Friday, April 19, 2013
YingYing Shang: An Open Letter to Suzy Lee Weiss
www.huffingtonpost.com: Dear Suzy Lee Weiss,
My name is YingYing Shang, and I am also a current high school senior. To be specific, an Asian-American female from a relatively wealthy suburb of Philadelphia.
Going into the college admissions process, I was just as nervous as we all were. Just like you, I weighed my stats. I realized that if we were strictly talking profiles, I was perhaps even more disadvantaged than you were. Asian-Americans are an "overrepresented minority" at top colleges and need an SAT score of 140 points higher than average to be accepted to the same places. My parents are not "tiger parents," despite being immigrants, and like you, I've also never picked up a violin in my life. For three years, I was the slowest person on my school track team.
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This is great. When I read Suzy Lee Weiss' letter, I shared some of the same testaments as YingYing Shang did in his response to Suzy. While I do remember feeling the frustration that Suzy felt during the college admission process (and certainly observed this frustration impacting my peers as well), I look back now and realize I was just trying to blame someone or something for the tedious, stressful process. But I shouldn't have, and don't really know why I did now, looking back at it. Part of it could have been this attitude and culture that Suzy embodies in her letter to college admissions officers. And like YingYing Shang, this trend is concerning and could be dangerous for our youth. Instead of taking the time to complain and instead of finding people to blame, we should really be finding the things we are most passionate about, taking the time and energy to pursue them, and let our hard work speak for itself. And if your passion and hard work isn't enough for a college, maybe you aren't meant to be at that college in the first place.
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