What appears to be a separate, more competitive evaluation for Asians may not be quite what it seems. Consider that at some of these super highly-selective schools, there are groups of hooked individuals that have a competitive advantage in admissions. For a class size of 1,500, you might have:
[ul]
[]URMs (about 300 individuals typically enrolled per class)
[]Athletes (about 150)
[]Legacies (about 200)
[]Children of big donors, the famous, etc. (about 100)
[/ul]
While it is true that none of these categories represents a “quota,” those individuals who fall with these categories have a distinct advantage. Let’s assume there are 10,000 overall applicants for the 1,500 positions (overall 15% admission rate). Assuming a slightly higher admit rate (25%) for URM as compared with the overall 15% rate, and a conservative 50% admit rates for the other hooks, you would now have: 7,900 remaining applicants competing for just 750 spots, which would lead to an admit rate of 9.5% for those outside these categories.
Now consider that:
[ul]
[]a relatively high number of Whites (relative to Asians) would be included in the non-URM hooked groups, so that Whites would appear to be favored over Asians, but in reality the non-hooked Whites are admitted at the same rate.
[]Asians are generally much more likely to be applying into hyper-competitive and/or over-enrolled departments or disciplines (e.g., engineering, “pre-med”) with admission rates lower than the overall school
[li]Certain categories of extra-curricular activities (e.g., string musical performance) attract disproportionate numbers of Asians, such that admission offices at schools with many Asians may then devalue those ECs.[/li][/ul]
These may feed the perception of bias, even where non exists.
FWIW, while disappointed for him, I’m not surprised at all by the OP’s admission results:
[ul]
[li]Rejected: MIT, Stanford, Berkeley (out of state; Engineering), Duke[/li][li]Waitlisted: CMU (Engineering/Computer Science), UCLA (out of state; Engineering), UMich (out of state; Engineering)[/li][/ul]Individually, I would not have estimated the OP’s chances at better than 25% for any of these…