The boundaries are different for South Asian and East Asians. NUS's participation probably influenced using the Asian cutoff rather than the Caucasian cutoff.
If you check the source for the data you'll se that they define "Asian" as "All persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, or the Pacific Islands."
And don't forget that the data group everyone with ancestors from Asia, a rather large and diverse place, as being from a single demographic. That is, if they don't group people from an Asian background in the broad "not historically underrepresented" category. As if Uighers and Cambodians (for instance) have massive institutional advantages.
Typically if there is some distinction of asian in US surveys I've encountered, the common categorization is southeast asian vs asian/pacific islander. Which is just as much of a head scratcher of groupings.
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