Quotables

"Have fun with your swimming team... Gosh, I feel so sorry for you... hehe I'm glad that my college application doesn't depend on how fast I can swim!"

-relative in Europe via e-mail

"Academics have no free time. Nearly every moment not spent working is a moment spent in anxiety about not working. The distinction between work and free time is meaningless in the minds of most academics I know. Which means that, when their work is not going well, you're faced with an anxiety-ridden, depressed person who feels like a failure. When work is going swimmingly, you never see them."
-Admissions Confidential

"Rachel, for an Asian, has many friends..."
-Teacher recommendation


"There is even a psychological malady known as The Yale Syndrome, a sort of obsession with college admission that creates an unusually proximate time horizon for a young person, the moment of college admission. Students who suffer from this affliction do not develop a plan for success in college, or in any aspect of their lives, beyond the arrival of that "fat envelope" detailing their acceptance. Oddly, they share many of the same concepts of time as terminally ill cancer patients. "
-Is the Ivy League "Worth It"?


"If you think you know what parental pressure is, and you're not Asian, you are wrong."
-Bitter Asian Men: The Asian Parent Syndrome


[edit: last quote removed]