I'd like to propose an alternate interpretation: There is some desired heterogeneity of intellect. Elite Colleges aren't just looking for sharp mathematicians

I'd like to propose an alternate interpretation: There is some desired heterogeneity of intellect. Elite Colleges aren't just looking for sharp mathematicians. They want to attract sharp physicists, sharp philosophers, sharp linguists, sharp artists, sharp musicians, sharp poets etc. Now, in my experience there is a set of areas in which asians excel, but that doesn't comprise 100% of all areas. There are many areas where predominantly white people dominate. If you weight the distribution of ethnic origin along those lines, I suspect asians will be underrepresented relative to the distribution measured by SAT scores.