part of the problem with Asian Americans in the application process is that they are treated just as Asians. My Computer Science Program at University of Pennsylvania was about 74% Asian, 20% Indian, and 5% European. There was <1% you can attribute to anyone else.

Problem is, the 74% Asian was almost entirely Chinese born Chinese, and I do feel it hurt the program. They did not want to join groups with non-Chinese people because they preferred speaking Chinese in group projects. They didn't want to talk to you before or after class if you were not speaking Mandarin. The chit chat and sharing of ideas is the whole point of higher education IMO. There were other problems not related to the fact they only wanted to speak Chinese their whole duration of their time in the program (such as talking during class, cheating, etc.) but I wont go into that. The point is, having nearly 70% of the program being Chinese born Chinese made the education experience worse. Unfortunately, American born Chinese (or even Korean) gets lumped into the Asian group and they have to compete against 1 billion Chinese applicants taking paper GRE tests (cheating on these paper tests is common, as you can buy the answers ahead of the test ).