Recruit to Reject? Harvard and African American Applicants

Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler and Tyler Ransom

No 2019-074, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Over the past 20 years, elite colleges in the US have seen dramatic increases in applications. We provide context for part of this trend using detailed data on Harvard University that was unsealed as part of the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit. We show that Harvard encourages applications from many students who effectively have no chance of being admitted, and that this is particularly true for African Americans. African American applications soared beginning with the Class of 2009, with the increase driven by those with lower SAT scores. Yet there was little change in the share of admits who were African American. We show that this change in applicant behavior resulted in substantial convergence in the overall admissions rates across races yet no change in the large cross-race differences in admissions rates for high-SAT applicants.

Keywords: college admissions; racial disparities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I28 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12
Note: ECI
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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Arcidi ... ecruit-to-reject.pdf First version, December 6, 2019 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Recruit to reject? Harvard and African American applicants (2022)
Working Paper: Recruit to Reject? Harvard and African American Applicants (2019)
Working Paper: Recruit to Reject? Harvard and African American Applicants (2019)
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