How AYL Can Help Your Child
In Asian Young Life, we seek to partner with parents so that together we can help your child reach his or her full potential. As a Christian organization, one of our primary goals is to help teenagers grow spiritually. To learn more about how we do this, please visit our About Asian Young Life page.
PREPARING FOR COLLEGE
You probably want your child to do well in high school and to get accepted into an excellent college. In Asian Young Life, we can play a supportive role in helping your child to achieve such a goal. Most of our leaders are tutors and/or teachers at nearby secondary schools. Our experienced "teacher-leaders" are already familiar with educational methods that can help your child to succeed academically. And because our leaders strive to become mentors and adult friends to the teenagers they serve, we find that many high school students are motivated to take school more seriously and to think about their future when that guidance is coming from their Asian Young Life leaders.
Furthermore, our leaders go above and beyond to assist teenagers in other areas of life as well. Listed below are some of the additional ways our leaders and our organization can help your child to be his or her very best.
One of the best ways to get teenagers thinking about college is to take them on college tours. Over the years, we have organized trips to some very prestigious schools, like Cornell, Yale, Brown, MIT, Princeton, Boston College, Virginia Tech, Rutgers, and even to Stanford and UC-Berkeley in California! We also have dozens of alumni at these colleges who serve as tour guides for our high school students and who give us the "inside scoop" on how to get in and on what college life is like.
SAMPLE AYL COLLEGE TOURS...
YALE
MIT
UPENN
CORNELL
Some of our leaders have also organized study sessions at local libraries to help students focus on their academics. Believe it or not, teens actually enjoy studying when a caring adult turns it into an "activity" or an "adventure."
Every year our leaders also write tons of college recommendation letters, and our letters are REALLY good because we KNOW our students well and because we usually have so many positive things to say about their involvement in Asian Young Life. Our leaders can add the "personal touch" that makes your child stand out among the thousands of applicants who typically look like everyone else. If your child stays active in Asian Young Life, it would be our pleasure for our teacher-leaders to write a recommendation letter for your child. If you would like to see one of our letters for a past AYL student, please click here.
Lastly, we have good relationships with a few SAT schools (a.k.a. "hagwons" or 학원) in the region that provide excellent instruction and offer financial discounts for students who are involved in Asian Young Life. Interested? Contact us and we can put you in touch with these outstanding SAT schools.
Why do we do all of this? We do these things because we care about young people and because we want them to succeed in ALL areas of life. Please know we are committed to working alongside parents in doing all we can to assist your child in becoming a more competitive and attractive candidate in the college admissions process. If there is anything you want our leaders to do specifically to assist your child academically, please let us know. We want to help!
COMMUNITY SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES
Many parents today see the benefit of having their child engage in community service projects. Although Asian students typically achieve high SAT/ACT scores and grade point averages, one significant component that many Asian teenagers (and their parents) often overlook in the college admissions process is the importance of character.
In Asian Young Life, we provide numerous opportunities for young people to mature in this critical area. For example, through our partnerships with groups like Habitat for Humanity and the PERC Homeless Shelter, we give teens a chance to serve the community and to grow in character. Every summer, we also take our teens to a special service project camp called Capernaum. At this camp, our teenagers serve young people with disabilities by helping campers overcome obstacles and grow in confidence.
Many high schools now require (and many colleges now expect) students to complete a number of community service hours before they graduate. As a licensed non-profit organization, if your son or daughter volunteers with us, we can provide service hours and documentation certificates that can be used to partially fulfill such community service requirements.
We are also happy to provide letters of recommendation for volunteers who go above and beyond what is expected. More importantly, by participating in our community service projects, our young people grow in character as they learn to have compassion on others.
It is not uncommon for many of our volunteers to write about these experiences in their college application essays because of the life-changing impact these opportunities had on who they are and how they see the world around them. Click here to read a sample college essay submitted by one of our students after he served at Capernaum camp.
Learn more about our service opportunities by visiting our Community Service page.
MORAL AND ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT
American culture is confusing and fraught with temptations and tough decisions. You know firsthand that it is becoming increasingly difficult to raise your child with the values that you deem important.
That's where Asian Young Life can help... We desire to instill in young people the same moral and ethical principles that you would expect from them — taking responsibility for their chores and other family obligations, studying diligently and doing well in school, taking initiative in planning for their future, and being respectful and obedient to their elders.
As a Christian organization, we emphasize the biblical principle of honoring one's parents, knowing that a "wise child brings joy to a father" (Proverbs 10:1). In addition, we try to connect your child to a community of well-behaved and responsible peers who enjoy living life to the full without depending on things like alcohol or drugs to have a good time.
In Asian Young Life, we call this "life the way it was meant to be." In every interaction that our organization has with teenagers, our leaders model and emphasize these values in the hope that young people will adopt these values and live them out on their own.
LET'S TALK!
If there are things we can do to help your child, please TXT or call us at (201) 777-0-AYL or email us. We have leaders who can speak English, Chinese (中文), and Korean (한국어), and we would love to discuss how together we can help your child experience abundant life and become all that he or she was meant to be!
