Reply to DD is half Asian, half white. Is one better to declare for college applications?

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[quote=Anonymous]How admissions works is Harvard compares the Asian American applicant against other Asian American applicants, not to the rest of the application pool. Harvard will have an informal quota for the % of the incoming class reserved for Asian Americans. They do the same with African Americans and Hispanics, as well as international students. In short, African American applicants are not competing against Asian American applicants for the same spots. The one pool of applicants that is not designated as a separate group are white applicants, who all go into the "regular" pile unless they have a legacy or sports hook. But the applicants within that pile are still competing against each other for the remaining slots.

The uncomfortable truth is that the average SAT scores for Asian American applicants at schools like Harvard is higher than the average SATs for white students, and substantially higher than for African American students. This is a fact. A simple, undeniable fact. While SATs are not everything, it still strongly suggests that Asian American applicants are held to higher standards than any other applicant groups at Harvard. It's not a deliberate tactic on Harvard's attempt, it's a reflection that Harvard has informally decided that X% of the incoming class will be Asian American, there are Y numbers of Asian American applicants, so by default, the standards are higher. Likewise, Harvard has decided that X% of the class will be African American, there are Y numbers of African American applicants, and because the pool of African American applicants is much smaller the competition for admissions is less competitive and standards as measured by SAT scores are lower (relatively speaking, of course).

Harvard et al have decided that they prioritize and value a certain demographic makeup in their student body over true meritocracy, and this is the way it's practiced. But it does underscore a certain hypocrisy of the modern liberal mindset that in order to achieve the ideal student population they have to substantially discriminate against a minority group and meritocracy is, in reality, not a priority but something that only receives lip service in contrary to the general liberal ideas most of the school and its administrators espouse.

As a private institution Harvard can do what it wants to do but I'd respect them more if they were honest about these discriminations.

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