Plausible deniability for illegal/unpopular admissions practices.

People skills are helpful to success. I can testify to that as someone with insufficient amounts.

The parent comment seems to be emphasizing the point that bureaucrats who have never met/interviewed the students shouldn't be the ones deciding which students have the potential to develop positive people skills. Their alleged leaning on stereotypes to make those decisions is unsurprising given such constraints.

Especially since the alumni interviewers who actually meet the candidates give Asian candidates basically the same marks for personality as White candidates.

But are the students who meet with alumni a representative sample? If I were a socially inept applicant I would take my chances without the interview.

It's not just alumni. Asian applicants were rated basically the same on "Personality" scores from teacher letters, counselor letters, alumni interviews, etc. Everything except their final grade (which is the only place that includes essays, I believe).

However, I find it incredibly unlikely that asian applicants are so bad at writing essays that it's singlehandedly tanking their personality score that drastically.

The way it worked when I was interviewing was that every applicant had an interview.