I reckon it's to purposely give them a "reason" not to accept Asian Americans. People like to believe we live in a meritocracy and Asian Americans as a group d

I reckon it's to purposely give them a "reason" not to accept Asian Americans. People like to believe we live in a meritocracy and Asian Americans as a group did better than other races - so they put in "well-roundedness" which ends up being super subjective but a reason for them to deny others based on other factors not relating to scores. The respect part is a cop-out as it plays on peoples bias. This is where social stereotypes of groups as a whole tend to work it's magic. Asian Americans are seen as "not able to lead", "worker bees" etc. Even though there is no objective measure for that, just peoples bias and this leads them to apply certain characteristics to groups (based on names/photos) no matter what their application looks like.