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My brother-in-law is half Vietnamese and half Chinese. He asked me to review his personal statement and help him with college applications a few years back. I e
by scruple 6y ago
My brother-in-law is half Vietnamese and half Chinese. He asked me to review his personal statement and help him with college applications a few years back. I encouraged him to self-identify as Vietnamese instead of Chinese. He was accepted to multiple Ivy's (but ended up staying in state in the end) where his Chinese friends were all rejected. They are otherwise indistinguishable. Even their personal statements were all more-or-less on the same level, at least the few that I helped out and recall. They all learned a pretty valuable lesson there.
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoWhy is Vietnamese the right kind of Asian?
- scruple 6y agoIt's not that Vietnamese is the "right kind" of Asian. It's that Chinese-Americans dominate the landscape compared to Vietnamese-Americans. So here you have a Vietnamese-American who has excelled (just ever so slightly, in his case) beyond his immediate Chinese-American peers, which made him a standout in that regard.
- usaar333 6y agoTrue, but Vietnamese Americans are well represented in undergrad at least. In fact about double the white representation in UCs (https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/disaggregated-data https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/disaggrega...)
- scruple 6y agoWhat's the representation at Yale, I wonder. Without checking I just assume that (from living in SoCal for a long time) California has most of the country's Vietnamese-Americans.
- reaperducer 6y agoI just assume that (from living in SoCal for a long time) California has most of the country's Vietnamese-Americans There's a very large Vietnamese population in Houston. Probably other cities.
- scruple 6y agoI'm finally off my phone, so I had a look. There's a Wikipedia on it here [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_large_Vietnamese-American_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_large...
- sizzle 6y agoBy that logic, what about Taiwanese?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- scruple 6y agoWell that's complicated. I believe that it's been made deliberately confusing (the geopolitical issues between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China are at least known to exist today) and it's pretty hard to talk about. I wanna tap out of this conversation before I even say anything about it because I feel like it's way over my head. But, in the very specific context of what I was saying regarding university admissions in 2017, I don't think there was a lot that a Taiwanese-American person could do to distinguish themselves from being labeled or otherwise considered Chinese-American.
- pedroma 6y agoIt's like finding a rare Pokemon, except human.
- kabacha 6y agoVietnamese Americans: 1.3M[1] Chinese Americans: 2.5M[2] It's almost double, but is it really on a rare pokemon level? 1 - https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vietnamese-immigrants-united-states-5 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vietnamese-immigrant... 2 - https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/chinese-immigrants-united-states-2018 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/chinese-immigrants-u...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pedroma 6y agoI'm curious to see how many applications they get from ethnically Chinese and Vietnamese students. My guess is there's much more ethnically Chinese applicants (which includes international students).
- xapata 6y agoFor a light-hearted take, Google Ali Wong's bit about Jungle Asians. The gist is that different waves of immigrants from different countries ended up with wildly different average socioeconomic outcomes in the US. Even different waves from the same country. Sadly, cohort matters. Note that Vietnamese here is good, because in other situations, it ain't good. The college admissions context is a confounder that flips the desirability of being a particular ethnicity.
- sbierwagen 6y agoAverage household income, Vietnamese American, 2018: $67,331 Average household income, Chinese American, excluding Taiwanese, 2018: $91,944 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
- DataWorker 6y agoThere are simply more Chinese so brain drain will be more pronounced. But I would also speculate that a larger percentage of Vietnamese are second generation or more. Very true in little Saigon. Poor Vietnamese who were born in the USA live in east San Jose, Chinese live in Cupertino. Very different levels of privilege.
- scruple 6y agoYou see this in Orange county, too. Garden Grove and Westminster vs. Irvine.
- xapata 6y agoThat would only be true if the US allowed only the same number of immigrants from each country. I don't think that's been the policy historically. I'm not familiar with the current policy. People immigrate for different reasons at different times. The causes combine with changing US immigration policies and the dynamics of preferential attachment to diaspora clusters to create distinct cohorts that have similar socioeconomic outcomes.
- ucgradtemp 6y agoI was accepted by a graduate program at one of the more selective UCs. An alum of my college who was a current student at the UC contacted me to invite me to a recruiting shindig for accepted minority students (she knew I was Asian from the club activities on my resume). But when she found out what my specific racial background was (half white and half Chinese), she said I would not be invited. The only people who were invited to the recruiting trip were those from other Asian backgrounds (anything but Chinese/Korean/Japanese), or students who were black or hispanic. Instead of an all-expense paid visit spanning from Thurs-Sun and including sitting in on lectures, I was allowed to come for a single Sunday-only event. I spent more money on that trip than I had ever spent on anything in my life, except for my college computer. I was pretty ticked that the school was treating different minorities differently, and that for all the money I spent I couldn't even visit a class in session (since I was only allowed on Sunday). I remember meeting a half-Chinese / half-Vietnamese guy there, who regaled me with tales of the wining and dining that the favored-minority students had enjoyed. I should note that this was way after Prop 209 (barring affirmative action at the UCs) was passed. I ended up attending the UC, and I asked an administrator about how recruiting trips like this were legal (he happened to be a lawyer). He gave some hand-wavey answer about federal pre-emption that, if true, would have completely gutted Prop 209.