with regards to Harvard et al., they have a harder time to do positive discrimination since some court decisions in recent years. all in all, they look at extracurricular stuff to try to give extra points, because they can't discriminate - even positively - based on race, as far as I know. (the legal history of affirmative action is pretty long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit... )