The Distribution of Asian American Scholarship Awards Among Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Individuals

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. It addresses an important yet understudied question: how perceived Asian typicality might influence the distribution of resources such as scholarships. This topic has important real-world implications, especially for Filipino students, who remain understudied in the literature. The manuscript also responds well to recent calls for a deeper understanding of the heterogeneous experiences of different ethnic groups within the broader Asian community. Overall, I think this is a strong manuscript. The studies are well executed, and the designs and analyses are rigorous, thoughtful, systematic, and transparent. The writing is also clear and easy to follow. I only have a few minor observations and suggestions for the authors to consider.

1. The studies are carefully designed and have strong internal validity, which is a clear strength. At the same time, this may come with some tradeoffs in external or ecological validity.
   • For example, the content of each essay remained the same across clusters, which appropriately controls for potential confounds related to essay content. However, in the real world, students from different ethnic groups might—or might not—write essays in somewhat different ways.
   • In addition, the Asian undergraduate scholarship condition does not appear to provide much information about the purpose of the scholarship. The OSF link did not work for me, so I may be missing some of the materials. Still, in real-world settings, scholarships targeted at specific populations often explicitly describe goals related to social justice, diversity, equity, or increasing representation. For instance, if a scholarship clearly stated that it aims to address the underrepresentation or marginalization of students who identify as Asian, is it possible that Chinese students would be rated as less deserving, assuming participants are aware of their high representation in higher education?
   • This point seems especially relevant to the authors’ discussion of “the utility of diversity scholarships in the context of diverse and heterogeneous racial groups, like Asian Americans.” More specifically, in the current study design, were participants aware that these scholarships were intended, at least in part, to “ameliorate racial disparities between White and Asian Americans”? I would encourage the authors to discuss the constraints of the current design in terms of ecological validity and the implications of those constraints for interpretation.
2. I appreciate that the authors considered the potentially confounding role of perceived competence. Based on the racial position model, however, one dimension on which Asians are particularly marginalized is perceived foreignness. First, theoretically, how do the authors understand the relationship, if any, between perceived foreignness and Asian typicality? Second, is it possible that Southeast Asians and South Asians experience the perpetual foreigner stereotype more strongly than East Asians (e.g., Vang, 2025)? If so, do the authors think perceived foreignness may also play a role in the present context?
3. This may be beyond the scope of the current manuscript, but I wonder whether these studies might (or might not) have practical implications for scholarships or other forms of resource distribution aimed more broadly at underrepresented or marginalized groups. In the real world, some awards target underrepresented minorities or marginalized identities in general rather than a specific racial group. In those contexts, would the authors expect to see differences in perceived worthiness among different Asian ethnic groups?

Overall, I want to reiterate that I think this is a strong manuscript that makes important contributions. My suggestions are relatively minor and hopefully could strengthen an already valuable piece of work. Thank you to the authors for their great work.

Reference
Vang, H. (2025). The perpetual foreigner and model minority spectrum: Comparing how Southeast and East Asian Americans experience racialization. Race and Social Problems, 17(4), 291–306.

Author Response

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. It addresses an important yet understudied question: how perceived Asian typicality might influence the distribution of resources such as scholarships. This topic has important real-world implications, especially for Filipino students, who remain understudied in the literature. The manuscript also responds well to recent calls for a deeper understanding of the heterogeneous experiences of different ethnic groups within the broader Asian community. Overall, I think this is a strong manuscript. The studies are well executed, and the designs and analyses are rigorous, thoughtful, systematic, and transparent. The writing is also clear and easy to follow. I only have a few minor observations and suggestions for the authors to consider.

Response 1.1: Thank you for your kind words. We hope we have addressed your comments in our revised manuscript.

1. The studies are carefully designed and have strong internal validity, which is a clear strength. At the same time, this may come with some tradeoffs in external or ecological validity.

• For example, the content of each essay remained the same across clusters, which appropriately controls for potential confounds related to essay content. However, in the real world, students from different ethnic groups might—or might not—write essays in somewhat different ways.

Response 1.2. Thank you for bringing up this point. We now include this point in the Limitations and Future Directions section on p.31. Specifically, “First, the personal essay manipulations in both studies were purposely written to be similar in content to control for potential essay-related confounds. However, in reality, applicants will answer essay prompts differently, and some of those differences (e.g., related to lived experiences) may be confounded with Asian ethnicity, which will influence perceived scholarship worthiness. 

• In addition, the Asian undergraduate scholarship condition does not appear to provide much information about the purpose of the scholarship. The OSF link did not work for me, so I may be missing some of the materials. Still, in real-world settings, scholarships targeted at specific populations often explicitly describe goals related to social justice, diversity, equity, or increasing representation. For instance, if a scholarship clearly stated that it aims to address the underrepresentation or marginalization of students who identify as Asian, is it possible that Chinese students would be rated as less deserving, assuming participants are aware of their high representation in higher education?

Response 1.3: We apologize that the OSF link did not work for you. We have included it here for your convenience: https://osf.io/k4xng/overview?view_only=b8a4adcf307c45bea581166b49d802d3.

We clarified in the revised manuscript on p.14 the text that participants saw when describing the Asian scholarship. Specifically, participants read the following scholarship description: “This applicant is also submitting their essay to apply for the scholarship below. The University Asian American scholarship is a $2,500 scholarship awarded to Asian undergraduate college students with demonstrated scholarship, leadership, and/or community service.”

You are correct that scholarships targeted at specific populations often explicitly describe goals related to increasing representation. We did not have that type of language in our description of the scholarship. We do agree with you that changing the type of scholarship to more explicitly state that the scholarship is meant for students who are underrepresented in higher education will affect the perceived scholarship worthiness of our Asian applicants. We also speculated that we would be more likely to see that, regardless of ethnicity, an Asian applicant might be less deserving of a scholarship meant for underrepresented students in higher education, given narratives surrounding Asian Americans’ academic success. However, it is important to note that not all Asian Americans are academically successful and are actually underrepresented in higher education, which many U.S. participants are unaware. We included a discussion of this in the Limitations and Future Directions section on p.31-32. Specifically, “Second, participants were purposely given very limited information about the scholarship to which the applicants were applying. For example, we did not inform participants as to the purpose of the scholarship. Many academic scholarships targeted toward specific racial groups are meant to increase the representation and to alleviate disparities in higher education-related outcomes between White Americans and the targeted groups. If we had informed participants of the purpose of the scholarship, we would expect different outcomes. Specifically, if participants were told that the scholarship was meant to increase the representation of students with identities that have been historically underrepresented in higher education, it is possible that we would not see significant differences between applicant ethnicity on scholarship worthiness, given narratives that Asian Americans, as a whole, are academically successful (e.g., model minority myth, Chun, 1995). Future research can test this hypothesis and, more broadly, how deserving Asian American applicants are of scholarships or awards meant for students from underrepresented backgrounds. This is especially important given that, in reality, not all Asian ethnic subgroups are well-represented in higher education (Jin, 2021; Krogstad & Im, 2025; Shivaram, 2021), a fact which U.S. participants are generally unaware of (e.g., Vinluan & Kraus, 2026). If underrepresented Asian Americans (e.g., Southeast Asian Americans) are deemed not as worthy of scholarships meant for students from underrepresented backgrounds, then interventions may be needed to increase awareness of variation in Asian ethnic subgroup representation in higher education.”

• This point seems especially relevant to the authors’ discussion of “the utility of diversity scholarships in the context of diverse and heterogeneous racial groups, like Asian Americans.” More specifically, in the current study design, were participants aware that these scholarships were intended, at least in part, to “ameliorate racial disparities between White and Asian Americans”? I would encourage the authors to discuss the constraints of the current design in terms of ecological validity and the implications of those constraints for interpretation.

Response 1.4: Participants were not told that these scholarships were meant to ameliorate racial disparities - please see Response 1.3 for the exact wording participants saw for the scholarship description. However, we do discuss this as a limitation in the Limitations and Future Directions section on p.31-32- Please see Response 1.3.

1. I appreciate that the authors considered the potentially confounding role of perceived competence. Based on the racial position model, however, one dimension on which Asians are particularly marginalized is perceived foreignness. First, theoretically, how do the authors understand the relationship, if any, between perceived foreignness and Asian typicality? Second, is it possible that Southeast Asians and South Asians experience the perpetual foreigner stereotype more strongly than East Asians (e.g., Vang, 2025)? If so, do the authors think perceived foreignness may also play a role in the present context?

Response 1.5: We did ask participants to rate the applicants on perceived foreignness along with perceived competence. We clarified this in a footnote on p.13. However, like perceived competence, we did not find a significant main effect of applicant ethnicity on perceived foreignness - these results are in the Supplement. Like you, we expected that perceived foreignness would differ by applicant ethnicity. In our revised manuscript in the General Discussion, we add to our discussion of the lack of significant findings for the perceived competence measure, which also extends to other stereotypes, such as foreignness, on p.27. Specifically, “In addition, we did not find significant differences by applicant ethnicity for other stereotypes specific to Asian Americans (see Supplement), such as perceived foreignness, which we would have expected to vary by Asian ethnic subgroup (e.g., Goh & McCue, 2021; Vang, 2025).”

1. This may be beyond the scope of the current manuscript, but I wonder whether these studies might (or might not) have practical implications for scholarships or other forms of resource distribution aimed more broadly at underrepresented or marginalized groups. In the real world, some awards target underrepresented minorities or marginalized identities in general rather than a specific racial group. In those contexts, would the authors expect to see differences in perceived worthiness among different Asian ethnic groups?

Response 1.6: Please see Response 1.3.

Overall, I want to reiterate that I think this is a strong manuscript that makes important contributions. My suggestions are relatively minor and hopefully could strengthen an already valuable piece of work. Thank you to the authors for their great work.

Reference
Vang, H. (2025). The perpetual foreigner and model minority spectrum: Comparing how Southeast and East Asian Americans experience racialization. Race and Social Problems, 17(4), 291–306.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript addresses an important and timely question: how perceptions of Asian American typicality may shape judgments about scholarship deservingness within a broadly defined racial category. The paper is clearly motivated, and the topic is relevant both theoretically and practically. The integration of work on group typicality, intragroup differentiation, and resource distribution is a real strength, and the overall research question is interesting and publishable.

The manuscript also has several methodological strengths. The studies are generally well designed, the hypotheses are easy to identify, the use of preregistration and power analyses is appropriate, and the authors make commendable efforts to support transparency through OSF and supplementary materials. The inclusion of a pilot test for the essays is also a good design choice in principle.

My main concern is that some of the manuscript’s conclusions are stated more strongly than the evidence fully warrants. In particular, the central theoretical claim appears to depend heavily on Study 2, where the key interaction between scholarship type and applicant ethnicity does not appear to have been supported. That matters because the context-dependent argument rests substantially on the expectation that ethnicity-based differences should emerge specifically in the Asian scholarship condition but not in the general scholarship condition. As currently written, the manuscript sometimes gives the impression that this prediction was more cleanly supported than it actually was.

Relatedly, I encourage the authors to revise the discussion and abstract so that the claims more closely match the evidential pattern. The evidence from Study 1 is clearer and more convincing than the evidence from Study 2. Accordingly, the paper would be stronger if it adopted a more measured tone, emphasizing that the results provide stronger support in Study 1 and more mixed or partial support in Study 2, rather than presenting the full theoretical account as firmly established across both studies.

I also think the essay pilot should be described with more precision. The main manuscript states that the essays did not differ significantly in perceived quality or content and that ethnicity did not affect these judgments. However, the supplement suggests a more complicated picture, including some significant interactions and at least one significant effect involving perceived GPA. I do not think these issues invalidate the studies, but I do think the relevant passage should be softened so that it does not overstate the cleanliness of the pilot results.

Another issue concerns the proposed mechanism. The paper foregrounds perceived Asian typicality, but the evidence seems somewhat less tidy than that framing suggests. In Study 1, typicality and identity both appear to matter, while the broader supplementary and exploratory analyses suggest a more mixed pattern. The manuscript would benefit from a more open discussion of whether the operative mechanism is specifically typicality, or perhaps a broader construct such as perceived fit with the category “Asian American” or attributed group identification.

I appreciated that the authors acknowledge the limitation of focusing on only three ethnic groups. Still, this limitation deserves slightly more emphasis. The choice of Chinese, Indian, and Filipino applicants is understandable and justified, but the article should be careful not to imply that these cases can straightforwardly stand in for the full diversity of Asian American populations. The conclusions should remain closely tied to the groups actually studied.

The manuscript is generally coherent and readable, but the argument would be more compelling if the discussion section were more balanced. At present, the paper moves somewhat quickly from the observed results to broader implications about scholarship distribution. A somewhat more restrained discussion of what the studies do and do not show would strengthen the manuscript by making the contribution feel more credible rather than less ambitious.

The English is understandable throughout, and the manuscript is certainly readable, but it would still benefit from language editing before publication. There are a number of minor wording problems, formatting issues, and awkward passages that make the paper feel slightly less polished than it could be. This is not a major barrier to review, but it is worth addressing in revision.

Overall, I see real merit in the manuscript. My recommendation is revision rather than rejection. The paper has a worthwhile contribution, but it would be substantially improved by moderating some of its claims, being more direct about the limits of the Study 2 evidence, and tightening the alignment between results and conclusions.

Author Response

This manuscript addresses an important and timely question: how perceptions of Asian American typicality may shape judgments about scholarship deservingness within a broadly defined racial category. The paper is clearly motivated, and the topic is relevant both theoretically and practically. The integration of work on group typicality, intragroup differentiation, and resource distribution is a real strength, and the overall research question is interesting and publishable.

Response 2.1: Thank you for your kind words. We hope we have addressed your comments in our revised manuscript.

The manuscript also has several methodological strengths. The studies are generally well designed, the hypotheses are easy to identify, the use of preregistration and power analyses is appropriate, and the authors make commendable efforts to support transparency through OSF and supplementary materials. The inclusion of a pilot test for the essays is also a good design choice in principle.

Response 2.2: Thank you for acknowledging our effort to make our research more transparent.

My main concern is that some of the manuscript’s conclusions are stated more strongly than the evidence fully warrants. In particular, the central theoretical claim appears to depend heavily on Study 2, where the key interaction between scholarship type and applicant ethnicity does not appear to have been supported. That matters because the context-dependent argument rests substantially on the expectation that ethnicity-based differences should emerge specifically in the Asian scholarship condition but not in the general scholarship condition. As currently written, the manuscript sometimes gives the impression that this prediction was more cleanly supported than it actually was.

Response 2.3: We added a new paragraph in the General Discussion on p.25-26 to more specifically discuss what our Study 2 findings were unable to tell us due to a lack of clear evidence. We additionally discuss how we were unable to disentangle between category fit and perceived Asian typicality, given that our Study 2 findings were inconsistent. Specifically, we wrote the following: “However, we did not have clear evidence from Study 2 that Asian typicality plays a role in decisions when the scholarship is designated for only Asian Americans and not when the scholarship is unrestricted. We expected that findings among participants in the Asian American scholarship condition in Study 2 would replicate findings from Study 1. However, we expected that in the unrestricted, general scholarship condition, the applicants’ perceived scholarship worthiness would be equivalent. Instead, we found that, across both scholarship conditions, the Chinese applicant was rated as more deserving of the Asian American scholarship than the Indian applicant. Additionally, the equivalence tests within the unrestricted, general scholarship condition were inconclusive. The Chinese-Filipino and Indian-Filipino comparisons were equivalent, while the Chinese-Indian comparison was not equivalent. Relatedly, in Study 2, we found that the Chinese applicant was rated as more deserving of the Asian American scholarship than only the Indian applicant, unlike in Study 1, where we found that the Chinese applicant was rated as more deserving than both the Indian and Filipino applicants. Therefore, we were also unable to completely replicate the parallel mediation findings from Study 1. Thus, we cannot conclude from Study 2’s findings that perceptions of Asian typicality of the scholarship candidate mattered in only the Asian American scholarship condition. Nevertheless, previous research suggests that judgments of group typicality are context dependent (e.g., Roth & Shoben, 1983); thus, future research is needed to test if this is the case for judgments of the scholarship worthiness of Chinese, Indian, and Filipino American scholarship applicants. Additionally, our Study 2 findings unfortunately cannot disentangle whether the mechanism for Asian American scholarship worthiness is perceived Asian typicality, specifically, or perceived fit with the Asian American category. Though closely related, typicality refers to the degree to which a target group member is close to the standard group member, whereas fit refers to whether a target group member is consistent with the social group (e.g., Bless & Wänke, 2000; Craig & Bodenhausen, 2018). Therefore, we recommend future research test these two mechanisms in the context of resource distribution among Asian Americans.”

Furthermore, we edited the discussion for Study 2 and the General Discussion to soften our conclusions to more accurately reflect our findings.

Relatedly, I encourage the authors to revise the discussion and abstract so that the claims more closely match the evidential pattern. The evidence from Study 1 is clearer and more convincing than the evidence from Study 2. Accordingly, the paper would be stronger if it adopted a more measured tone, emphasizing that the results provide stronger support in Study 1 and more mixed or partial support in Study 2, rather than presenting the full theoretical account as firmly established across both studies.

Response 2.4: Please see Response 2.3. We have additionally revised the abstract so that the claims more closely match our findings.

I also think the essay pilot should be described with more precision. The main manuscript states that the essays did not differ significantly in perceived quality or content and that ethnicity did not affect these judgments. However, the supplement suggests a more complicated picture, including some significant interactions and at least one significant effect involving perceived GPA. I do not think these issues invalidate the studies, but I do think the relevant passage should be softened so that it does not overstate the cleanliness of the pilot results.

Response 2.5: In the Supplement, we briefly summarized the findings of our pilot research on p.6. Specifically, “Overall, we concluded that participants were perceiving the essays as being equal in quality even when the same essay was ostensibly written by a writer of a different racial identity. While there were a few significant main effects and interactions, pairwise comparisons revealed that we only saw a difference in Cluster 3 between the Filipino and Chinese applicants’ essays on leadership, and that the Chinese applicant was perceived as having a higher GPA than the Filipino applicant. Therefore, it seemed that overall, there were no consistencies in how the essays significantly differed from each other.”

Additionally, in the main manuscript, we added the following sentence on p.13: “However, there were some significant effects of applicant ethnicity on participants’ evaluations of the essays and/or the applicant – for the results, please see the Supplement.”

Another issue concerns the proposed mechanism. The paper foregrounds perceived Asian typicality, but the evidence seems somewhat less tidy than that framing suggests. In Study 1, typicality and identity both appear to matter, while the broader supplementary and exploratory analyses suggest a more mixed pattern. The manuscript would benefit from a more open discussion of whether the operative mechanism is specifically typicality, or perhaps a broader construct such as perceived fit with the category “Asian American” or attributed group identification.

Response 2.6: Please see Response 2.3.

I appreciated that the authors acknowledge the limitation of focusing on only three ethnic groups. Still, this limitation deserves slightly more emphasis. The choice of Chinese, Indian, and Filipino applicants is understandable and justified, but the article should be careful not to imply that these cases can straightforwardly stand in for the full diversity of Asian American populations. The conclusions should remain closely tied to the groups actually studied.

Response 2.7: We agree that this is an important point and is the reason for our motivation to do this research. In the Limitations and Future Directions section, we discuss this more on p.30-31. Specifically, “Our studies have several limitations, offering potential avenues for future research. In both studies, we limited the Asian American ethnicities represented in our research to only three: Chinese, Indian, and Filipino. Our results allow us to make conclusions about how only Chinese, Indian, and Filipino individuals are perceived in the context of diversity scholarships. However, the Asian American group consists of more than 20 Asian ethnicities; therefore, it is unclear if our findings generalize to other East, South, and Southeast Asian ethnicities. This paper may provide a methodological framework for future research examining perceptions of diverse Asian ethnicities. Within our social-cognitive theoretical lens that East Asians are perceived as typically Asian, we would expect applicants of East Asian ethnicities to be considered more deserving of an Asian American award than applicants of South and Southeast Asian ethnicities. However, it is possible that studies examining perceptions of different Asian ethnicities may discover different patterns. For example, while household income greatly varies by Asian American ethnic subgroup, the household incomes for Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans are still higher than the overall U.S. household median income (Krogstad & Im, 2025). Therefore, if we had selected ethnic subgroups whose household incomes are lower than the overall U.S. household median income (e.g., Mongolian, Burmese), candidates with more obvious funding needs may have been perceived as highly deserving of an Asian American scholarship. However, future research can test this possibility and more directly test the interaction between socioeconomic status and Asian ethnic subgroups on scholarship worthiness. Overall, we would expect different stereotypes and perceptions of Asian typicality to be activated depending on the Asian ethnicity of the applicant, impacting the extent to which the applicants are perceived as deserving of a scholarship. Therefore, it is possible that, for example, despite both Filipino and Vietnamese Americans being considered Southeast Asian ethnicities, there may be differences in how typically Asian American these two ethnicities are considered

The manuscript is generally coherent and readable, but the argument would be more compelling if the discussion section were more balanced. At present, the paper moves somewhat quickly from the observed results to broader implications about scholarship distribution. A somewhat more restrained discussion of what the studies do and do not show would strengthen the manuscript by making the contribution feel more credible rather than less ambitious.

Response 2.8: Please see Response 2.3.

The English is understandable throughout, and the manuscript is certainly readable, but it would still benefit from language editing before publication. There are a number of minor wording problems, formatting issues, and awkward passages that make the paper feel slightly less polished than it could be. This is not a major barrier to review, but it is worth addressing in revision.

Response 2.9: Thank you for pointing this out. We had edited our manuscript accordingly.

Overall, I see real merit in the manuscript. My recommendation is revision rather than rejection. The paper has a worthwhile contribution, but it would be substantially improved by moderating some of its claims, being more direct about the limits of the Study 2 evidence, and tightening the alignment between results and conclusions.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting the revised manuscript. I appreciate the effort to clarify several parts of the argument. However, I still think a few issues need to be addressed before publication.

1. The revision does not fully address the main concern about Study 2. The manuscript still presents the Study 2 pattern as more supportive than it is, even though the key scholarship type × applicant ethnicity interaction was not significant.
2. The abstract should be more cautious. The phrase “As predicted” and the overall summary still imply cleaner support across both studies than the results warrant.
3. The pilot essay description remains too strong. The manuscript still states that the essays did not differ in quality or content, but the supplementary results appear more mixed. This should be softened.
4. The proposed mechanism should be framed more openly. The results suggest that perceived Asian typicality matters, but perceived Asian identity also plays a role. The authors should avoid presenting typicality as the only clear mechanism.

The limitation regarding the three ethnic groups is now better acknowledged. The manuscript appropriately notes that Chinese, Indian, and Filipino applicants cannot represent the full diversity of Asian American populations. This point is reasonably addressed.

       

Author Response

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting the revised manuscript. I appreciate the effort to clarify several parts of the argument. However, I still think a few issues need to be addressed before publication.

1. The revision does not fully address the main concern about Study 2. The manuscript still presents the Study 2 pattern as more supportive than it is, even though the key scholarship type × applicant ethnicity interaction was not significant.

Response 2.1: Throughout our revised manuscript, we edited any discussion of Study 2’s results by explicitly mentioning that we did not find a significant scholarship type x applicant ethnicity interaction. For example, in the Study 2 Discussion section on p.24, we state: “Inconsistent with our hypothesis, we did not find a significant interaction between applicant ethnicity and scholarship type on scholarship worthiness. Instead, overall, the Chinese applicant was rated as more deserving or worthy of a scholarship than the Indian and Filipino applicants. However, we decided to test our pre-registered hypotheses (despite not finding a significant interaction) by conducting a series of post-hoc comparisons and equivalence tests.”

Additionally, in the General Discussion on p.25, we wrote: “However, we did not have evidence from Study 2 that Asian typicality plays a role in decisions when the scholarship is designated for only Asian Americans and not when the scholarship is unrestricted, given that we did not find the expected significant interaction between applicant ethnicity and scholarship type on scholarship worthiness.”

1. The abstract should be more cautious. The phrase “As predicted” and the overall summary still imply cleaner support across both studies than the results warrant.

Response 2.2: We removed the phrase “As predicted” from our abstract and specified that we did not find support for our expected scholarship type and applicant ethnicity interaction in Study 2.

1. The pilot essay description remains too strong. The manuscript still states that the essays did not differ in quality or content, but the supplementary results appear more mixed. This should be softened.

Response 2.3: We revised the pilot essay description on p.13 to the following: “Pilot study results (see Supplement) revealed that there were some significant effects of applicant ethnicity on participants’ evaluations of the essays and/or the applicant – for the results, please see the Supplement. However, because the patterns were not consistent in terms of which applicant was rated as higher on perceived quality (e.g., clear and concise, well-organized, minor grammatical errors) and content (e.g., scholarship, leadership, and community service), we decided to move forward with the pilot-tested essays as the applicant ethnicity manipulation.

1. The proposed mechanism should be framed more openly. The results suggest that perceived Asian typicality matters, but perceived Asian identity also plays a role. The authors should avoid presenting typicality as the only clear mechanism.

Response 2.4: We added more to our discussion of the Asian identity results in the General Discussion on p.28: “In addition to perceived Asian typicality, we found that perceived Asian identification as a potential mechanism for perceived Asian scholarship worthiness. The present research conceptually replicates findings that perceptions of group typicality are related to perceptions of group identification (Wilkins et al., 2009; Kaiser & Wilkins, 2009). Specifically, the Chinese applicant was rated as identifying more strongly with the Asian American category than the Indian and Filipino applicants. Participants appeared to assume that the more typical the applicant was of the Asian American category, the more strongly the applicant would identify with being Asian American, and as a result, the more deserving the applicant should be of the Asian American scholarship. Thus, it seems like participants use perceived racial minority identification to determine whether an applicant is worthy of a resource meant for racial minority groups.”  

The limitation regarding the three ethnic groups is now better acknowledged. The manuscript appropriately notes that Chinese, Indian, and Filipino applicants cannot represent the full diversity of Asian American populations. This point is reasonably addressed.

Response 2.5: We’re glad that we were able to address this point in our prior revisions.