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The past couple of weeks have offered an unprecedented look into the way Harvard University evaluates applicants. The details came to light during a lawsuit alleging that the school of has discriminated against Asian-Americans hoping for a spot at the school - a claim Harvard vehemently denies. Though the suit has certainly pulled back the curtain on the Harvard admissions process, many details still remain under wraps. Harvard is hoping to keep it that way.
As part of the suit, the school filed a brief late last week arguing that certain documents produced as part of the case - including internal training materials and preliminary snapshots of the school's admitted class during specific periods of the application cycle - should remain under seal.
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The brief is part of a larger request to keep certain documents, like individual applicant files or correspondence with alumni, under seal so as not to violate the privacy of people communicating with or submitting their information to Harvard. "Harvard is deeply committed to protecting the extensive personal information applicants entrust to us in the admissions process," a Harvard spokesperson said in a statement regarding last week's brief.
Comment: What a joke. They're only concerned with protecting their own 'personal information', i.e. the evidence that their admissions process is highly politicized, and monetized. Years ago, Daniel Golden wrote a book about how super-rich families essentially buy admission for their children. That's how Jared Kushner got into Harvard, for example: The Story Behind Jared Kushner's Curious Acceptance into Harvard:
My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children's way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)
I also quoted administrators at Jared's high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard's decision.
"There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard," a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. "His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not."
Comment: Harvard is a joke: