Week 2- Ashley Shuen Section A02

“Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety – Ethnic, Gender, and Generational Difference in Asian American College Access and Choices” references a book by Amy Chua about Chinese Americans, their children, and their success in higher education. The article examines how Asian American students tackle the college application/choosing process and concludes that choosing colleges is beyond the "Tiger mom" pressure. As noted in the chart (Table 3, pg 26) there are a wide range of reasons that high school seniors may choose to attend/apply to specific colleges such as family approval, distance from home, academic reputation etc. In table 4, it is noted that high school guidance counselors play a larger role (67%) in providing information about colleges to students than parents. In my own high school experience, my guidance counselor was the one who played the largest role in helping me find colleges that suited my needs and met with me constantly. Although there is a misbelief that tiger mom's force their children to attend the most prestigious Ivy Leagues with the most high paying majors, it is shown that there are a wide variety of influences on the students. 

This article is especially prevalent in my own life seeing as my sisters and I grew up in a fairly intense Asian household. Each child is different and is influenced by different factors but my mother played a large role into my siblings' college decisions in regards to prestige and academic excellence. However during my college applications, I was allowed more freedom to pursue a variety of schools and mostly received assistance from my guidance counselor. My experience supports the article's conclusion of diversity of the pursuit of education among Asian-Americans and such conclusions further demonstrate that Asian Americans are not the stereotype  "nerds who are good at math and studying". 

Question: From Table 3 it shows that there are a variety of different factors that influence Asian American students' college choices, how do those factors change among other ethnicities and their college choices?

References: 
Poon, O., & Byrd, A. (2013). Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety – Ethnic, Gender, and Generational Difference in Asian American College Access and Choices. Journal of College Admissions. 
Sean Nealon on September 22, 2014. “Hold On, Tiger Mom.” UCR Today