No offense, but this is almost certainly a false narrative that you are telling yourself and your son. It’s not healthy.

You summarized everything else outside of his grades and SAT scores as “strong extracurriculars”.

Show me an impressive hook and a few rejections from elite schools, and I will agree that there is likely discrimination of some sort somewhere in the process (possibly his high school, possibly at the elite schools).

I somehow doubt that there is an impressive hook, otherwise you would have mentioned it.

Elite school admission is totally not a lottery for someone with your son’s scores and a strong hook. Quite the contrary, admission to at least one elite school is almost a lock, even as an Indian-American.

That said, most families with really smart kids don’t focus on the strong hook, often because they don’t know that they need to do so. As such, they are left grasping for explanations. Race is an easy crutch to lean on (especially these days), but it is likely not the actual reason.

If you really think that he’s almost there, I recommend throwing in at least one application to an elite school. If he’s not at least wait listed, then he wasn’t even close, and no amount of race blind admissions would change that.

Though I do agree the odds are quite insane lately, with the top schools receiving applications from the top students of the entire planet. Basically everyone has to shift their sights down the rankings as a result.

In my experience, a typical parent thinks that a student with 4-year varsity sport participation (more than one doesn’t help if it’s just participation), president of a school club, and member of some group or two (one probably being a local community service group) as being “strong”.

I would call this nice, but similar to 10k-20k other applicants, mainly because it’s fairly easy to manufacture this.

Some sports teams take anyone who is willing to play. It’s often trivially easy to start a club with your friends and declare yourself president (and essentially do nothing). It’s trivially easy to join a group or two and tag along. I have heard of and seen all of these examples that were done precisely to game elite school admissions.

Is this what happened with OP’s kid? Who knows?

What strong in one or more of these same categories might look like:

- all-state first team in a sport, and/or talented enough to be recruited in a sport. If it’s not a school sport, then winner of a regional or larger competition (depends on sport).

- started a club/group that went on to do something meaningful, with “meaningful” roughly being that it was probably worthy of being written up in a local or regional newspaper.

- participated in a group (like a music group or academic group/team) that was highly competitive to join and won regional, national, and/or international competitions.

- participated in a group (like an existing service group) that did something incredibly unique, most likely led by the applicant (e.g., some sort of decent-sized development project, local or international).

One or more of the above, substantiated in recommendations and/or supporting materials (e.g., newspaper articles, bulletins, etc.) will make an applicant much more unique.

> Though I do agree the odds are quite insane lately, with the top schools receiving applications from the top students of the entire planet. Basically everyone has to shift their sights down the rankings as a result.

This is largely not true.

Outside of covid years (those years are outliers), the main reason the acceptance rates are lower is because more people are applying. In general, the overall quality of those additional applications is relatively low — it’s just much easier to apply now (especially with a mediocre application) than it was in the past, and it’s getting easier every year.

Harvard had 60k applicants last year, and about 13k 30 years ago. The strong applicant pool has not increased 4x-5x over the past 30 years.

Is it tougher? Yes, but only slightly, imho. I think the internet has allowed some students who are not in elite university feeder schools to get info on how to be a strong candidate. This info was much tougher to access 30 years ago.

As a simple example, Cal Newport has written some good blog posts and books on how to be an outstanding applicant.

That said, many people don’t avail themselves of this information and still stubbornly think that grades and SATs are the main criteria for elite school admissions.

You are displaying an amazing sense of entitlement.

The reality is that the race is not independent from economic means and social status. Students who are applying who are black or native are at a major disadvantage. In terms of how they were treated personally, how their schools were likely funded, their family wealth, etc. So when someone toggles the race entry, the probabilities factor in the fact that their background is going to be much more compelling.

You have an average wealthy family, without major hardships, in a wealthy area. Your son is doing just ok for his background; not great, not bad. I have seen thousands of such applications and the poster you're replying to is spot on.

Even if the Supreme Court kills race-based affirmative action, universities will use hardship and economic means instead. And that will not change your son's statistics one bit.

Stop blaming underrepresented less well educated poorer people for what your limitations are. That's how you become a racist.

This is how I objectively know he's being held to a much higher standard. A kid of any other race, to have the same chance of admission to these schools, will need an SAT score 250-450 points lower (depending on race), and a GPA 0.2 - 0.9 lower (again, depending on race), than him. To use Harvard's own statistic, "An Asian American in the fourth lowest decile has virtually no chance of being admitted to Harvard (0.9%) but an African American in that decile has a higher chance of admission (12.8%) than an Asian American in the top decile (12.7%)" They tried to explain it on the basis of soft metrics like "personality". Funnily enough, interviewers didn't judge Asian Americans as low on personality and sociability. Only the admissions staff did. Go figure.

Other posters who understand this tried to explain it to you. Even if this law were to change, it would make zero difference. You don't understand what changes these statistics. Race is a shorthand for them. Those people come from a much more disadvantaged background.

Your child comes from a wealthy family with every opportunity and is doing ok for it. Other people come from very far behind and got nearly to the same place. Their gap is much much larger, their effort is much much larger, as a consequence their achievement is higher.

These statistics will not change substantially after the lawsuit.

Moreover, you're totally being blinded by this to blame the wrong people: poor black kids.

Do you realize that the vast majority of applicants at Harvard aren't getting in by merit? They go in through programs related to wealth and legacy. That's where people should be upset.

Instead, you're just walking down a racist path that is obviously false.

I absolutely love this stat

Take a minute, and think about what non-AA, non-racist reason this might be true?

I don’t know the exact answer for the 4th decile, but I can make a good guess.

Of all of those folks in the fourth decile across all races, what do you think sets them apart?

It will without a doubt be that they are very highly rated in some other area.

The most likely answer statistically is… wait for it… recruited athlete.

There are other possible answers like child of faculty member, or child of person of interest, or child of key donor. We don’t really know unless we see the specific applications of the folks who were accepted in the 4th decile.

If you want to criticize schools for their policies on recruiting athletes or granting preference to deans/directors lists, you won’t get much pushback from me. That said, it’s very much the reality now and probably for the foreseeable future.

Turning this summary data into a race issue without knowing the details of the specific applicants is simply irresponsible.

Your measuring stick is 90% blank. How you measure "higher standard" are table stakes in the Ivies.

csa already did a good job explaining this which apparently didn't sway you, so I'm going to try a different tack.

If you ever get the opportunity to meet in person face to face in an intimate setting with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or Arnold Schwarzenegger, I encourage you to avail yourself, and observe as detached as you can. The change in the room is palpable and electric. Their charisma is off the charts powerful.

I'm familiar with Clinton's charisma, and it is stunning to watch at work. It isn't just his extraordinarily comprehensive recall, but also how he deploys it. You can observe the mechanics, like warmly restarting a thread of conversation with someone he last met a few years ago as if he simply turned around from another party guest a few seconds ago. But even among top politicians who employ the same technique, he stands out in the refined fashion with which he delivers it.

Think how many people regularly in your life have that kind of charisma. The Ivies still reject candidates with that level of magnetic personality because they lack in other dimensions.

By using the metrics you use, you are limiting your son and yourself. Those metrics come with a hard ceiling. Where the Ivies are going, there are no ceilings, there are no metrics in the first place. World class admissions means being open to von Neumann-scale, I-didn't-believe-that-possible possibilities to surprise the admissions committee and delight in that.

You don't achieve that surprise and delight with what you have mentioned so far.

Your son sounds like a terrific human being and you are rightfully fiercely proud of him and what you have accomplished as a parent and successful immigrant. Keep pushing forward on that trajectory, for college is not the pinnacle, just another foothill towards that summit reached at the end of our life. He can (and I'm sure will) still achieve incredible heights in his life, Ivy or not, as long as he continues to improve himself and the little part of the universe around him that he can personally make better. Successful dents in the universe have rarely historically come stamped with Ivy diplomas, and I wish someday to read about a dent your son makes and delight in my surprise at where that dent shows up.

Thanks for your sentiments in the last paragraph. He will make a dent!

This is worded extremely well.

I think many people grossly underestimate what a motivated and talented high schooler can do, largely due to the conceptual ceilings that are pervasive in our society.

1) The ivy leagues (and many other colleges of the US) shifted from a purely meritocratic assessment to an "all rounder" vetting process of potential candidates simply to eliminate the "undesirables" (at that time, mostly jews).

> The first thing to understand is that everything we know about selective college admissions today is less than a century old. So if you go back to 1910 or 1920, the Ivy League schools were not particularly expensive. They were not particularly desirable, in that they didn't have five or 10 or 20 times as many applicants as there were spots. And they weren’t particularly rigorous about vetting students ... So how did we get from there to here today, when these schools are desirable, expensive, and have a very rigorous vetting process?

> The answer is that most of those measures came about as part of the effort to limit the percentage of Jews in the student body. The extensive college application of multiple pages came about because they added questions to figure out if an applicant was Jewish, including What’s your religion? What is your father’s occupation? What is your mother’s maiden name? Where were your parents born? At some schools, they asked you to attach a photograph. Some began to require an interview. And that was in part so they could try to suss out if you were Jewish or not.

(Source: America’s most prestigious universities became elite through policies designed to keep Jews out of them. - https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/632c8ea068f6... ).

> ... the Ivy League didn't really want them. Being first-generation students, these applicants didn't have rich alumni parents who would be likely to donate big bucks. Being from an ethnicity not associated with America's governing class, they didn't help the Ivy League with its biggest selling point — that going to college there provides an opportunity to rub shoulders with America's governing class. And they were seen as boring grinds who studied too hard and weren't much fun.

> The result was a change in admissions criteria to reward "leadership," and "well-rounded" candidates — a thin disguise for "WASPs" — and, following closely on, actual quotas for Jewish students, so that no matter how many applied, their numbers on campus would stay just about the same.

Source: Asians get the Ivy League's Jewish treatment: Column - https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/23/ivy-league...

Yeah, it looks like they are doing the same thing with the Asian-Americans today (who have a similar immigrant cultural values like the jewish immigrants of the early 20th century - strong family ties and cultural importance to getting a good education).

2) If you are rich and have money to bribe these colleges, the "minimum qualification" will be "adjusted" to accommodate you. (Source: How elite US schools give preference to wealthy and white 'legacy' applicants - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-school... ).

1. A good history of the SAT and ACT can be found here: https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history-printable.h...

2. Here is another very solid source on the wart (Lowell): https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/27/opinion/harvard-presi...

3. One goal of standardized tests in the early 1900s was to get the better students and a more diverse group of students into the better schools rather than lean very heavily on feeder WASP private schools (which had been standard up until then). There were societal needs that the the existing admissions processes did not address on a number of levels.

4. Eliot, Harvard president in the early 1900s before Lowell, embraced diversity. "Eliot was bragging to The New York Times about Harvard’s racial, ethnic, and religious diversity as well as its economic class diversity."

5. A racist Lowell became president and implemented a Jewish quota in the 1920s.

6. In the 1930s, Conant, Lowell's successor, gradually eased these quotas and focused on using the SAT as less-biased assessment tool. "Eight years after rejecting the SAT for use in admissions, Harvard begins requiring all prospective scholarship students to take the SAT. The president of the university, James Conant, feels that the test provides an accurate assessment of a student's intelligence. (Conant reasons that the SAT could then be used by Harvard to select scholarship candidates from among students other than those from well-known East Coast private schools.) By 1938, all of the College Board member schools will be using the SAT to evaluate scholarship applicants."

7. In summary, Lowell's Jewish quota was only in place for a decade or so (a dark time to be sure). Prior to and after that, diversity found via various forms of merit were aggressively sought after.

8. Some of your quotes seem to suggest that academically strong students are also boring grinds. It is possible to be strong academically while also being well-rounded, regardless of your race. The definition of "well-rounded" may have been tailored during Lowell's time to exclude Jews, but a modern day definition definitely does not exclude any race by design (e.g., it is possible to be an acclaimed Asian athlete, leader, artist, etc.).

9. There are book-length treatments of the subject of Harvard's history of seeking diversity that are quite compelling (noting that Harvard never was and never has been perfect). Rather than read and quote click-bait articles about the topic, I would encourage folks to read one of these books. Student Diversity at the Big Three: Changes at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Since the 1920s is one possible book, but I'm not sure it's the best (I read a very good one in the 00s, but I cannot remember the title or author). The Chosen is another.

I will close with a quote from the Boston Globe link above:

"Don’t be fooled by those using the Jewish quota of the mid-20th century or charges of discrimination against Asian Americans (also despicable when true, but which the lower courts convincingly found was not the case here) as an excuse to limit the inclusion of Black and Latino students at selective universities. We should be celebrating, not ending, the policies of diversity and inclusion that opened universities to Catholics, Jews, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, women, and other outsiders."