immigrants-in-the-unites-states-today/[4] Career Development Attributes and Occupational Values of Asian American and White American College Students[5] Culture and Personality Among European American and Asian American Men[6] APA PsycNET Login[7] ACCULTURATION, COMMUNICATION PATTERNS, AND SELF-ESTEEM AMONG ASIAN AND CAUCASIAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS[8] PsycNET[9] APA PsycNET Login[10] Motivation and Mathematics Achievement: A Comparative Study of Asian‐American, Caucasian‐American, and East Asian High School Students[11] Cracking the Bamboo Ceiling[12] What is the gender pay gap and is it real?: The complete guide to how women are paid less than men and why it can’t be explained away