Helen Wan is an author, frequent speaker on diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and former corporate and media attorney. Her new book, "The Partner Track" (Macmillan), is about an Asian-American woman lawyer navigating race, gender and class dynamics at a prestigious law firm. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

A new study suggests that women and minorities are less likely to receive early support from potential academic mentors. Researchers from Wharton, Columbia and NYU ran an interesting field experiment: Pretending to be students, they e-mailed more than 6500 professors at top U.S. universities admiring each professor's work and asking to meet. The e-mails were all identical except for the senders' names.

The researchers found that faculty were most likely to respond to e-mails from white males. But more surprising was the high level of racial bias against Asians and Indians -- professors were likeliest to ignore e-mails from these students.

The study highlights the pernicious nature of the "model minority" stereotype of Asians, and the fact that Asians are still viewed as the most foreign "other" in our American culture -- perhaps the biggest outsiders in the politics of "not like us."

A common refrain I hear from well-meaning friends and colleagues is: "What's so bad about the Asian stereotype? Seems to me Asians have done all right." I get it. As a woman of color, I'm keenly aware that on the spectrum of bias, there are plenty of worse things to be called than good at school. It doesn't sound so terrible to be thought of as hardworking or quiet when there are so many more obviously sinister racial myths out there to bust.

But the flip side of the model minority myth is an assumption that Asians do just fine and don't need any mentoring or help in the academic or professional world. Whether due to bias or mere lack of interest, the professors in the study treated Asian and Indian students differently despite their reputation for academic achievement.

And this lack of mentorship while in school may lead to an achievement gap in the workplace. There's still a huge disparity between the percentage of Asians graduating at the top of their class from the best schools in the country and the percentage of Asians who go on to achieve top leadership positions in their chosen fields.