The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating a complaint that Harvard and Princeton universities discriminates against Asian-Americans.

The investigation began with a complaint from an Indian-American student in California who was near the top of his high school class but was rejected at both schools.

The civil rights agency doesn’t discuss the substance of pending cases, so there’s no telling what evidence the Indian-American family might have to support a discrimination claim. Mere rejection - - by either Harvard or Princeton - - likely would not suffice, as both schools routinely reject students with perfect SAT scores and grade-point averages.

A Harvard spokesman told reporter Golden the institution does not discriminate. Asian-Americans make up 16 percent of Harvard undergraduates.

Asian-American students have challenged Ivy League admission policies before.

Jian Li, a Chinese American, filed a civil rights complaint after Princeton rejected him in 2006. He’d scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT and graduated in the top 1 percent of his class, yet had been rejected at several Ivies.

Golden reports that the agency received a fresh complaint in September targeting Yale, subsequently withdrawn.

It’s questionable, though, whether any student could prove discrimination by those schools without access to stacks of admission data.

Harvard’s admission rate has dipped to 6.2 percent, and Yale and Princeton aren’t far behind. There is simply no guarantee of admission, no matter one’s credentials.

There’s plenty of research to suggest, though, that Asian-American applicants must bring higher test scores and GPAs than whites, Hispanics or Blacks to gain entry.

Golden cites a 2011 study of admissions at Duke: Asian-American enrollees scored 1457 on the reading and math sections of the SAT, compared to 1416 for whites, 1347 for Hispanics and 1275 for Blacks.

(Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)