<p>I think what they are telling you is wrong. Parents of Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars program members should urge their children to follow the program slogan, "think big, work hard, achieve" and apply to the best schools in the country. I would expect those students to get into very good colleges, Asian or not. All the very best colleges don't need to be stingy with their financial aid money--they have plenty--and they are glad to allocate financial aid to get great students. </p>
<p>Best wishes to your child when application season comes around.</p>
<p>President Lowell was kind of a tool on these matters but that doesn't mean that everyone before him had the same opinions; his predecessor Charles William Eliot was much more progressive. Eliot believed in diversifying the school--he even boasted of having Japanese Buddhists at the college--and during his tenure Harvard began to admit black students; W.E.B DuBois graduated from Harvard in 1890; Harvard granted Booker T. Washington an honorary degree in 1896. A friend of mine who did a term paper on blacks at Harvard had a letter from a dean (I don't know the year, but based on the handwriting it had to have been 19th century) to a parent who objected to a black student's being housed near his son; the letter told the man that the black student in question was doing very well at Harvard and that they saw no reason to move him--but that the son would have to be sent home for his lack of academic performance. There were times when Harvard's policy toward certain groups of students was not what it should have been but it's not really fair to say that Harvard's policy on the matter was no more progressive than Princeton's until the mid 20th century.</p>