Is Harvard Admissions Discriminating Against Asian-Americans?

CAMBRIDGE, MA — A lawsuit against Harvard University alleges that the admissions office has a purposeful pattern of rating Asian-American applicants lower than any other race on personal traits that might boost their chances of getting into the Ivy League School.

The lawsuit was brought by a group called Students for Fair Admissions and says the school with violated civil rights by discriminating against Asian-Americans and keeps the numbers of Asian-Americans low on purpose. Meanwhile, it accepts white, black and Hispanic applicants who are not as qualified.

Harvard University has denied this and said the internal Harvard study referenced in the lawsuit has been taken out of context and was incomplete and preliminary.

The group representing the Asian-American students analyzed more than 160,000 student records and filed the analysis Friday in federal court in a lawsuit against the university that stems from 2014.

Both sides filed asked for an immediate ruling in their favor on Friday. If that fails, a trial is set for October. If it goes on to the Supreme Court, it could upend decades of affirmative action policies at colleges and universities across the country, according to the New York Times, which broke the story.

“Today’s court filing exposes the startling magnitude of Harvard’s discrimination against Asian-American applicants," said Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, in a statement, on the group's website.

Harvard’s class of 2021 is 50.9 percent minority, according to the admissions website, which notes 22.2 percent are Asian-American 14.6 percent are African-American, 11.6 percent Hispanic and 2.5 percent Native-American or Pacific Islander.

In its admissions process, according to the court documents, Harvard ranks applicants in five categories — “academic,” “extracurricular,” “athletic,” “personal” and “overall” from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.

Some 21.3 percent of white applicants gave a 1 or 2 compared to 17.6 percent of Asian-Americans when it came to personal ranking, according to the analysis of Students for Fair Admissions.

Alumni interviewers have given Asian-Americans personal ratings similar to those of whites. But the admissions office appears to have given them the worst scores of any racial group, often without even meeting them, the Times reported.

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, retained by the Students For Fair Admissions said there were ways around this, according to court documents.

"Harvard failed to fully consider any of the numerous available race-neutral alternatives that could achieve the educational benefits of diversity.

He suggests Increasing socioeconomic preferences; financial aid; Reducing or eliminating preferences for legacies, donors, and relatives of faculty and staff; Adopting policies using geographic diversity, including percentage plans and the use of zip codes; Increasing recruitment efforts; Increasing the admission of community college transfers; and Eliminating the Early Action admissions option.

Check out some of the analysis in the court document:

Read the NYT article here on this: Harvard Asian Enrollment Applicants

Read more about Students for Fair Admissions.

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