Study Charges Harvard With Recruiting Black Applicants Who Have No Chance of Admission

A new study from researchers at Duke University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Oklahoma charges that Harvard University “encourages applications from many students who effectively have no chance of being admitted, and that this is particularly true for African Americans.”

The study was based on data that was made public in the recent lawsuit that ruled that Harvard did not discriminate against Asian American applicants. The study states that “African American applications soared beginning with the Class of 2009, with the increase driven by those with lower SAT scores. Yet there was little change in the share of admits who were African American.”

Essentially, the study charges Harvard with recruiting large number of Black applicants who had no chance of admission so that Black acceptance rates would decline to more closely match those of White and Asian applicants. This would serve to mask the racial preferences given to Black applicants over White and Asian applicants with similar high SAT scores. The study states that “admit rates for African American applicants were twice as large as admit rates for Asian American applicants in 2000, but by 2017 were approximately the same.”

The study says that for the Classes of 2014 to 2018, 38 percent of Black applicants had essentially no chance of admission based on their test scores and grades alone. “Using historical admissions data for Harvard,” according to the study, “we provide evidence that this was not always the case, and that beginning in the Class 2009, Harvard dramatically expanded its recruitment of low-scoring African American applicants.”

The full study, “Recruit to Reject? Harvard and African American Applicants,” may be downloand by clicking here.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. If all those late comers to “Equal Justice Under the Law” spent as much time on investigating and eradicating anti-Black discrimination and racism as they do in perennially trying to ferret out even the scent of “favoritism” and “undue advantages” allegedly granted Blacks in university admission processes, this nation would be discrimination- and racism-free BEFORE breakfast time tomorrow morning!

  2. Does that mean all Black applicants do not have the required SAT scores? All Black applicants in the whole of United states and all over the world they do not have the required High SAT scores?

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