APPENDIX
Harvard College Admissions Program
For the past 30 years Harvard College has received each year applications
for admission that greatly exceed the number of places in the freshman class.
The number of applicants who are deemed to be not "qualified" is
comparatively small. The vast majority of applicants demonstrate through test
scores, high school records and teachers' recommendations that they have the
academic ability to do adequate work at Harvard, and perhaps to do it with
distinction. Faced with the dilemma of choosing among a large number of
"qualified" candidates, the Committee on Admissions could use the
single criterion of scholarly excellence and attempt to determine who among the
candidates were likely to perform best academically. But for the past 30 years
the Committee on Admissions has never adopted this approach. The belief has
been that if scholarly excellence were the sole or even predominant criterion,
Harvard College would lose a great deal of its vitality and intellectual excellence
and that the quality of the educational experience offered to all students
would suffer. Final Report of W. J. Bender, Chairman of the Admission and
Scholarship Committee and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, pp. 20 et seg. (Cambridge, 1960). Consequently,
after selecting those students whose intellectual potential will seem
extraordinary to the faculty --perhaps 150 or so out of an entering class of
over 1,100the Committee seeks variety in making its choices. This has seemed
important . . . in part because it adds a critical ingredient to the
effectiveness of the educational experience [in Harvard College] . . . The effectiveness of our students' educational
experience has seemed to the Committee to be affected as importantly by a wide
variety of interests, talents, backgrounds and career goals as it is by a flue
faculty and our libraries, laboratories and housing arrangements. (Dean of Admissions Fred L. Glimp,
Final Report to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 65 Official Register of
Harvard University No. 25, 93,104-105 (1968) (emphasis supplied).
The belief that
diversity adds an essential ingredient to the educational process has long been
a tenet of Harvard College admissions. Fifteen or twenty years ago, however,
diversity meant students from California, New York, and Massachusetts; city
dwellers and farm boys; violinists, painters and football players; biologists,
historians and classicists; potential stockbrokers, academics and politicians.
The result was that very few ethnic or racial minorities attended Harvard
College. In recent years Harvard College has expanded the concept of diversity
to include students from disadvantaged economic, racial and ethnic groups.
Harvard College now recruits not only Californians or Louisianans but also blacks
and Chicanos and other minority students. Contemporary conditions in the United
States mean that if Harvard College is to continue to offer a first-rate
education to its students, minority representation in the undergraduate body
cannot be ignored by the Committee on Admissions.
In practice, this
new definition of diversity has meant that race has been a factor in some
admission decisions. When the Committee on Admissions reviews the large middle
group of applicants who are admissible" and deemed capable of doing good
work in their courses, the race of an applicant may tip the balance in his
favor just as geographic origin or a life spent on a farm may tip the balance
in other candidates' cases. A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to
Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can
usually bring something that a white person cannot offer. The quality of the
educational experience of all the students in Harvard College depends in part
on these differences in the background and outlook that students bring with
them.
In Harvard College
-admissions the Committee leas not set target-quotas for the number of blacks,
or of musicians, football players, physicists or Californians to be admitted in
a given year. At the same time the Committee is aware that if Harvard College
is to provide a truly heterogeneous environment that reflects the rich
diversity of the United States, it cannot be provided without some attention to
numbers. It would not make sense, for example, to have 10 or 20 students out of
1,100 whose homes are west of the Mississippi. Comparably, 10 or 20 black
students could not begin to bring to their classmates and to each other the
variety of points of view, backgrounds and experiences of blacks in the United
States. Their small numbers might also create a sense of isolation among the
black students themselves and thus make it more difficult for them to develop
and achieve their potential. Consequently, when making its decisions, the
Committee on Admissions is aware that there is some relatioiiship between
numbers and achieving the benefits to be derived from a diverse student body,
and between numbers and providing a reasonable environment for those students
admitted. But that awareness does not mean that the Committee sets a minimum
number of blacks or of people from west of the Mississippi who are to be
admitted. It means only that in choosing among thousands of applicants who are
not only "admissible" academically but have other strong qualities,
the Committee, with a number of criteria in mind, pays some attention to
distribution among many types and categories of students.
The further
refinements sometimes required help to illustrate the kind of significance
attached to race. The Admissions Committee, with only a few places left to
fill, might find itself forced to choose between A, the child of a successful
black physician in an academic community with promise of superior academic
performance, and B, a black who grew up in an inner-city ghetto of
semi-literate parents whose academic achievement was lower
but who had demonstrated energy and leadership as well as an apparently abiding
interest in black power. If a good number of black students much like A but few
like B had already been admitted, the Committee might prefer B; and vice versa.
If C, a white student with extraordinary artistic talent, were also seeking one
of the remaining places, his unique quality might give him an edge over both A
and B. Thus, the critical criteria are often individual qualities or experience
not dependent upon race but sometimes associated with it.