I am cynical enough to believe it's a loophole to keep overachieving Asians or Indians from owning a rightful slot instead of a son or daughter of a wealthy donor, politician, or celebrity.

Is "owning" a typo for "earning"? I don't see how anyone can own a slot.

To add to your cynicism, university exams started as way to select WASPy prep school students instead of "overachieving" Jewish public school students. See, the tests included a section on Latin, which was much more often taught in private prep schools than public high schools.

To detract from your cynicism, the intrinsic assumption is the SATs are meaningful indicator of "rightfulness."

My understanding is that at best it shows a correlation with the first year of college, and that high school grades show a better correlation than the (gameable) SAT.

Don't know if the WSJ article covers any of this - don't have a subscription. But the header suggests this change is only for the next year, as a response to the pandemic, and not (yet?) a long-term change, so it likely doesn't touch on these issues.

Why not both? Reconsidering the "rightful slots" of either group would diversify the institution significantly, though there are many who believe diversity is not beneficial. Perhaps Harvard sees a path to increased value in their endeavor to be more representative society.

Yup. The SAT exam fee is affordable (even if expensive) to everyday people. Other qualifications like intel science fairs, extra-curriculars, trips internationally, etc are all really expensive. As the child of middle-class immigrants from Asia, it's meant to keep people like me out, and instead select for the exclusive neighborhood I now live in and the Jones's who want to keep up. Great...

Agreed.

Harvard is selective and exclusionary but it doesn't need to select the objectively best people, it just has to select people that are "good enough". Most of the value of an undergrad degree at Harvard comes from networking rather than the education itself. It's a club.

(Unrelated, but I love, love, love your username.)

Thanks, I'm glad I took it.

It's just a music group.

Don't forget that we're in a global pandemic that is severely limiting students' ability to take the test.

Maybe they found that SAT/ACT were not good criteria for selecting the best candidates.

May or may not be related to the lawsuits they’ve been dealing with recently.

SAT/ACT tests provide "objective" data that can then be used in lawsuits to prove discrimination.

Can't win the lawsuit? Eliminate the proof!

You made me dig up some articles on this:

Harvard did win the bias lawsuit last year (october 2019): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruli...

The organization challenging this is still there: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/

Here's their latest complaint (march 2020): http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...

Their latest update links to this paper (april 2020): http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...

They won the lawsuit...

Would you have rejected a Harvard admit ? Are you just salty you didn't get in ?