Curtis WestbayStudents for Fair Admissions v. Harvard was decided by a Federal district court in 2019, after winding its way through the American judicial system for five years. The suit was brought by a group of Asian-American college students who claim that Harvard had discriminated against them when they applied to the school. Through the lawsuit, an anonymous group of Asian-American applicants alleged that the standards for admission for them were unfairly difficult, and furthermore that Harvard had capped the spaces available for undergraduate students who identified as racially Asian. From Bakke, the Supreme Court's precedent regarding racial quotas in college admission is abundantly clear.
Since the introduction of the modern Civil Rights Act, a number of major amendments have been introduced, aimed at promoting fair and equitable practices for racial minorities in the fields of employment and educational opportunities. The plaintiffs, having been organized by a legal strategist named Edward Blum, claimed that their Title VI rights under the Civil Rights Act had been violated. Title VI "prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities which receive Federal financial assistance," which is important in the context of this court case. Harvard is a private institution, which traditionally means that it does not receive funding from the Federal or Massachusetts state governments. However, it does receive some research and development grants, and those grants totaled over half a billion U.S. dollars around the time this lawsuit was first filed, over half of its annual research and development expenditure. If the case had been decided in the favor of Students for Fair Admissions, Harvard would have had to adjust its admission practices or risk losing out on this important funding, but ultimately, a judge by the name of Allison Burroughs authored a decision which stated that the Harvard admissions process does not discriminate against Asian-American applicants.
At the same time, in the decision, she did acknowledge that Harvard's admission process leaves room for improvement. The 130-page decision is not black and white, and as are most high-profile court decisions, it is full of nuance and detail. If you're interested in wading through this book-length decision on your own, here is an English-only PDF copy.
From the Federal district court decision, Harvard divulged a great deal of detail about their admission process, hardly any of which is surprising in the context of elite college admission. Here are some of the major takeaways:
- Harvard assesses incoming students on the basis of academic, extracurricular, athletic, and personal quality.
- Students are assessed on a scale of 1-4 (1 being the best); application readers can add a plus or minus, effectively making assessments on a 12-point scale (from 1+ to 4-).
- Application readers can also give a student a score of 5, stating that they are totally unprepared for Harvard, or 6, stating that there isn't enough evidence to make an assessment of a student within one of these four categories upon the basis of the materials submitted.
- What do the ratings mean? Take this excerpt from the court decision regarding the extracurricular category, for example:
- "An extracurricular rating of 1 indicates national-level, professional or other truly unusual achievement that suggest an applicant may be a major contributor at Harvard;
- an extracurricular rating of 2 indicates strong contributions to an applicant's high school in one or more areas, such as being class president or achieving recognition for extracurricular accomplishments on a local or regional level;
- an extracurricular rating of 3 indicates solid participation but without special distinction;
- and an extracurricular rating of 4 indicates little or no participation."
- Here is the real key to understanding why it's so hard to get into Harvard— depending on the student's background, geographic origin, race, application materials, etc., students who are varsity athletes (i.e. those who will participate on Harvard's official athletic teams), legacies (i.e. children or grandchildren of Harvard alumni), children of potential donors, or children of faculty are between around 5-10 times likelier to get an offer of admission than those who are not. These students are referred to as ALDC's. In other words, Harvard likes Harvard people, and if you're not one, then you have a better chance at admission if you're a national-level athlete or a big donor.
- Students who are being seriously considered for admission to Harvard receive an invitation for a staff interview. Of ALDC's, about 80% who get a staff interview are accepted.
- In 2019, about 35,000 students applied to Harvard. Of these applicants,
→ about 2,700 had a perfect (800) verbal SAT score (EBRW)
→ about 3,400 had a perfect (800) math SAT score
→ more than 8,000 had perfect GPAs
→ Harvard accepted around 2,000 applicants, anticipating 80% yield and around 1,600 matriculating freshmen
At this point, it's hardly worth discussing whether or not Harvard's admission policy discriminates against Asian-Americans, given the past three weeks' blog posts. In each of these cases, the petitioners see their situations alone— situations in which they feel like they're better than at least some students who were admitted. It would deepen the dark, sinister contours of America's fraught history with racism to operate in a race-blind way in college admission. Minorities are already underrepresented at elite American schools, and to adopt admission policies the sort of which would ignore cultural and socioeconomic conditions for applicants and appease the petitioners in Bakke, Grutter, Fisher, and SFFA would create on-campus communities where the already-underrepresented minority populations would dwindle even further. There really weren't overtures in this case from the petitioners that Asian-Americans were being disadvantaged for the benefit of other distinct racial groups, the way there were such overtures in Fisher v. UT-Austin, which is good. If this case shows us anything about Harvard and its $40 billion endowment (and schools of similar means), it's that connections mean a lot to them. Beyond that, to get their attention in their applications, students from China have to be truly, measurably extraordinary.