This is Linh. Linh has a mom and dad. They live in San Francisco. Linh’s parents are from Cambodia and Linh was born in the United States. Linh’s parents worked hard to provide and build a life in America after immigrating from Cambodia.

 Linh’s parents came to the United States to have a chance at the American Dream. The American Dream for them was to make sure their children were successful in life and become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. So, they pushed Linh to become the best in everything she did.

When it came to playing the piano, she always excelled amongst her peers. Her teachers were impressed with how well she could play at such a young age. When it came to Karate, Linh was the youngest to earn her black belt in her dojo. And of course, when it came to school Linh was at the top of her class.

 With all this success, Linh had to dedicate her life to becoming the best at everything she does. The pressure of being perfect was starting to take place.

As time went on, Linh kept up with all the activities and studies and now it was time for college applications. Linh had her eyes on the ivy leagues schools, such as Brown, Yale, Stanford, and Harvard. 

But Harvard was always her dream school. The thought of not getting into Harvard made Linh very anxious. Her whole life she worked towards this goal. She would work day and night to keep up with all her activities, maintain her grades and work on the perfect college essay.

 For advice, she would go to her counselor to make sure everything is perfect. Her counselor was concerned with how hard Linh was working. So one day, her counselor, Ms.Niki, brought her in to have a talk.

 Linh said everything was okay, but as the conversation went on, she started to break down and talk about how she did not want to disappoint her parents and the people around her by not getting into a good school.

 Linh said she heard about the school admission scandal where the Asian applicants had a higher standard to achieve than their other peers, so she thought she had to be perfect to compete. 

Ms. Niki explained that these schools were trying to practice a concept called Affirmative action, where a workplace or school keeps the percentage of the races that attend the school about the same. It was created with the intention that minorities had a higher chance of getting into schools. But with more Asian applicants, the odd of them getting in would be a lower percentage compared to other races.

 Linh could see the pros and cons of Affirmative action, but the only thing she could think about is just getting in. With Ms. Niki noticing Linh getting anxious, she tried to change the subject to what major she was trying to go into.