That’s exactly what I was thinking when I read this. Basically 70% of the students that get admitted are Asian means that they are scraping more than the top 3% of Asian students. If the other racial groups are not doing cram school or equivalent test prep the the other students would likely be top 1-2% of their respective racial group. The difference there in just natural ability can be pretty large. That’s why it might seem like the white kids don’t have to do much to succeed where as what happened is you are comparing groups of people with significantly different natural ability due to selection bias.
