One trend I noticed lately is the downward fall of Japanese Americans as a group (less ambitious, not attending elite universities as much, not working in mid six figure white collar jobs as much as other East Asian groups). Conversely, I noticed an upward trend with Vietnamese Americans. Vietnamese Americans are becoming more ambitious and cutthroat competitive. In the past, Vietnamese Americans were happy to attend state universities like the Cal States and UC Riverside or UC Irvine. Now, Viet Americans are aiming for the big time schools, not just UCLA or USC, but the likes of the Ivy League schools and Stanford.

There's also an increase number of Vietnamese Americans working in white collar professions such as doctors, investment bankers in Wall Street, management consultants, and lawyers at prestigious big firms.

Why do you think Vietnamese Americans are rising in society and gaining a lot of prestige? Although collectively, Vietnamese Americans are still below Chinese and Korean Americans in terms of affluence, wealth, and prestige, soon (maybe within a decade or so), I can see Vietnamese Americans surpassing the Japanese and possibly be on par--or even surpass--the Asian Indians.

Vietnamese Americans' increased ambitions to attend prestigious universities and work in white collar professions can be attributed to these three factors: 1.) Vietnamese arrived in this country poor and in pittance; their children saw what their parents went through so the parents instilled in their children the importance of a strong education; 2.) Vietnamese Americans have been badly stereotyped as gangsters and criminals due to the rise of Vietnamese American criminal activity and violence in the 1990s; because of this stigma, Vietnamese Americans are pushing themselves to attend elite schools and get elite jobs in order to erase this bad image, and 3.) Model Minority Image, traditionally, the Model Minority Image has referred only to the Big Three East Asian cultures; Vietnamese Americans want to prove to everybody else that they could step out of the shadows of the Big Three and be recognized for their own high achievements.

In other words, Vietnamese Americans want to show everybody that they to can be as high achievers as their stereotyped East Asian counterparts.

Your post cracks me up, especially the last sentence.

In term of intellectual influence, I keep thinking that Indians are still far above. Based on the origin of falculty members in US Universities.