Asian American students feel discriminated with Asian ceiling for college admission

Asian American students usually achieve better scores for college admissions, but those "model minorities" get punished rather than awarded for their academic achievements, which makes them feel discriminated. Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and his colleague Alexandria Radford examined applicants to top colleges from 1997 in a study and found that the maximum SAT score at that time was 1600, today it is 2400. The study found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college in the United States as white students with a 1410, Hispanic students with 1230 and black students with an 1100. In their study, Espenshade and Radford showed the substantial admissions boost, particularly at the private colleges, which Hispanic students get over whites, and the enormous advantage enjoyed by blacks over whites. They also showed how Asians must do substantially better than whites in order to reap the same chances of acceptance to these same highly competitive private colleges. On an "other things equal basis," where adjustments are made for a variety of background factors, being Hispanic gave an admissions boost over being white (for those who applied in 1997) equivalent to 130 SAT points (out of 1600), while being black rather than white conferred a 310 SAT point advantage. Asians, however, suffered an admissions penalty compared to whites equivalent to 140 SAT points, the study found.