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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION
75% of students are Asian in the Fremont Unified School District, one of many school
districts in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley schools are heavily STEM directed, academically
driven, and are highly competitive. In Silicon Valley, it isn’t surprising to see students taking all
AP classes, having jobs, doing internships, volunteering, and taking college classes at the local
community college. It’s a factor of life that seems all too common. This seems wonderful that the
students are so driven until you take a look at the mental health and suicide rates of these
students.
This paper is written based on multiple sources. There are some quotes taken from
articles, some quotes from interviews I conducted with students as well as a teacher and school
administrator, as well as some information taken from my personal experience. This paper is
written heavily quote based as this is a topic that is hard to truly portray and understand without
seeing the point of view from those living in this area. Another format of this paper that revolves
solely on quotes is available at https://siliconvalleyaastudents.tumblr.com/

PART 2 - SILICON VALLEY ENVIRONMENT

There are a lot of predictions to how this environment in Silicon Valley has been created.

Some people believe it’s the parents that fall into the category of “Tiger Moms” while
others blame the academic stress to be stemming from Chinese and Korean influence (Hu, 2016).
Here is what a couple people I talked to commented on what they believe causes the environment
that exists in Silicon Valley. Yohann suspects the expectations set by parents and peers to attend
certain schools and achieve certain grades (Y. Tolentino, personal communication, November
21, 2017). Salazar commented upon the highly educated and highly skilled families brought in
by tech companies that place high expectations upon their children. She also suspects the
proximity to Stanford University is creating competition within the high school level (Y. Salazar,
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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

personal communication, November 22, 2017). Joanne suspects parents seeking opportunities for
their children to have a better life, who then place these beliefs upon their children to excel in
school (J. Shen, personal communication, November 21, 2017).
“​I feel like there are a lot of factors. I do think that the tech boom and the kind of
increased innovation and all these start-ups. And with that, I think there’s a lot of
pressure to compete & do well. There is the duck syndrome. It’s a generalization that
East coast people work hard and they’re content in talking about that a lot, and that
working hard is a lifestyle that you should be proud of. People work hard in Silicon
Valley too, but the duck syndrome is the idea that you have to make it seem easy. The
duck looks calm on the surface, but underneath it is paddling furiously. Something that
you hear a lot here is “I did really well and I barely studied for it” and this natural
talent. That if it comes easy to you and you can do it very easily, then that is what’s
revered and admired. So I think the idea that you have to be super well rounded and that
everything has to be easy to be good like if you work too hard it’s not cool. The influx of
a lot of well educated wealthy Asian immigrants and the influx of workers coming to
silicon valley for good jobs. Immigration from a lot of highly educated people from east
and south Asian countries where the parent’s education system is one that is very
competitive, even more so unhealthy & competitive, then here. Has led to this perfect
storm. If you ask people who went to these schools 30 years ago it wasn’t like that. The
idea of white flight and the influx of Asian immigrants has changed but did the tech boom
cause it? Did immigration come first? It’s a combination of both, it’s hard to say.​” (O.
Yeh, personal communication, November 22, 2017)
This environment created by any number of the things above is causing competition and
comparison in these areas, even some academic competition and focus going so far as to cause
conflicts.
“​Many white parents say they’re leaving because the schools are too academically driven
and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal
arts and extracurricular activities like sports and other personal interests. The two
schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.​” (Liu,
2015)

PART 3 - COMPETITION & COMPARISON

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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

The competitiveness and intense academic rigor don’t just begin once you start high
school or middle school for some students. Sometimes it even starts in elementary school.
“​It’s a common running joke among second-generation Asian Americans that our parents
start us on college prep before we begin potty training. The joke didn’t seem so funny to
me when I was a kid, however. I remember earning minutes of TV by defining vocabulary
words correctly—while I was still in fourth grade. I remember being rewarded for
finishing homework early by getting extra “mommy homework,” which always involved
problem sets and practice exams from a dog-eared stack of Princeton Review test prep.​”
(Fang, 2015)
Life in Silicon Valley provides endless opportunities, but also are paired with tough competition.
Different students are put into different tracks of academic subjects, that become a part of their
social identity and how they are seen by others (Rosin, 2015). Many students feel the immense
pressure to excel not only academically but in their extracurriculars. These students overload
their schedules to try to keep up with the rigor of academics and the stress of trying to get into a
prestigious school.
“​The end goal is academic-based. A lot of people do FBLA or Speech & Debate or Model
UN because they want to get into a good college. It’s very narrow sighted here. It kind of
makes sense cause kids want to go to a good college but at the same time it’s sad because
everyone is working toward something that they might not necessarily have passion for –
I did QuizBowl and Tennis, and those things were fun for me, but at the same time I think
in the back of my mind I thought “how could this benefit me for college apps?” Not that I
did it just for that. It is a plus one. I think a lot of kids definitely factored that into
account.​” (R. Jiang, personal communication, November 22, 2017)
Silicon Valley academics are based heavily on STEM subjects, also known as science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics. This is also a common theme among many start-ups
in this area.
“​You get influenced by your surroundings. I had no interest in CS before 11th​ ​ grade. But
it was at that point a bunch of my friends said “hey we’re going to do this hackathon this
weekend” or “I got this internship at LinkedIn” and I thought this might be a good idea.
So senior year I ended up taking AP Computer Science and that’s mainly because of that
kind of influence. A lot of kids try to pursue a field in engineering and computer science.
This is definitely egged on, living in the Silicon Valley.”​ (R. Jiang, personal
communication, November 22, 2017)

Comparison occur between parents that are comparing their children to others, as well as
between the children themselves comparing grades and activities. This is a common occurrence
that happens to many in Silicon Valley.
“A lot of stress that students face is comparison. Parents get a lot of blame because they
seem like tiger parents or only one-track-minded about college and prestige and there’s
definitely real parts of that. A lot of it is this overall cultural. Culture is implicit in all our
days, our interactions and conversations, what we talk about in our free time, how we
spend our free time. A lot of the kids lives are focused on always doing something
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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

productive, something that has a means to an end for a better future, which isn’t
inherently bad, but when everything you do from 0-18 is only focused on or seems
focused on the end goal of college then it puts this disproportionate value of where you
go determining the rest of your life and your social status. Whereas in the past people’s
statuses were determined by which friend groups they’re in, which might still be the case,
but more and more now it’s very clear where you rank or stack up academically because
everyone talks about that or compares that a lot. So it’s on everybody, we’re all a part of
the culture, the teachers too, what we value in school is we assign a lot of busy work and
we applaud and give awards for certain things that make people want to work harder or
go to more summer camps for science and all this other stuff. And it’s not okay to just not
be productive, or not be maximizing sleeping less, not working your butt off every second.
That used to be more okay. So the different paths to success and lifestyles aren’t really as
applauded as much at a lot of these high-stress schools.​” (O. Yeh, personal
communication, November 22, 2017)

This constant competition causes further problems for students that impact their mental health
and places many expectations upon them.
“​There’s tons of work so kids are stressed about grades. There has been a lot of cases of
mental health, anxiety or depression. And it’s very widespread. Whether or not it’s
diagnosed or recognized or made aware of by the person themselves or by an adult.
There’s a lot of cases that go unrecognized. There’s not a ton of self-awareness or
self-fulfillment, it’s “I have to get this done” to do well, so I can compare well.​” ​(O. Yeh,
personal communication, November 22, 2017)

PART 4 - MENTAL HEALTH & EXPECTATIONS

At some schools, students and teachers joke about the Asian Grade Scale.
“​Asian grade scale:
A = Average; B = Bad; C = Catastrophe; D = Disowned; F = Forever Forgotten.​”
Comments like this are often said jokingly, but there is truth to these statements. Many
well-educated people immigrate to America and expect highly of their children, causing students
to be held to these higher standards to succeed.
This need to achieve causes Asian American students to do well in school, but it comes at
a cost. Of these students, most find their parents hold expectations that are too high and this
causes health to decline for students. When surveyed, more than half of students had answers
that were consistent with signs of depression and burnout (Noguchi, 2009). This level of
achievement leads to many more problems. Asian American students feel pressure to fill the
expectations that their parents have of them and that if they don’t they’re doing something
wrong.
"​I distinctly remember being a freshman in high school, overwhelmed by the belief that
my GPA over the next four years would make or break my life. My daily thought process
was that every homework assignment, every project, every test could be the difference.
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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

The difference between a great college and a mediocre college. The difference between
success and failure. The difference between happiness and misery.​" (Jackson, 2015)

This doesn’t just cause stress, but the rates of anxiety and suicide ideation spikes for Asian
Americans, especially for women. All these factors can really pile upon each other creating
situations of various high stresses that tend to end with depression and anxiety.
“​Some people have other stress [besides academic] like social stress. They feel the need
to conform to what everyone else is doing. A lot of peer pressure. In terms of academic
stress, people want you to go to certain schools or get high grades like 4.0 GPAs. Some
people with depression are mostly through peer and social pressures and the ones who
have anxiety lean more towards academic stress here​.” (Y. Tolentino, personal
communication, November 21, 2017)

Many parents focus so heavily on prestigious schools that sometimes this can cause a blindness
to what values are being placed on their children. These expectations are extraordinary and cause
students to carry the weight of needing to succeed.
“​Failure is not an option… Our “success frame”—can place significant stress on Asian
American children. In short, our children are told that their entire self-worth is
dependent upon getting into a school like Harvard and that if they perform below
expectations on a single exam, they are total failures. How can we not be concerned
about the psychological toll that kind of pressure will have?​”(Fang, 2015)

These students need time to find themselves and feel human. Many students focus their lives so
heavily upon academics that they spend every free moment on something to go towards
academic achievement. The excessive focus on academics put student’s health on the backburner
making it a second priority to academics. When will people realize that there’s a problem that’s
taking children and preventing them from ever having a future? These kinds of situations place
heavy stress on Asian students, causing depression, anxiety, self-destructive behavior, and high
academic stress (Fang, 2015). There needs to be a heavier expansion and emphasis on mental
health.
“​If praise comes only when a child succeeds, the child is likely to develop a sense that his
or her parents’ affection depends upon good grades, or touchdowns, or mastery of a
religious text, or whatever the parents’ priorities might be​.” (Rosin, 2015)

The feelings that occur when faced with failure can be great, even when past records may
be consistently exceptional. Failure causes students to feel worthless and hopeless. Students face
these feelings along with a mix of the hormones they experience while growing up and the
inability to relax and having limited social interactions. These add up to cause students to lack
outlets to express themselves and can cause negative thoughts. These feelings are met with the
option that many students find comforting to stop the pain: Suicide.
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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

PART 5 - SUICIDE
Asian Americans aged 25-34 have the highest suicide rate with 16.8% which have
commonly been due to family and social expectations (Noguchi, 2009).
Some evidence pointing to the developing problems of academic stress that cause mental
health problems is the case of Gunn High School and Palo Alto High School. Gunn High School
is an elite high school that is located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Gunn High School is 43.8%
Asian, with 54% of students scoring a grade of 5. The most common university that students
attended were Stanford University and UC Berkeley (Hu, 2016). The two high schools have a
higher suicide rate than the national average, with it being 4-5 times higher, over a ten year
period. In 2009, within a period of 9 months, 3 Gunn students committed suicide. The school is
located near train tracks often is a common place for students to kill themselves, along with cases
of students hanging themselves (Rosin, 2015). Many of the students that committed suicide
during 2014-2015 were Asian American males (Hu, 2016).
At Palo Alto High School, 12% of students have seriously considered suicide. School
administrators are trained to be careful when discussing kids that committed suicide, as they
must treasure the student’s memory, without romanticizing their deaths. More recently one
student that killed himself was Cameron, a student that was popular in school and seemed to be
succeeding. The other kids who committed suicide previously appeared to be social outcasts or
had clearly known mental illness with obvious struggles, but Cameron’s death had caused a
change, as he was seen as an everyday student.
“The prevailing feeling was: What’s the difference between this kid and my kid? Nothing.
There is no safe space. My kid could be next.” (​Rosin, H., 2015)

Although there has been an absence of suicides, counselors are still overwhelmed with
many students being high-risk students (Rosin, 2015). Many schools lack the appropriate amount
of support for their students and struggle to clearly recognize the mental illnesses and suicidal
thoughts occurring within their student body population.

CONCLUSION
“​(What about the girl taking a summer immersion program to skip ahead and get into AP
French her sophomore year? And that internship your best friend has with a Stanford
professor?) You can’t help but slip into the system of competitive insanity. We are not
teenagers. We are lifeless bodies in a system that breeds competition, hatred, and
discourages teamwork and genuine learning. We lack sincere passion. We are sick. Why
is that not getting through to this community? Why does this insanity that is our school
district continue?​” (Rosin, 2015)
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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

High school tends to be a stressful process regardless of where one lives, as teenagers are
facing college admissions, changing hormones, friendships ending, and much more. Silicon
Valley students must face these difficulties while also facing the competition that exists within
their schools and the expectations placed upon them by their family, peers, and themselves. All
these worries that students face are starting to cause bigger and bigger problems as more students
develop mental illnesses and suicide is being considered by more and more students. There needs
to be greater expansion researching mental illnesses and talking to these students about these
stresses before it’s too late for them.
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Asian American Students in Silicon Valley

Works Cited

Fang, J. (2015). For Asian Americans, standardized testing is its own costly, hyper-competitive
culture. Retrieved from Quartz website:
https://qz.com/424884/for-asian-americans-standardized-testing-is-its-own-costly-hyper-co
mpetitive-culture/

Groves, B. (2016). Asian-American parents bring academic pressure with them. Retrieved from
The Mercury News website:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/04/12/barry-groves-asian-american-parents-bring-acad
emic-pressure-with-them/

Hu, T. (2016). Silicon Valley Suicide Crises. Retrieved from LinkedIn website:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/silicon-valley-suicide-crises-dr-trudy-hu/

Jackson, A. (2015). Jeremy Lin wrote a poignant Facebook post about stress and suicide in
Silicon Valley. Retrieved from Business Insider website:
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-lin-facebook-post-about-stress-and-suicide-in-silico
n-valley-2015-12

Liu, S. (2015). The Tiger Parents of Silicon Valley. Retrieved from SLATE website:
http://www.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/despite-sweetheart-deal-pruitt-was-reporte
dly-a-nightmare-tenant-who-never-took-out-the-trash.html

Noguchi, S. (2009). High grades, high stress for Asian-American students in Bay Area.
Retrieved from The Mercury News website: https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/01/02/
high-grades-high-stress-for-asian-american-students-in-bay-area/

Rosin, H. (2015). The Silicon Valley Suicides. Retrieved from The Atlantic website:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/