STUDENT PROFILE:
AMY LEI
By Pamela Burdman

By the time astronomy class gets going at 8:20 A.M. at City College of San Francisco, Amy Lei has staked out her front-row-center seat, eaten her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and heard about a classmate's latest heartthrob. Mr. Stanford opens class with an animated discussion of new discoveries about Mars from the morning's New York Times. But Amy, having declared astronomy "a snoozer," has only one thing on her mind: whether the Mars article will be on tomorrow's midterm. "It might find its way on there. I have been known to put a current events question on," said Stanford, to Amy's exasperation. "That's the kind of stuff I hate," she said. "Maybe it is, maybe it's not."

Photo Credit: Rod Searcey Amy Lei, 19, of San Francisco, used to think that community college was only "for people who missed out"-but after her first year at City College of San Francisco, she's changed her mind.

So, just to be sure, Amy will review planetesimals and proplyds, Kelvin-Helmholtz Theory and the Newman Kepler laws. And she'll try to remember that the Orion Nebula is 1,500 light years away.

It's summer session, but nineteen-year-old Amy can't take any risks with her grades. She is one of some 40,000 Californians intent on enrolling at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 2001. Some will apply straight from high school. Others, like Amy, seek to transfer from community colleges.

"My friends at Berkeley tell me there are great minds there," she said. "You're really challenged."

With the outcome hardly guaranteed, Amy has memorized a complex array of entrance requirements to be sure she also qualifies for the College of Letters and Sciences, where she would probably choose to major in psychology. "You have to be really strategic," she observed.

Amy, whose sense of humor is never far from the surface, says this is the life for which she was destined. She was born in Shanghai, where urban couples were allowed to have only one child. So all her parents' dreams and aspirations are focused on her. They named her Kejing, which she translates from Chinese as "hard-working."

"As an only child, there's so much pressure," she said. "I could be 'babbling brook' or 'pretty flower,' but no, it's 'hard-working.' My parents are always saying they had to uproot their way of life for me to have a good future," she added. The family left Shanghai when Amy was nine.

Although Amy has adopted the traditional values of her parents, she has infused them with American ideas. It's hard for her parents to understand, for example, why she tells them not to "stress out," presses them to let her get a driver's license, or insists on having fun.

"'Fun' is something that's hard to explain to them. They'll say, 'We didn't have fun when we were kids. We don't have the luxury of being kids because we're immigrants.' I do want to do well, but I'm a teenager," she said.

Amy had always intended to go to UC Berkeley. Along with 315 of her classmates, she applied to Berkeley during her senior year at San Francisco's Lowell High School.

Competitive admissions were familiar enough to the Lei family. In China, college matriculation was determined by a nationwide exam. Amy's father, a high school physics teacher for nineteen years, had helped hundreds of students prepare for college. So her parents weren't surprised that Amy had to compete for admission to Lowell, one of California's top-ranked public high schools.

Racial issues, on the other hand, were new to the Leis: The rollback of affirmative action at the University of California made national headlines, but Lowell High also became a civil-rights battleground during the years Amy was there. In 1994 a group of Chinese American parents sued the school over admissions requirements that limited the number of Chinese Americans who could be admitted.

Since then, a judge has ordered the school to change its policies, but the Leis and many other recent Chinese immigrants remain wary of any so-called qualitative admissions requirements.

Photo Credit: Rod Searcey Amy Lei with parents Philip and Pancy.

At Lowell, competition doesn't end after a student gains admission. Stories abound about freshmen bursting into tears upon receiving their first report card. Most are striving for the grades that will take them on to elite colleges, and for many that means UC Berkeley. In fact, Lowell sent 43 of its graduates to UC Berkeley last year—more than any other high school in the state.

"From middle school to high school, you're praying to go to Lowell. From high school to college, you're praying to go to Berkeley," Amy explained.

Not getting in was devastating, especially because of her parents' expectations.

"The Asian students take it a lot harder, because it's the only school their parents know," she said. "It's spelled out that you're not leaving California. It's spelled out that you're not leaving northern California. They break it down for me: It's a good school. It's cheap. You can come home. You can do your laundry."

With a 3.75 grade-point average and 1340 on her SATs, Amy considered herself a good candidate. "I'm not cream of the crop, but I definitely was above average," she said. "When I didn't get accepted, it was so hard. It was like the hardest time in my life. One day I cried nonstop through all seven of my classes."

Six of her teachers wrote appeal letters for her, but the decision stood. The experience has turned Amy into a critic of UC Berkeley's holistic review process, adopted after the UC Regents abolished affirmative action and insisted on race-neutral admissions.

"They don't know how many lives are ruined," Amy complained. "They have no clear standards. We have people who don't seem so outstanding, but they get accepted. That's fine, but you have to accept the people above them. They have to have some written policy of what they want."

With few exceptions, the cutoff for admission to the University of California system is strictly quantitative. Students like Amy whose grades and test scores place them in the top one-eighth of the state's high school graduates are considered "UC eligible." But that doesn't mean they can attend the campus of their choice.

Because Amy's grades were promising, UC Berkeley offered her a spot in the Cooperative Admissions Program (CAP). The program guarantees a junior class slot for students who take 60 units of UC-approved courses at participating community colleges and maintain a B average.

Even though she knew that the transfer program would eventually enable her to enroll at UC Berkeley, it wasn't easy for Amy to swallow her pride and attend a community college.

"It was hard to put down your ego and say you're going to City College, because City College has a reputation that it's for people who missed out. It was hard to say I'm going to go to school with those people."

Her perspective changed substantially once she became immersed in classes and activities at City College of San Francisco.

One of the largest and most diverse community colleges in the country, City College serves about 90,000 students a year at eight campuses and dozens of other instructional sites. The school offers a diverse program in some 150 academic and occupational disciplines. These include free noncredit courses in citizenship and English as a second language.

Admission is open, and tuition of just $11 per credit unit makes it a bargain. Along with the other 105 community colleges in California, City College provides a gateway to the University of California's 8 undergraduate campuses and to the 22 campuses of California State University.

As soon as her two morning classes are over, Amy is off to the office of the Dean of Student Activities, where she earns $13 an hour working half-time as a clerk. She got the job after serving as an executive assistant to the Associated Students organization.

Amy is also treasurer of the Asian Students Association, a group she started with some friends after the earthquake in Taiwan in 1999. The group raised about $700 and sent their donation through a Buddhist temple.

The club has sponsored fundraisers and cultural celebrations. But Amy is concerned that on a two-year campus, the organization will not survive. "I'm pretty sure that as soon as we leave, it'll just die," she said.

Amy heads BETA (Better Education Through Action), a group that promotes a controversial website where students can evaluate their instructors. She is also a volunteer at the Mayor's Office on Homelessness and Poverty and at the Lowell Sports Foundation.

"I'm so glad I'm doing what I'm doing," she said. "I'm meeting so many people I wouldn't have met. I've made good friends here. City College has such a mix of different people. You've got your 18-year-olds fresh out of public high school or your 45-year-old who's just doing this for kicks. I get a lot of classes where people are my parents' age."

Taking classes at City College has also helped Amy decide on her major. At Lowell she was a math tutor for three years, and she thought about a career in teaching. Her father, a teacher himself, wanted Amy to try something more ambitious. Her volunteer work on homeless issues piqued her interest in public policy, and her new plan is to enroll for a business degree, with coursework in nonprofit management.

For now, Amy is well on her way to meeting her goal of attending UC Berkeley. With astronomy and anthropology, the two summer courses she's completed, and the three Advanced Placement tests she passed in high school, Amy has completed 55.9 units.

That leaves her an entire year to complete the additional 4.1 units she needs to ensure herself a seat at UC Berkeley. She is already exploring options for concurrent enrollment so she can get a head start on her Berkeley classes.

Amy is confident about clearing the CAP hurdles, but admission to UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business is a taller order. Last year, Haas admitted only 11 percent of its transfer applicants.

Amy says she grew up with the philosophy that "hard work will give you everything you ever wanted." In the case of her application to Haas, she's hoping that's true.