Successful Asian-American students commonly credit their achievements to the influence of parents who are determined that their children should take full advantage of what the American educational system has to offer. For many parents, personal sacrifice is involved. Daniel Pak, an 18-year-old from Dallas entering Harvard next month, shines in everything he does, from math to violin. His brother Tony, 20, is studying physics at MIT. Their parents had such colleges in mind when they moved to the U.S. in 1970. The boy's father gave up his career as a professor of German literature in South Korea. Unable to get an academic position in the U.S., he eventually found work as a house painter.

A very effective measure of parental attention is the amount of time children spend on homework. A 1984 study of San Francisco-area schools by Stanford sociologist Lanford Dombusch found that Asian-American students put in an average of eleven hours a week, compared with seven hours for other students. Westinghouse Prize winner John Kuo recalls that in Taiwan he was accustomed to studying two or three hours a night. "Here we study half an hour a night at the most." To make up the difference, John and his two brothers were often given extra assignments at home by their parents. "Asian parents spend much more time with their children than American parents do, and it helps," says Dornbusch.

Some Asian-Americans may be pushing their children too hard. Says a Chinese American high schooler in New York City: "When you get an 80, they say, 'Why not an 85?' If you get an 85, it's 'Why not a 90?"' Many Asian-American parents even dictate their children's choice of college courses, with an eye to a desirable future. New York City youth counselor Amy Lee, 26, remembers that when she changed her field from premedical study to psychology her parents were upset, but pressed her at least to get a PhD. "They wanted a doctor in the family, and they didn't care what kind it was."