Lotteries May Be the Fairest Way to Fix Elite-College Admissions
A federal court has in recent weeks unsealed a trove of documents revealing how Harvard decides whom to admit out of the 40,000 or so students who apply each year for its roughly 1,600 freshman seats. The documents, provided as part of a 2014 lawsuit filed by the organization Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which represents Asian Americans who at some point were rejected from Harvard, contain compelling evidence that the university’s admissions system disadvantages Asian applicants. Behind the scenes, the plaintiffs allege, the school’s admissions officers to build freshman classes comprised of students with a range of backgrounds, interests, and strengths. This scheme, according to the lawsuit, which is slated to go to trial in October, entails a degree of racial balancing that
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