The Truth About Harvard Admissions: If Merit Was All That Mattered, It Would Be All Asian

For decades, the college admissions process at elite institutions like Harvard has been shrouded in a cloak of subjectivity. We’ve been told about "holistic review," a system that considers everything from your race to your extracurriculars to your family's history. But what if we stripped away all the layers and looked at one simple, undeniable metric of academic merit: test scores?

The data is clear and compelling. Year after year, Asian American students, on average, post the highest SAT and ACT scores of any racial or ethnic group. The numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) don't lie. The average SAT score for Asian Americans is consistently higher than that of their white counterparts. This isn't a matter of opinion; it's a matter of fact.

This brings us to a fundamental question: If Harvard's goal is to admit the most academically talented students, why have Asian Americans been so underrepresented relative to their test scores? The answer, as the recent Supreme Court case against Harvard revealed, is that "merit" has been defined in ways that actively disadvantage them.

The notion that extracurricular activities are a measure of merit is a fallacy. They are often a measure of privilege. The ability to afford a private music tutor, to travel for elite sports competitions, or to dedicate hundreds of hours to an unpaid internship is not a reflection of inherent talent or a "well-rounded" character. It's a reflection of economic status. A true merit-based system would not weigh these things against the raw intelligence and academic dedication demonstrated by a student's grades and test scores.

Consider a truly merit-based system, one championed by the idea of an admissions process that judges applicants on their academic achievements alone. In such a system, where objective measures like SAT scores were the sole deciding factor, the admitted class at Harvard would look dramatically different. Based on the data, it's not a stretch to say that the class would be overwhelmingly, if not 100%, Asian American.

This is the system that many believe President Trump's focus on "merit" would lead to, a system that doesn't penalize students for their race or privilege subjective, non-academic achievements. It's a vision of higher education where the most academically gifted students get a seat at the table, regardless of their background or how many sports they played. It's a simple, fair, and objective way to restore true excellence to our elite universities.