| For those who aren't following closely: Harvard, like many Universities with applications from far more candidates than they can accept, filter applications based on perceived desirability. For example, a student with the same academic background is more likely to get admitted if they come from Wyoming or Maine than New York or California; in the name of having a more diverse student body with more diverse interests and upbringings, rather than just upper-middle-class students from coastal cities. There is, of course, a racial component to this. Today, qualified Asian-American applicants are overrepresented as a share of the overall population, due to great academic qualifications. Harvard has been found to be accepting them at a lower rate than you would expect; if you look into it, there's some "desirability" factor that's bringing them down. Obviously this is very controversial. "Students for Fair Admissions" was created by Edward Blum, a Neo-Conservative activist and AEI fellow who is well-known for his work against the Voting Rights Act of 1965, for attempting to reduce the population-based power of districts by only counting registered voters as persons, and generally recruiting 'victims' of affirmative action to be subjects of test-case lawsuits in order to advance his political beliefs. |