Is Rejection a More Common Experience for Asian Americans? How Differences in College Application Strategy Affect Admissions Results

ABSTRACT

Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS:09), this study examines the experience of college acceptance and rejection among white and Asian American students applying to four-year postsecondary institutions. The results suggest that Asian male students in particular face higher rejection rates relative to whites with similar academic profiles. First, Asians participate in more supplementary preparation, apply to more schools, and consider more selective colleges than whites net of other characteristics, which suggests that they may anticipate more rejection than whites. After controlling for individual and background characteristics, Asian male students are eighty percent more likely to be rejected by their desired institution compared to whites. This effect is most prominent for high performing Asian male applicants to highly selective schools and lower performing Asian male applicants to less selective schools. Separate analyses by race show that the predictors for college rejection differ substantially for Asian and white applicants. When disaggregated by ethnic group, Chinese and Southeast Asian students, and more specifically Chinese males, face the highest odds of rejection net of other explanatory factors. The author posits that the rejections faced by Asian male students may affect their feelings of resentment about the college application experience. (198 words)

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• race
• Asian American
• college application
• college choice

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2019 Korean Millennials’ Conference at Yale University. Thank you to Grace Kao for advising on this research project, and to Meera Choi, Keitaro Okura, and Sophie Lindner for their feedback and support. The author would like to thank the National Center for Education Statistics in the Department of Education for access to the restricted use NCES data used in this study. Comments from JHE reviewers and editors substantially improved the work. The author gratefully acknowledges support from The MacMillan Center, Yale University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).