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<p>See paragraph 34 of the complaint. Title VI broadly prohibits racial discrimination by those who receive any form of federal assistance.</p>
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There’s no law that makes discrimination on the basis of secondary school illegal.</p>
<p>For that matter, there’s no law the prohibits discrimination on the basis of GPA or SAT scores.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who doesn’t see any reason why the student they describe would have been a shoe-in if he weren’t Asian? Captain of the tennis team, but was he a recruited athlete? High test scores but didn’t seem to do much academic activities outside of school. Obviously a very bright student but the complaint is written as though clearly he should have been admitted yet I don’t see anything there that would wow anyone on this forum. OK he got the AP award for taking lots of AP exams and he was a NMSF along with 50,000 other kids. I am still not seeing how it’s clear he should have been admitted over all the other kids who also had those boxes checked off.</p>
<p>Because people who are book-smart but real-life dumb haven’t figured out that acceptance to Harvard is not predicated upon racking up X scores and X GPA and X extracurriculars. Because some people can’t possibly break free from the paradigms that they are used to, where college admission is predicated upon scores and nothing else.
No one with a 36, 2400, etc. has a place at Harvard that is being “stolen” by someone else. </p>
<p>Actually, the complaint doesn’t even say that he had a 2400, from which I conclude that he didn’t. It just says that he had an 800 on the math level 2, which places him in the top 9% of students taking that test–roughly the top 13,000 of test takers. The ACT score of 36 puts him in the top 5,975 of test takers. But given the geographic distribution of Harvard’s applicant pool I would guess that many of their high-scoring applicants didn’t take the ACT.</p>
<p>Just a quick numerical comment: There are about 16,000 NMSFs each year. The figure of 50,000 includes the Commended Scholars, who are out of the running for National Merit scholarships. Of the 16,000 NMSFs, about 15,000 will become finalists, and about 8000 will actually receive monetary awards, if previous patterns hold (could be some adjustment in these figures).</p>
<p>Ah, thanks for the correction. Still, it appears that Harvard could fill their entering class with NMSF and still have to turn quite a few away. According to NMSC, in 2012-2013, 268 of those 8,000 who won the awards ended up at Harvard. </p>
<p>The complaint actually doesn’t say that the student was selected for a scholarship, just that he was a semifinalist, so one of the 16,000. </p>
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The ACT score of 36 puts him in the top 5,975 of test takers
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<p>Where did you get the number? Last I checked it was less than 1000 each year.</p>
<p>It’s not particularly clear to me why they even mention that kid, as none of the relief sought seems to have anything to do with him. Presumably it’s to create a “cause or controversy” for the purpose of applying the Declaratory Judgment Act? Except, of course, the fact that they’re seeking relief that doesn’t have much to do with him just indicates that there isn’t actually a case or controversy, or a plaintiff.</p>
<p>I kind of suspect the purpose of the complaint was to get people to read it, rather than to get a court actually to do something.</p>
<p>He’s willing to transfer. Without him, do they have standing?</p>
<p>I can’t imagine allowing my kid to do this, as his entire life history becomes public record, subject to internet searches, should the court case go forward. And Harvard can release the application file, if necessary. You’d have to be certain the recommendations were absolutely glowing to risk that.</p>
<p>@texaspg, <a href=“http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2014/pdf/profile/National2014.pdf”>http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2014/pdf/profile/National2014.pdf</a> and you are correct, I read off the wrong number. Just ignore everything in that post! The composite number was 1,407. </p>
<p>The student is apparently seeking to transfer to Harvard. </p>
<p>Does there have to be evidence of harm? The kid got into some other top 20 university, right? How is there “harm”? </p>
<p>How is there “harm” to ANYONE if Harvard denies them? Is there some life guarantee that you get what you want? Perhaps I should sue companies I applied to long ago because they didn’t give me job offers. </p>
<p>It really defies comprehension.</p>
<p>FWIW, Harvard’s website says they have 12 transfer openings a year.</p>
<p>The kid’s not even a party to the suit. The relief they request is pretty odd. Paragraphs (a) and (b) look like straightforward advisory opinions. What’s they want in (b) looks like it’s supposed to be a general statement of principle that would apply to every academic institution in the country (99.99% of which haven’t been joined as parties). The remedies in © and (d) are so wildly broad they’re really hard to justify. To comply with (d) I think they’d have to put up a Chinese* wall in which the people on the admissions decision-making side wouldn’t even get to see last names of applicants.</p>
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<p>*Metaphorical term, not related to ethnicity!</p>
<p>@mathyone That number seems to keep going up each year (one wonders if ACT has become easier). About 2011, there were several in a local school and at that time the total was closer to 500 or 600.</p>
<p>I think Harvard should just admit that they ARE trying to engineer a certain racial balance in their class, and the only way to do that consistently is to look at race.</p>
<p>It’ll get dismissed on a summary judgment motion. The good thing is that they can speed things up since the plaintiff already wrote its brief and included it in the complaint.</p>
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So how does one evaluate life-smartness?</p>
<p>@#35, Are they doing that, though? I don’t know. It’s also possible they’re trying to engineer a balance of “concentrations” (i.e., majors) in the class, as well as geographic diversity. You’d have to have access to data to see how many students of each background apply to be STEM or humanities majors. And athletic recruits add a twist to the data.</p>
<p>@texaspg, possibly, or perhaps because students prep more and also I gather from this site that more high-achieving students are taking both the ACT and SAT than used to, although that is not standard practice in our area. I haven’t actually looked at those numbers before because my daughter didn’t take the ACT (which is why the 5,000+ figure I quoted before didn’t strike me as odd–that was the number scoring 36 in English, not the composite, by the way.)</p>
<p>I actually think the bar is higher for Asians, but I also think that these schools have a right to admit kids who play the harmonica as well as violinists, and kids who want to study classics as well as STEM. If they were flooded with harmonica players the bar would probably be higher for them as well.</p>