Kicking The Nerd Syndrome

By Sam Allis/Boston

Tohoru Masamune, 31, grew up in a Japanese-American household distinguished by world-class scientists on both sides of his family. He graduated from M.I.T. in 1982 with a degree in chemical engineering. His success in the family tradition appeared assured. Then everything went haywire. "I realized I was totally in the wrong line of work," he says. Last year Masamune stunned his parents by dropping a well-paying job with a computer company to become an actor, a career he had been pursuing furtively on a part-time basis. "It was a huge risk," he says, "but it is also a huge risk going into something your heart's not into."

David Shim, 21, a Harvard senior, made a conscious decision in high school to shun the science track in college even though he was brilliant at its disciplines and scored 1580 out of a possible 1600 on his college boards. "All my teachers were disappointed that I didn't go to M.I.T.," he says, "but I really wanted to avoid the stereotype of the science geek." Shim chose to major in government, and has been accepted at Harvard Law School.

America's diverse Asian-American community is awash these days with stories like those. Increasingly, Asian-American students and graduates are chafing at the "model-minority myth." That image depicts them as a group of blinkered science-oriented achievers -- "the Asian in the M.I.T. sweatshirt," as Masamune puts it. "It's really frustrating to score over 1400 on your SATs and learn that society is telling you they've got you figured out," he says. Hei Wai Chan, 28, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at M.I.T. who plans a career in social work within the Asian-American community, agrees. "Maybe half of Asian-American students are in conflict over this."

Like most stereotypes, the one about Asian-American student attainment has papered over a very different reality. Four out of every five such students are in public two- or four-year institutions rather than elite universities. And plenty are not particularly good at math or science. At the University of Massachusetts' Boston campus, the majority of 640 Asian-American students work part time to support their families while going to school.

Nonetheless, in the upper reaches of the meritocracy, there have been glints of truth to the "science nerd" generalization. Of the 40 finalists in the prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search this year, 18 were Asian American. Yet while there are no statistics on the shift among Asian Americans away from the sciences, there is no doubt it is happening. "I can see a difference in those students just two or three years younger than me," says Mark Kuo, 22, a Harvard senior who, along with his two brothers, was a Westinghouse finalist while at the Bronx High School of Science in New York City. "They're more interested in public policy and social action than in what their parents preached about economic security through medicine and engineering." Kuo left premed at the end of his freshman year to study comparative literature.

Such changes in course are often wrenching for Asian-American youths because of strong parental pressure to achieve in areas with a high career payoff. , "They are raised to suffer through their problems alone much more than in other cultures," explains Karen Huang, a clinical psychologist at Stanford who has counseled many Asian-American students. "Also, Asian parents are more concerned about guiding their children and less interested in listening to what they want or need."

Lewison Lee Lem, a Harvard admissions officer, calls this parental attitude "the Beida syndrome." Beida, which refers to Peking University in Mandarin, is shorthand for the push in Asian countries to be accepted at the top national institution, a tradition that stems from the Confucian emphasis on bureaucratic status via education. Once admitted, students are guaranteed a secure future, and parents feel they have done their duty.

"The pressure to achieve remains strong for Asian-American women too," says Cara Wong, 20, a Harvard-Radcliffe junior who switched from biochemistry to government studies last year. "I had such a narrow focus when I came here," she says. "The whole path to medical school was laid out for me. Then I started reading history and government here, and I really enjoyed them." Wong adds that her parents were "not at all happy" with the change. "My mother was afraid that as a government major I would end up as a welfare worker," she says.

The fact that the best and the brightest among Asian Americans are veering away from programmed patterns of success may be, in fact, another sign that the over-achievers are settling into the mainstream. Of course, Asian Americans will continue to major in math and science in large numbers. But more will do so because they genuinely enjoy the subjects, and others, like Tohoru Masamune, will be freer to choose other paths. "It destabilized my life," he says about his decision to get out of engineering, "but it was an instability that I'm comfortable with." That too is achievement.