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Presumed competent, Asian Americans exhibit the highest level of education and median household income of all major US ethnoracial groups. On average, they outpace all groups in the domain of education, yet they do not maintain their advantage in the labor market. The question of bias against Asian Americans has taken center stage in the most recent US Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, but the attention has been on university admissions. We broaden the focus and rewrite the question to consider how Asian Americans seek to preempt bias in the labor market by strategically adapting to mitigate it. Strategic adaptation begins with precollege education, continues with college choice and major, and entails acquiring elite credentials that signal hard skills and merit. The strategy falls short of obviating bias altogether, however. We show how Asian Americans' labor market earnings and mobility vary by gender, nativity, national origin, place of education, and field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Less privileged students disproportionately aim low with their university applications and often fail to apply to the institutions that match their academic qualifications. Little attention, however, has been directed toward the converse phenomenon, that of aiming high. These kinds of applications are commonly called 'reaches,' meaning an applicant's credentials fall slightly below the institution's range for the average first-year student. Using nationally representative survey data from the United States, this study examines whether social background predicts the likelihood of applying to reach institutions and assesses the consequences for disparities in enrollments. We find a strong relationship between students' socioeconomic background and their likelihood of applying to reach institutions, even after controlling for a range of academic and non-academic characteristics. Further, there is a substantial pay-off to applying to reach institutions, revealing the degree to which these class-based choices at the application stage contribute to the social stratification of higher education.