The Disparate Impacts of College Admissions Policies on Asian American Applicants
Joshua Grossman, Sabina Tomkins, Lindsay Page, Sharad Goel

TL;DR
This study analyzes application data to reveal that Asian American students face lower admission odds than whites at selective colleges, with disparities influenced by legacy preferences and geographic biases, highlighting ongoing equity concerns.
Contribution
It provides the first large-scale empirical analysis of Asian American admission disparities using application proxies and identifies key factors contributing to these gaps.
Findings
Asian American applicants have 28% lower odds of admission than whites with similar qualifications.
South Asian students face a 49% lower admission odds compared to white students.
Legacy preferences and geographic biases partly explain the disparities.
Abstract
There is debate over whether Asian American students are admitted to selective colleges and universities at lower rates than white students with similar academic qualifications. However, there have been few empirical investigations of this issue, in large part due to a dearth of data. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications from Asian American and white students to a subset of selective U.S. institutions over five application cycles, beginning with the 2015-2016 cycle. The dataset does not include admissions decisions, and so we construct a proxy based in part on enrollment choices. Based on this proxy, we estimate the odds that Asian American applicants were admitted to at least one of the schools we consider were 28% lower than the odds for white students with similar test scores, grade-point averages, and extracurricular activities. The gap was particularly…
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Taxonomy
TopicsHigher Education Research Studies · Medical Education and Admissions
