Students in Asian Voices Meet With College Counseling

Members of the Asian Voices (AV) Club, led by senior Nick Song, gathered on Friday with college counselors to share their opinions on the pressures placed on Asian students during the college application process, affirmative action and college counseling at Exeter.

Song and senior Tim Han organized the meeting, and were joined by Director of College Counseling Elizabeth Dolan, Associate Director of College Counseling Sherry Hernandez, Psychologist Szu-Hui Lee and Physical Education Instructor Bruce Shang. One of Song’s underlying reasons for hosting the meeting was to further the College Counseling Office (CCO) and its understanding of the challenges that Asian students face when applying to colleges.

“The CCO tells us that the process is equal for everyone, so when people don’t get into schools, they blame it on themselves. Sometimes a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re Asian,” Song said. “Ultimately, not telling them about this is unfair.”

“The CCO tells us that the process is equal for everyone, so when people don’t get into schools, they blame it on themselves. Sometimes a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re Asian,” Song said. “Ultimately, not telling them about this is unfair.”

He added that for a school where roughly 23 percent of the student body is Asian, according to the online factbook, he would like if there were more than one Asian college counselor.

Although Dolan had previously met with Asian students on the Diversity Council, this was the first time a direct conversation was held between the CCO and an Asian affinity group to address issues specific to Asian students.

“[Song] cited many concerns that he and his peers have about the college search process, so I suggested a meeting with CCO,” said Associate Dean of Multicultural Affairs Hadley Camilus, who helped organize the meeting. “I encouraged dialogue with CCO as a fact-finding mission and an opportunity to relay concerns.”

During the meeting, students brought up the many difficulties they found when trying to apply to college as an Asian. For example, many felt that they were expected to have an exceptionally strong standardized test score and GPA. Lower Khinezin Win described this as “a stereotype that’s impossible to achieve,” and shared stories of how her parents had pressured her to achieve high test scores to match with the local Asian community.

Students also talked about how they find ways to distinguish themselves from the rest of the applicant pool. Song recalled childhood memories where his parents pushed him to invest time in activities including Boy Scouts and swimming because they were considered “non-Asian.”

Senior Anna Clark explained the difficulty of being unique as an Asian applicant. “You get reduced to the activities you do...The main worry is that you won’t be able to show yourself as a person and how unique you are because of your race,” she said.

Clark, who identifies as half white and half Japanese, said outside of the meeting that her mom “told me specifically that I had to emphasize the halfie aspect of my identity instead of the Asian aspect because she didn’t want that to disadvantage me.”

Many felt they had to conform to certain expectations in terms of their identity as well, such as being proficient in the STEM field, which has negative implications for both those interested in the sciences and the humanities. Upper Daniel Kang mentioned that he was involved in several STEM clubs when he arrived at Exeter. However, after realizing the immense competition there was between Asians in STEM fields, he became discouraged in pursuing science.

Win, however, felt that she was stereotyped against writing because of the small number of Asian peers interested in the same field.

Upper Rajrishi Das felt that there was a “lack of recognition [from the CCO] in that I have to actively suppress aspects that may seem stereotypically Asian in order to appease the college admission office.”

Another concern that many voiced was how Asians and Asian-Americans come from immigrant families that hold very high expectations, but at the same time do not understand how the American college application process works and thus feel an additional layer of stress.

History Instructor Hannah Lim added that “particularly children of immigrants are raised to see academic success as a pathway to upward mobility, which can put a lot of stress on them.”

Upper Adrian Venzon agreed, commenting that he had experienced a great degree of stress because his Philippines-educated parents could not offer much support. “Others are more well prepared. It was only until the beginning of upper year that I knew about SAT subject tests,” he said. “I feel ‘blind.’ ”

International students from Asia also face many of the same problems, which are exacerbated when not only parents, but college counselors, do not understand the particular issues when applying as an Asian international student.

“I never expected [my college counselor] to be an expert in my situation,” Wendi Yan, a senior from Beijing, said. “There’s no way for him to totally understand my situation because he’s a white man working at Exeter. How many international Chinese students do you see here?”

Overall, many students at the meeting agreed that the combination of societal pressures coupled with affirmative action made the college process especially difficult for Asians. Furthermore, Song said that biracial students tended to apply as Caucasian rather than Asian and that this “really affects their racial identity.”

Students and faculty alike acknowledged the importance of affirmative action and bringing equal opportunities to students from different backgrounds. “For sure equal opportunity means taking into account people’s circumstances by some degree,” Clark said.

Mathematics Instructor Brandon Hew added, “Equal opportunity means that everyone applying is evaluated on the merits of what they do and what they might bring to the campus. And I think that race, class and gender are all important factors in that evaluation.”

At the end of the meeting, Dolan emphasized CCO’s commitment to accommodating students of all backgrounds, saying that her office continues to work on hiring the most experienced college counselors with a commitment to diversity.

She added in a separate interview that “the college counselors strive to understand how minority students feel about different issues, topics or concerns. It is important to note that they often extend themselves far beyond what students see in an individual meeting and/or workshop.”

According to Dolan, the meeting was “great” because students shared honestly “what they were feeling in regard to expectations (their own, their family, their friends) about the college process and in particular, the stereotypes associated with being Asian.”

Song was satisfied with how the meeting went and said that the participants covered a significant amount of content in the one-hour conversation. Despite this success, for Song and other AV members, the dialogue is only just beginning. He said, “We are looking forward to having more of these discussions in the future, a goal which CCO says they share.”