Admissions to Advocacy: Navigating the Educational Journey
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So we do have students who come from China and other countries join us in high school. And I do think that when I ask, you know, what do you want to be? Give me anything. Give me like three keywords that describe yourself, like these exploratory questions that they tend to not know how to answer. So I think that's my calling. And that's why I'm in this space. I love

helping them figure this out and we might never figure it out but it's okay we can just figure out the next four years um one one step at a time hi everyone welcome to cultural collision and victoria

In today's episode, we have the privilege of hosting Angela, a dear friend of both of us. We have known her for a long time. Her life journey embodies the pursuit of her education dream. As a Chinese American, her past has been both inspiring and enlightening. Angela's educational odyssey from her early years in China to her experiences as a high school counselor in Princeton

offers a unique perspective on the intersection of culture, education, and identity. We'll delve into her story, exploring her academic achievements, her educational journey at Princeton and Harvard, her insights as a former prestigious institution as an admission officer, and the notion of the model minority. I haven't seen you for a long time in person. I know you recently traveled back to Beijing. How was that trip?

It was great. So I personally haven't been back home since 2018. To me, the reverse culture shock is definitely real. Obviously, the food is amazing, will always be amazing. But I don't even know if the good food could have like compensated for the amount of shock that I experienced when I was back to the place where I grew up. And that

refers to, you know, like the access to news, the type of news that I am reading every single day. And the fact that I think I saw a lot of my friends and I mean, everyone around my age is working now. And I think there's that sense of just vying for competition for the sake of it, rather than being driven by a desire to pursue something that,

they would like I don't know if and and if my friends are listening to this I love all of you um but again like I I saw a lot of just everyone like being busy bodies since like from 7 a.m to

midnight or even later and I just would ask them like is it worth it like what's the point of being so busy and and I don't know if I heard like a really solid answer and of course that that happens in the on the state side like where my friends are really busy in finance or consulting um

But to me, many of them have like a next step, like a clear ulterior motive of like, I will do this for like two or three years and then something else that I really, really enjoy. So I think to me, that was like the biggest culture shock, the idea of like, but what's the purpose of that, right? Like you can do it for your own sake. You could do it because you're feeling the societal pressure, right?

So I don't have a good answer for that. It's just rather the observation that I had this time when I traveled back home. And I guess just because I'm older now, I'm seeing like the differences in other spheres, like medical system, not that the US has a good one. The US actually doesn't. The political system is drastically different. So I like going home, but perhaps because I haven't been home in years,

what is it, like four years, all the changes are hitting me really drastically. But it was certainly nice to be with family and see the friends who I haven't seen, who I grew up with for so long. If I can ask, since you mentioned food, like what is like a must-have meal that you have to have when you are back in Beijing or in China?

That might be the hardest question today. Could I like tweak it a little bit and say like my first meal? Because I feel like that indirectly answers the question because it's my priority. I feel like dou jiang you tiao, like long answer short. So for those who might not know, it's just soy milk. And then this like non-sweet Chinese churro that you either eat on the side or you can like dip into the soy sauce.

And it was homemade. And I think to me, like I could go out and eat whatever, but my favorite meal would always be the ones made by my grandparents. Yeah, I remember we talked about like you would eat last meal in your whole life. What would you eat? Me and Angela, we both sound like picking duck.

Yes, yes. That I have never had homemade, but yeah, that's up there on my list. It's never the same when you eat in Beijing or in other cities or in the other countries. It's never the same. Yeah, and that's something hard to get from other places, I think. It's interesting hearing you talk a lot about that reverse culture shock. I feel like I experienced that when I moved back and Victoria and I had talked about that

previously on how hard that can be. And I think it's particularly jarring when you feel like you're supposed to get things and understand it. And you're like, I don't have any context for this. And I feel like I was in Beijing, what, two years ago now? And I feel like so much has changed just from my observations from, you know, my friends' moments and things like that. So I can only imagine you four or five years later,

I imagine that that must have been pretty drastic, even at the surface level. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about your own educational journey, right? It's spanned two continents, you know, from China to the U.S. How have your experiences in these two places shaped your perspective on education and your life in general? Sure. And I love that question, whoever came up with it. So for me, I...

Similar to probably many students at this point, I spent my, I guess, educational life from pre-K to middle school in Beijing and then from high school to college.

to now grad school in America. So if we're doing the math, that's pretty much splitting it down the middle by the T. And I was actually born in LA. That's why my name is Angela. And I see everyone does that. Like, I don't think that's a cool fact, but everyone is like, so there you go. And then I, um,

I was raised in Beijing. My family has been there for a long time. It takes a village, so I grew up there. I was in a private elementary school for a little bit, and then I think the rigor just wasn't there. So then my family placed me into the Chinese public school system.

In China, the public school system is actually a lot better than the private school system. So it might be the reverse in many other countries. Anyways, I pretty much am a child through the competitive public school pipeline. That's kind of similar to the American like magnet school, the testing school systems in the UK. So yeah, there was a lot of

There were a lot of tests and quizzes and ranks and competitions growing up just as a result of the system that I was in. I mean, education to the little me who was in this process was just, you know, doing the best that you could on a test. The public nature of the ranks and the social status that you had associated with testing itself

kind of took away the joy, not kind of, it definitely took away the joy of learning from me and that God

particularly salient when I was in middle school, we would have what is called "Zhou Kao" so like weekly tests every single week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You get a break, you get a break on Tuesdays and Thursdays where you would go home and look through the tests from Monday and Wednesday because for Friday it's probably the harder test that you have the weekend to digest it. So that was my life like for a very long time and it was

probably to no surprise, very focused on the STEM. So I think math and physics in particular were extremely hard, hard for everyone, but, but I, I really don't have the, I'm blaming it on the genes. I don't know what I don't have, but this brain doesn't work. It does not cross wire with math and physics. So when I was in eighth grade, I just started studying.

being very pessimistic and being very negative about school. I have never been a child to rebel. And I, at that time I still didn't, but I got insomnia as a 13 year old and it was really bad. So my, my family knew that something was up and then they, they just, you know, asked me like, what's wrong? What do you want to do? And that's when I

the whole conversation about perhaps going to a US high school started. And when my family asked me what I wanted to do, I just said I wanted to read. I wanted to read for my own pleasure. I didn't want to do those darn tests anymore. I wanted to just

feel like I could breathe for the first time in a very long time. And I know that that sounded dramatic, but I still remember it nowadays, that conversation, the long nights with insomnia. But I was reading during those nights. I was happy. I went through a lot of novels. So eventually that led me to the application process and eventual journey to a beautiful boarding school in

Connecticut. And that was kind of like a life jacket for sure. I was so, so happy during those four years. And many people say that college contains the best four years of your life. For me, it was high school. I made the best friends of my life. I met two teachers, my college counselor and an English teacher who were life-changing. One taught me how to

manage expectations and be a good person. The other one truly taught me how to write. I was allowed to be myself. I could be the quirky and nerdy me. I could read. I could play music and run on the field. So yeah, I was so happy there. And then I went to college at Princeton and majored in international relations, specifically focusing on international education.

and then grad school on education because I always wanted to dive deeper into that area, but Princeton didn't quite offer a major in education. So it was always part of my plan underneath to do that. And that's kind of like a broad stroke overview of my journey and in terms of how I see education in the two countries. Yeah.

To me in China, it's heavily competitive in nature, possibly because they have to. It's got one of the largest populations in the world. But also I feel like when I was in China, I didn't know if I found a sense of purpose in my own educational journey. It was planned out by other people, planned out by my family would take me to these tests and quizzes. The school would just, you know,

constantly rank you and tell you that you probably aren't good enough yet. And you are constantly, and I mean, probably every single day being compared to someone else's child. There's literally a Chinese phrase that says, and that idea was very

instilled in my head that that sense of insecurity, insecurity to me rebellious in the case of my brother that he just completely didn't care. So it impacts different children differently. But I feel like from a children's developmental perspective, you, you kind of don't know who you are. And I don't know whether that's correlated with

how I'm seeing my friends nowadays, but I think there's no sense of I when I was growing up in China. It was always just we, like woman, like where are we ranked as a class compared to, as a homeroom compared to the other classrooms? How are we doing as a family unit? When I came to the US, going along the line of that idea,

the hardest thing I, I struggled with was writing my first ever analytical paper, uh, and, and stop using the we, um, subject as, as a way of saying things. It's always, I believe, I think I, I, I now it's, it's, it's all I now. So I think that's, you know, that's an easy diction switch, but mentally that's also a switch that I had to grapple with. Um,

who am I? Who do I want to be? What is my sense of purpose in this world? And I think because my school, my high school cultivated that, it really, if you're just, you know, go, go, go all the time and you don't take a pause on your life, you're not going to know what you want. And I think at that boarding school, like I was, I took time. I took time to think about

myself I took time to know what I want and education popped up for me I've I realized that I've always enjoyed being around people who are younger than me I I like helping I like chatting with people so you know like there's some like some schools will have like career exploration um classes or or after class time so I I my school didn't have that but I did that for myself and I think

Ever since then, I would always take time off to think about myself. And things like vision boards sound so cliche, but let me tell you, they work. I would always be that kid with the three-year plan, the five-year plan. And I know that this is not...

you know, like constricted into a school or a country. But I think I, at least in my case, I just had more time and more space to do that when I was in the U.S. I knew what I wanted, at least for now. And I would work towards a goal. So learning in the U.S. took place a lot more from within. And there was kind of like a,

a timeline like a like a long-term picture so I would say the learning in the U.S. felt more like three-dimensional there was like a linear timeline and then an overall development but learning in China I learned a lot and I think if anything I remember the learning in China more just because there was there were so many tests drilled into me but that felt like

it was pretty stagnant. It's kind of like a dot on the timeline. So I don't think either there's like a right or wrong answer, a good or bad answer. It's different. And I think I am fortunate to experience both. When you were talking about how competitive the China education is, I remember like when I was in high school, like my math teacher used to say, everybody need to work harder because you don't want to be the denominator.

So you want to work harder because there are a lot of people. If you want to go to a good college, you have to study harder and to do the exam, like get a higher score. So already like people are thinking, all we're thinking was like, how can I get a better score? And we never talk about like what I want in life. Like that's not something like we even like consider when we're in high school. Only thing we care about is the examination, the score.

I think that's like that very big difference from like the how you study in China and you study in the US. And also, Angela, is that why you want to like delve into education industry? I think I think that's definitely one of one of the major reasons. Yes, the the fact that I have seen both sides and benefited from from both sides and the fact that even when

I am a college counselor now. My job is literally helping students explore their future options. So I think definitely just to your point, Victoria, I think, yes, because I think I had

somewhat of a smooth journey figuring myself out that I want to help others, especially those who might be at loss, do the same. And now that I am working at a high school, and I'm not overgeneralizing, but I do see more. So we do have students who come from China and other countries join us in high school. And I do think that when I ask, you know,

What do you want to be? Give me anything. Give me like three keywords that describe yourself, like these exploratory questions that they tend to not know how to answer. So I think that's my calling. And that's why I'm in this space. I love...

helping them figure this out. And we might never figure it out, but it's okay. We can just figure out the next four years one step at a time. You didn't experience like GoCall, but you've seen that you know how competitive it is. But you experienced the college application process in the U.S.,

Other than that, also you worked as an animation officer at a prestigious institution before. Could you provide some insights into the whole process and how do you think your experiences there have influenced your career as an educator? Absolutely. So yes, I did. And I think

Being an admission officer came as a result of all of my vision boards, of all of my journaling. So an admission officer's job is always quite busy and it's different within each cycle or each season. And I like that as an introvert, as someone who doesn't want to quite be confined to a job on a desk. I wanted the variety.

And an admission officer would travel in the fall. That's literally called travel season. So you would go to different states in the US or even different places around the world, visiting high schools, talking to students. And then when you get back from the road, you would sit down and then

get through as many applications as you can before mid-December for schools that offer EA, DREA, so early action, early decision, restrictive early action. You then would have a little bit of a break and then come back and then read again. So that's called reading season, starting from November up until God knows when, um,

March, I would say like late March. So for hours on end each day, you're getting through the application. And I think it was such a privilege to be able to read so many students carefully crafted stories. And after that, then you release decisions in mid or late March. And then you have, I think, what's the most

fun for everyone, like the happy season of yielding. So you'll put up events, welcome the admitted students and their families onto your campus and do your best in convincing them that this is the place they're supposed to choose. So then after the busyness of the, I suppose, the yielding season, then from like May to August,

August, it's the summer. There's no season tied to that. It's just the summer. People take time off. People are doing some sort of project within the office, maybe data analysis. So that's really the downtime for admission folks. And I think, so that journey, as you can hear, each

cycle is very different and the skill sets you learn are really different. So I think similar to students who want to go into consulting for the just the like ever-changing nature of it, that was kind of like my reason for going into admission, except it's a really niche job. And I really, really liked being an admission officer. It's not an easy job by any means. You're constantly making

hard decisions. And you're reading these breathtakingly beautiful stories. Some are quirky, some are extremely well-written and touching. So I loved every aspect of it.

We were, you know, I'd be lying to say that we weren't overworked. The nature of the admission job means that it's got a really high turnover for many reasons. And the applications are not going to read themselves. So there were many, many long nights. You pretty much barely had any weekends when you're in the thick of the reading season. But I came to realize what I enjoyed the most about the job was the

travel season, meeting the school counselors and teachers, talking to the students face-to-face, or in my case, on Zoom during COVID. So I really liked that part. And then I took some time, again, to think, what does that translate into as a job? And naturally, college counseling came out of that. So I think the admissions job provided me a great foundation for

for finding my passion in college counseling, but also for me to provide insights to the students now that they're thinking about the college process. So these two things are heavily connected to each other. And before I became a college counselor,

I said to myself, I wanted to learn a little bit more in terms of the theoretical side of counseling, individual counseling, family counseling, group counseling. So before I started my job right now, I went to graduate school for a year to just kind of add another type of skill sets that I needed.

always had a hunch for, but didn't really have the theories to back up. So it all kind of came together, starting from working in the admissions office. So you've mentioned that you're in this high school, right? And I've also worked in the high school, working with students and admissions. So it's great, right? You have this front row seat to students and their dreams. And as you said, it's

Sometimes you ask them, you know, like those exploratory questions, they don't know exactly what to say. So I guess when you're, when you are working with your students and you're going out, I'm wondering, what are you noticing perhaps is different between the

the students that you're guiding through today and perhaps what your process was like when you were going through it. And what you've seen as an admissions officer from your own experiences, of course, through grad school, how is that informing how you want to guide students to achieve these goals that they're having? And I love that question. I think I definitely noticed a few differences.

As I mentioned before, I went to a boarding school. So I think in a sense,

there wasn't as much family and school partnerships. I am being mindful that my own family doesn't speak English. So perhaps it's just more so the case of international students. But my best friends at the time were all local students. And I really, I really don't think there were as many family meetings with the college counselor. So in a sense,

At that school, at my high school, we all kind of navigated that college application process, just us and our college counselors at the time. Well, I now work at a day school. It's actually got the name day school in the school's name. So I think the triangle of like family, student and parents like that partnership is

It's constant every single day. So I think that's definitely one major point, points of difference. So it's, and it's really touching. It's really amazing to see how supportive some families are to the students.

In many other cases, you see a difference, a misalignment between what students want and what the parents think the students want. And that's, I think that's just bound to happen in Chinese. We call like in Chinese, we constantly have differences and maybe conflicts between parents and children. And I definitely do see that now working on the other side, sometimes having to

meet the parents where they are sometimes having to reconcile that difference between the family and the student because otherwise the students can't get any work done. They're so stressed about trying to make their family happy, but also at the same time, you know, like following their own heart. So I think that just is as a result of like the nature of a boarding school versus a day school. Another difference that I see would be just

how much more competition there is. And I think that is kind of a cop-out answer. It's been, Jesus, almost 10 years since I applied to college. Well, thanks for that existential crisis. But I mean, 10 years ago, it was still fiercely competitive. But I think the result of

many schools going test optional means to Victoria's point, like that denominator at each school, the application pool at each school is just getting bigger because students are shooting their shots. Students who were barred from applying to a super competitive school in the past is now applying to them because they don't have to submit a test score. So I think that

It's not an illusion of choice, but it's just the fact that there is more option does stress students out tremendously. More students want to apply to the competitive schools. More students are coming into my office literally to meet and decide which schools we are submitting testing for and which school we're not submitting.

The fact that test optional is an option does open doors for many who might not have a chance before. And at the previous school, college I worked at, we definitely every single year had students who were accepted without testing. On the other side, this piece, I think just it's another moving piece and the unknown and the

the fact that there's no clear answer stresses students and families out. Anxiety stems from the unknown. So this is just another piece that's, it's a double edged sword. It's beneficial to many, but at the same time, the denominator is only going to get larger.

And I think just, you know, as a result of, and I, again, this is another point where I don't know how I feel about it. Just, I'm working with the TikTok generation. These students get their news from TikTok.

At the time when I was applying to schools, that wasn't quite a thing. I was reading on their website. And if my students are listening to this, I know that you don't just do that. But when I was applying, and I'm as long as old, so I was only reading sources by talking to my counselor and looking on the official school websites. So I have mixed feelings. I think TikTok is a very...

quick way of getting resources, but it's not nuanced at many times. It's one person's opinion, but if it is like the first source of news you're getting, sometimes it sticks with you. So I think oftentimes right now, I feel like I might be fighting the battle between like what I say versus what TikTok says, what I say versus what like an Instagram reel says to my students. And it's, I mean,

It definitely makes me feel old. But there is a way to steer students into the right direction, even on TikTok. Many schools actually are on TikTok now, like colleges and universities making their official short video. So I think it's just we are growing and we're learning with time. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned TikTok. Sometimes I have these moments where I'm like,

You know, I'm sure you've seen the videos of like the dancing weather forecasters or like the news anchors. And I'm like, I can't imagine, you know, like, I don't know, working in an admissions office and like getting a directive from my boss being like, you have to dance to the water song because we need engagement on our TikTok. Like, what a, I don't know, five years ago, that wouldn't have been a thing, right? But like now TikTok integration is...

very normal. Like, I don't know what to make of, I don't know what to make of people getting on TikTok trends in an industry like, I don't know, college admissions. It feels silly to me, but like, that is the reality. I had an advisory. I worked at a day school as well. And the amount of times I was asked to get into a TikTok with my advisees was insane.

every day. I don't know. It just seemed like not what I thought I would be doing when I signed up to, uh, to, to work at a school. Yeah. I wouldn't even be surprised two years from now. That's already, that's going to be in like the JD of many jobs. Thank you for being a part of our episode today. Our discussion with Angela was so rich that we'll have divided into two parts. Join us again next Wednesday to delve deeper into Angela's inspiring journey.

where we explore the intricate notion of model minority and its impact on her life. Stay tuned for next week. Bye!