Amy Chua's essay "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" struck a nerve because Chinese-American kids *are* over-represented at our elite universities and among science competition winners. If Chinese-American kids were underperforming, she would be ignored. I think Chinese outperformance partly results from a higher average IQ (some studies find 105), but few critics of Tiger Mothering want to consider that reason for outperformance.

Culture may also play a role. Chinese parents commonly send their children to Chinese school, where in addition to learning the language (and preparing for high SAT subject test scores in Chinese), enrichment classes are offered in math and English. The math classes are taught at an advanced levels by Chinese fathers who are mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, and they prepare students for math contests and school math. If a Chinese kid and a white kid have the same math talent but the Chinese kid has been exposed to algebra and MathCounts problems
for several years before 8th grade, the Chinese kid may have an edge and think he is good at math.

In my web searches I have noticed that California, with its large Chinese population, has many enrichment programs with mostly Chinese students. Look at the Avid Academy's Physics Olympiad results http://www.avidacademy.com/site-new...s-olympiad-semi-finalists-medal-rankings , for example. What fraction of the U.S. population knows there is a Physics Olympiad?

I think it's worth looking at successful groups to see how they accomplish what they do.