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by polynomial 2200 days ago
This is the most puzzling aspect. Not sure how anyone could claim with a straight face Harvard unfairly discriminates against Asian applicants.

There's definitely something else going on here.

1 comments

Statistically, Asians have higher than average SAT, ACT scores, this is not contested.

In 1996 California passed prop 209 which banned affirmative action on the state level. All top UC schools have become majority asian despite California being less than 20% asian.

Now considering Harvard, there was a federal case brought against it since asians scoring higher marks than peers were being rejected.

Harvard's defense was that they were scoring lower, on average on "personality" scores -- a qualitative measure on admissions.

By contrast, african americans were scoring highest on these personality scores.

Ultimately, the case was won by Harvard since the intent was not determined to be pernicious.

It's no question Harvard artificially diversifies its student body, but affirmative action does come at a cost.

How was personality scored? Was this specified?