Thanks. I was off by about 2/3, but my ratio was very close. If they had 61K applicants, I’d estimate about 36K were well qualified.
So I was given to understand. I went to Georgia Tech myself, we tended to think of the best university in Cambridge as a rival.
But that is the issue presented, is it not? If you have 60,000 applicants and have to select only 2,000 of them for admission, I don’t think that anyone is arguing that you cannot take any factor you want in account, except for race (or religion, or gender, etc.). If Harvard thinks that having half of the class full of tuba players, or legacy admissions, is desirable it is free to do that, and nobody disputes it.
The issue is that Harvard says, after applying this test, that it must take race into account otherwise their student body would nearly all white and Asian.
But if true, that is only because of the criteria that Harvard itself uses to make admissions decisions. That is the hard sell here that Harvard is asking for an exception in law that is almost never given except under the strictest scrutiny, yet it is in response to a problem of its own creation.
As an aside, the questions about diversity v. quotas are pretty telling. Some Justices are trying to point out the absurdity of Grutter which holds that quotas are bad, but “critical mass” or diversity is good. So they pose a question like, “Well what if you have 10% blacks, is that enough diversity?” The lawyers are smart enough not to fall into that trap, because if they say yes or even no, then they are now talking about a prohibited quota.
I’ll admit I don’t understand the distinction that Grutter was trying to make. Obviously, if the goal is diversity, you have to have a number in mind that is more or less sufficient to achieve that, and it is thus a quota.
We seem to be at least trying in this forum. In any event, noone has called me a racist for my stance on the harvard lawsuit yet.
I agree with the last part. As to the first part, since Grutter was a problem of the Court’s own creation, it needs to now
account for the problems it has caused. Grutter has allowed for 20 additional years of racial discrimination and there have been reliance interests. Plus, it can be argued that Grutter is not being overruled but simply being applied as written: 25 and done.
Yes, I believe that both Harvard and UNC gave lip service to the idea that they would just love to end racial discrimination, but they definitely cannot do it now or in 5 years and cannot give the Court any sort of date–could be 100 years, we can’t say. I think they missed an opportunity there. If either would have said that they are trying and to just give us 10 or 15 or 20 more years. That could have gone a long way.
And Waxman was just unsympathetic. The Petitioners proposed a plan that basically said, drop the legacy and donor preferences, and accept the 98th percentile of scores instead of the 99th and you have the same racial balance you have now without making direct racial preferences. The school rebutted that idea and said that per Grutter, it didn’t have to do that. A pay for play admissions process doesn’t seem to meet the high demand required for strict scrutiny.
There is a misconception baked into that post that
there is some objective ranking of “scores” that is or could be used. What “scores” would that even be?
Based on the information submitted during discovery, about 40% of Harvard applicants receive a 1 or 2 on academics; about 25% get a 1 or 2 on extracurricular activities; 20% received a 1 or 2 personal score; 10% receive a 1 or 2 athletics score
Less than 1% of applicants get a 1 in ANYTHING. If you get 2s across the board, you have a 68% chance of admission, If you only have three 2’s your chance drops to 48%. So yeah it’s very competitive.
I was surprised at how salty the three liberal justices were.
Kagan presented a hypothetical and the SFFA lawyer answered her question asked if she would allow him to suggest a different formulation of the hypothetical and her response was “No, I don’t think I will” and just kept asking questions without hearing him out. I was shocked at this. It is highly unusual for a justice to behave this way.
I have done alumni interviews for Harvard for several years now, I don’t think I’ve ever given a candidate a 1 in anything. I don’t usually give out 2s.
Noone received a 1 personal score in 2017 (apparently noone means up to 50 people). So they are rare.
But if you read their descriptions, a 3 is a fully qualified candidate. That’s my point. Most of their applicants are qualified.
I was indifferent to that. As an appellate advocate, you are taught never to do that. Sure, instead of answering the hard hypothetical the judge will pose, I want to “reformulate” it so I can answer my own easier question or even strawman it. You are taught that it is very disrespectful to a Court to do that and seems evasive. So I don’t have an issue with Kagan, at this level of advocacy, basically saying, “No, you answer my question.”
In other instances, though, the liberal justices, especially Sotomayor and to a lesser extent Jackson would just ask a series of softballs to the advocates on “'their” side. Scalia would sometimes throw a lifeline if the advocate on “his” side was struggling, but this was a series of softball leading questions just basically them giving a speech. I’ve not seen things done to that extent.
Agreed!
(Harvard being the second finest university in Cambridge, MA)
I’ll admit that I am unsure. That was posed to Waxman and he didn’t seem to dispute it.
The answer is “no”.
Very few academic 3’s get in without a 1 some other category.
Only 4% of 3s get in, 70% of 1’s get in (and 12% of 2’s).
85% of applicants get 1’s 2’s or 3’s I don’t think Harvard is indifferent between these categories.
But all those numbers are subjective. I don’t have some formula to decide if the kid is a 2 or a 3 in extracurricular activities. Or academics, for that matter, especially since Harvard stopped requiring standardized tests.
Very few kids without standardized test scores actually got in.
I think there is a sort of algorithm for scoring academics and extracurricular. Local, state, regional, national. Some activities fall outside the cubbyholes but are frequently comparable to something they are already familiar with.
The only truly subjective score is the personal score.
That was my thought. Although Harvard may not require as a matter of policy a standardized test score, when you are trying to be one of 2,000 out of 60,000 it would seem to be very much to your advantage (read: don’t even try without it unless you are really, really special) to show a high standardized test score.
Much like how Justice Jackson tried to make the point that nobody was required to put their race on the admissions form. But if you are a URM and get a boost, even if slight, then who in their right mind would not?
I thought he DID answer the question but wanted to expand on the answer and she refused. That is highly unusual.
They are preparing their dissent.
I know you are pessimistic based on Barrett and Kavanaugh’s questions and based on what I have heard from friends that attended the oral arguments, you might be right but it is unlikely.