The admissions process at Harvard must be reformed

Harvard's defense is solid and will probably save it in the short term, even if the latter involves recourse. Like all of the country's elite private colleges, Harvard has put in place an extremely cautious, personal, and labor-intensive admissions process. In addition, his pool of candidates is singular, so profoundly talented – the 500 or 600 children who top each incoming class are youth, according to the terms of the Admissions Committee, who possess a form of education. " distinguished excellence "the caliber of classes decreasing with new priorities is unfounded. The college certainly offers a more interesting and intellectually more varied course than it was a century ago, while admitting all men – up to dreamers and troublemakers at the bottom of the class – in a few preparatory schools of New England. Over the years, I have met many Harvard students. I know a lot of people who were unhappy in college. But I never met one, whether it was a long-time student or a student from an underrepresented minority group, who did not seem to be an extraordinary person in their own right. The college has pretty much all the country to choose from, and he knows how he wants to include an ideal class.

The creation of this exciting new multiracial and economically diverse novel was the brainchild of his Dean of Admissions, a thoughtful member of the Harvard College Class Web of 1968, named William Fitzsimmons, who has spent more than 30 years at the post but who has At that time, few children like Fitzsimmons, a Catholic high school – Archbishop Williams of Weymouth, Mass., A city one hour from Cambridge – were encouraged to apply to Harvard. Two of his teachers refused to write any recommendations, thinking that the school was "a gang of communists, a gang of atheists, a bunch of rich snobs" – a lesson on the prescience of Catholic teachers. In spite of their advice, he has applied, has been admitted and developed the love of a stranger for an elitist place that accepts him in his lap, as well as his great sensitivity for the affronts and the prejudices that accompany the intrusion. The work of his life has been making the place more welcoming to "strangers", including making it much more racially diverse. For that, he was brought before a court and described as racist. That's another type of lesson.

But the big lesson is that the well-respected way of making admissions to Harvard and its counterpart institutions is not sustainable. What's more elitist – more paternalistic – than a black box process from which the final and life-changing decisions are made, based on a system that boils down to: Trust us? How can a process to democratize an institution always value the children of wealth and privilege? If the system is generally understood as a solution to its many past mistakes in the field of race and privilege, how can it justify the admission of Americans of Asian origin at a lower rate than any other person? other cohort? The institution's explanation for the preference it gives to the legacies and children of the unaffiliated wealthy is that their generous parents fund the tremendous work of the college, but Harvard's endowment is valued at more than $ 37 billion. How much money does he need? And for how long will students belonging to a minority be willing to accept that their place in college is guaranteed by the nobility obliges the richest and whitest?