College entrance exams do not test for intelligence or academic competence. They test for ability to do well on the exam, which is governed primarily by a student's socioeconomic status.
What is the signal Harvard uses to test for intelligence or academic competence? So far I only have learned that SAT and ACT are not it. Whaat is?
There does not exist a meaningful test of general intelligence that outputs a number that is equally meaningful to people from all socioeconomic (or even cultural) backgrounds. Similarly, there does not exist a meaningful test of academic potential (aside from a student's existing academic record).
College entrance exams are a scam meant to make money for the people who manufacture them. I say this as someone who did pretty well on every standardized exam I took, and felt guilty because I knew students who performed worse and had fewer college prospects than I did because of it, even though I knew they were better students who would easily out-perform me at the more prestigious institutions to which I was admitted in most meaningful metrics.
Harvard is one of the core institutions for inducting new members of the US elite, aka the people who will be placed into positions of power over the next 10-20 years.
Deciding who gets in primarily on racial and gendered grounds without even a fig leaf requirement of intelligence or academic competence is going to deeply wound US culture. This is supposed to be an ideology abandoned in the 60s. Abandoned for good reasons, I might add. The universities are publicly and purposefully screwing up decades of social progress and the shockwaves could be broad because racial ideologies do tend to get out of control.