Harvard's Secretive Admissions Process Unveiled in Court Documents 

A smart guy once told me "the US admissions process is just a glorified personality test" - now add racial bias into the mix, and the picture becomes more accurate

It's hard to imagine Harvard using these personality tests, considering how some famous alumnis like Zuckerberg are essentially humanized Androids

When an institution views "quiet and hardworking" as a negative trait, maybe it's time to reassess the prestige attached to that institution.

The hosts look like they haven't slept in months.

Harvard seems to be admitting that they only comb through applicants to find those who have already succeeded rather than to bring out the characteristics for success in anybody. This admission of incompetence in educating people or understanding the fundamentals of education is abhorrent and needs to be changed.

This isn't just Harvard. I got an alumni interview with an Yale student, and when I tried to explain to her the frustration an Asian feels when their hard work is dismissed just because they are Asian, she looked at me with disgust. As if I had the audacity to complain for being Asian. Beach, I don't get some secret stat boost like a video because I am Asian.

Is it not wayyy more interesting that it says "indistuinguisable from other Asian-Americans?" This suggests that the Asian American person in question is being compared solely to other Asian Americans and not the entire applicant pool, suggesting that Asian Americans are being treated differently.

Your judged on what language your neighbors speak... but you cant control who buys the house down the street from you.....

So, takeaway is, Asians should start their own Ivy League colleges.

Stereotyping asians as boring and uninteresting just because they worked hard to get to those grades and extracurricular activities is dangerous. Would you say the same thing about a non-asian person who worked hard and wants to become a doctor? It is almost if you are not asian it is "wow hardworking, dilligent, self-disciplined" and if you are asian it is "meh, hardworking, so what?" And hardworking=/= uncreative and boring. The problem is when you think of a person who is hardworking and asian, you automatically imagine a nerd who works hard just to please their parents, lacks social skills and is incapable of thinking outside the box. You can be hardworking AND an excellent scholar of the future. The admission officer needs to stop judging applicants by preconceived stereotypes .

So if I want to go to Harvard I need to get straight A' s, have a personality akin to Jesus (at least on paper), and not be reclusive or boring

I don’t understand why US colleges want to know all this information... In Europe no one asks you about your religion or ethnicity, because it is irrelevant - in my opinion, accepting someone with worse academic achievements then other applicants just for the sake of diversity is just as bad as keeping someone out because they do not belong to specific race or religion...

Harvard denied the allegations, and they denied the alligator!

the doctor one really bothered me because I don't need a doctor with a great personality, I just need a doctor smart enough to save my life and others who are in need

What about rich buying their way into Harvard?

Does it mean then, that Asian Americans who graduated from Harvard will be first in line to land a job ? Since they're supposed to be so good that even Harvard can't find any faults with them?

give huge donation you will get admission

A boring or indistinguishable personality should not be a factor. Most 18-year olds have no idea who they are. Their personalities aren’t fully formed; they haven’t yet found their voice or calling in life. A good college experience helps them to blossom.

The two reporters appear to be smart and hardworking yet uninteresting and indistinguishable from other reporters. sorry i had to.

Dougherty and Stuyvesant are the best schools in SF and NYC and have fully merit based acceptance and are 75% asian and 20% white. If Harvard was similarly merit based it would have similar demographics.

Why is race in the picture of college admission? Shouldn’t the process be based on everything else besides race?

3:33 "smart and hardworking yet uninteresting and indistinguishable FROM OTHER ASIAN-AMERICAN APPLICANTS" "from other asian-americas applications" is not highlighted...

You'll never know how I got these likes.

I chose a Canadian university, and most Canadian universities are public and they largely look at your grades only. Now some have criticized the Canadian admission process for being too simplistic. Those who've said this are either Ivy League alumni who sit on their school's interview boards, on a power trip or have questionable benefits to reap from applicants, or education consultants who make money out of helping parents to navigate through US schools' subjective and convoluted admission process. Needless to say, these consultants have little money to make from Canadian schools which don't have such processes. Let's be honest, like SAT and university rankings, the US school admission system is a money game set up to satisfy a conglomerate of people's specific interests.

I knew it... Where do I sign up for the class action lawsuit?

Harvard university is only one of the best because people make it the best. If people I'll stop applying or going to that university it will not be the best. Is like the brand apple just overrated.

Affirmative action at work, amiright? And no, this isn't just an objective truth about Asians. Just because you've met some bland Asian students in your time doesn't make the stereotype true. Passion, hard work, and quietness are not mutually exclusive. And we have an outright admission of Asian students being held to a different personality standard than other students, so this is a fault of Harvard admissions rather than of the Asian applicants.

I was surprised when I heard that this lawsuit was contentious because I've always thought it was just common knowledge that Asian Americans are discriminated against in the college admissions process. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always thought of it like this: When colleges implemented affirmative action policies in their admissions processes, the size of the pool of admitted students didn't significantly change. Thus, it is fair to continue to view the admission process as a zero-sum game. For example, considering all else equal, the acceptance of one student due to excellent grades necessarily implies the rejection of another due to inferior grades. If we apply this to race, then obviously some group of students will be discriminated against as a direct result of affirmative action. If one student's application value is increased because he/she belongs to a certain race, then another student's application value is necessarily decreased because he/she does not belong to that race, since they both can't get in in every scenario where all other application components are equal. From my observations and research, this group is Asian Americans. With that said, I do believe there is tremendous value in the diversity offered from affirmative action policies. I think effectively balancing that value with its inadvertent negative consequences is a tricky problem that is far from a clear solution.

This is important because all other colleges model after Harvard. If they're racist, all other colleges will choose to be racist.

Where can I find the documents

Journalism requires going through dossier of paper to find out minute details that people with power use to do their dirty laundry. It requires a lot of reading and spending at homes or offices. Right now when a chunk of population detests journalists and journalism in general, I feel they deserve respect and appreciation.

Thanks for shedding light on this topic! I enjoyed watching this.

it'll be interesting if all asian americans boycotts harvard and no one apply there in future

Not much of a revelation.

First time I'm watching a WSJ. Good work on covering up these topics in a rational manner.

Here's a question. After all the reviews of applicants are done, who makes the final call on who gets in? Is it just taking the top 2000 or so applicants based on a single total rating or is there someone or some committee that can shift the numbers around at the end?

where can i obtain those documents?

Sick. Anyone with an ounce of self-respect should stay away from such admission processes.

Seems very thorough.. they are doing due diligence

The way I interpret it ... “personal rating” is just the fudge factor to help achieve what they already decided is the desired mix of students they want.

Utterly entertaining.

I have had no idea about secrecy in admission process of Harvard. In India,the secrecy is maintained regarding conducting entrance exams, setting up and moderating questions (so that no leak happens), interviews (as there is no system to verify interview performance objectively) and of course checking of entrance exam papers.But now a days most of the exam boards publish model answers and through Right to information act someone can ask for his or her answer scripts to be shown. In some privately run institutions, suspicious admission process did occur in professional courses,but today our govt and court have been able to block the loophole in many respect. But at the same time our constitutionally mandated affirmative actions admit dumb students excluding the goods in the name of promoting social justice.This is a real problem as you will find so many low quality students in our leading institutions.Discriminating goods, admitting bads to promote diversity are unjustified as it promotes another kind of social injustice. Even though,the argument of Harvard university is to some extent correct,as Asian students are mostly marks scoring machine but that doesn't mean they are unsocial. Asia itself is very much colorful and diverse in terms of socioreliguous occasions.The background behind rushing towards high grades is ingrained in Asian minds as in most Asian countries good higher educational institutions and jobs are too competitive as the selection rate hardly goes beyond 1 or 2%(in rare cases it may go up to 5%) due to over population and limited resources.

This is why you have to apply to the UC’s. Racial quotas, etc. are banned in California (as well as in 7 other states), plus as a public institution everything is transparent. Also, if you’re a resident it’s much cheaper

Apart from the subject matter, which is interesting and the reason I started watching the video, the quirky presentation by these reporters was excellent... especially the comedic timing.

I want to be very clear on this because I believe that Harvard and other Universities use this method to get a diverse class not only in terms of race, but also passion and drive. What people really should be investing their time on is the unfairness that circulates around legacy children or students whose parents “donate” to have their children get into a prestigious school like Harvard, because to be quite honest most of those kids aren’t qualified they’re just rich.

Universities should not be stereotyping applicants, but I do agree that there is more to an applicant than their marks. The 21st century workplace is looking for qualities like collaboration, an accurate assessment of one's own strengths, creative problem-solving, interest in learning new things, and innovation. A well-rounded university applicant should not only be academically capable but should also demonstrate some of these competencies as well. Students that put marks above all else and sacrifice opportunities in the pursuit of a perfect grade are missing out on way too many opportunities to develop socially, emotionally, and cognitively. Of course, none of this is unique to any one culture, and it's disappointing to see some of these anecdotes from the admissions department of a very prestigious institution.

I’m an asian student studying in one of the top university in The Netherlands sometimes there’s a discrimination towards grading in the group projects against asian and yeah this is the world that we living in, it never goes away

WOW..💯 Thanks for this video

I always knew zip code and percentage of english speaking students went into it. I remember visiting Havard one day and asking a very wealthy parent how their children got in, without going too much into detail they explained they had access to a rubric.

Easy, just ask your rich dad to speed up the admission process

Thanks for this.

PLEASE DONT STOP. I'm curious about this!

It’s horrible that Harvard is doing this but I think the really sad thing is how many Asian-American parents stifle their children’s dreams and project their wishes onto the kid, rather than letting them find out what they want in life

My uncharitable and unhindered biases regarding this is that Harvard has found an alternate route to allow for a certain type of discrimination that one might say was unfounded, but restraining that suspicion with open-mindedness, I can imagine their admissions office shares a vision of a quintessentially "well-rounded student", with a significant tool kit of intangible qualifiers. I won't say which one I'm leaning towards, but I will say I tend to have a misanthropic outlook and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the former.

Ooo this is good stuff Keep em coming!

Does anybody know where can I find this guide for admissions officers?

How can you evaluate personal traits like maturity, kindness, open-mindedness, and likability of someone based on a few-minute long interview? Those are traits hard to evaluate even after knowing someone for months. I think it is absurd to have those as college admission criteria in the first place. The professional traits are easier to assess in a few minutes, such as academic scores, extracurricular activities, and interview questions. But personal traits?? How is that a criteria in the first place?

It's literally Harvard Law, of course they evaluate an individual's character and personality in addition to their academic and professional achievements. There are plenty of qualified people on paper, but a person really has to be the full package if they're to be admitted to a top tier law school. I truly hope Harvard isn't bias in their selection of candidates, that would be a really unforgivable thing to do for an institution devoted to justice and law.

Hey guys... could one get a pdf of these files?

Where can I find that chart that was briefly shown?

Why would it matter if my parents went to an Ivy League

I‘m so lucky all I needed to make it into law school is a copy of the results of my A-Level exams.

Good video. Good journalism. Thanks.

Where can you find the 200+ factors of admission list we see in the video?

Trade war becomes Education war ?

Its so interesting that as a black applicant, I was told that its all about your personality in college interview.

This is what happens across the board for medical school admissions in this country. They even have terms like ORM and URM to see which minority fits the bill.

My friend is studying at Harvard and it was very easy for him to enter Harvard. My friend's father gave a generous financial donation and later Harvard informed him that his son was admitted.

Great piece! Thank you for bringing this up. I realize that Harvard wants the best, but really? You are going to discriminate "untalanted" because they are weren't lucky enough to grow up in a society that values talent rather than the ability to work hard? At the end of the day, no one person is talentless. And thank you for looking real (read as look like me) ladies. At least somebody on youtube does.

Why is there even race involved in applications?

Aw I loved that little blooper!

But how did they get this evidence if the case is currently in a court of law?

This doesn't seem racist. How else is Harvard supposed to use the personal essay and letters of recommendation without using some sort of scale? It makes sense that a personality score is needed or else it wouldn't make sense to have the aforementioned components as part of the application. In addition, not having a personality scale fails to acknowledge the different environments that students endured throughout their life. I can guarantee you that the students that get let in over "more qualified" applicants is mostly due to the ability to do well in school but not quite up to the level of the more qualified applicants but did it in a much shittier environment.

They need to be an East Asian movement then, if you don’t shout, nobody listens. This is unfair but from observation it’s very true

In the future, I feel a new form of education is coming, and this problem will become a non-problem, because I believe we are moving away from exams, grades and scores so it will no longer be people who are deeming whether an applicant is good or bad but rather achievements or maybe reality itself is a better description. When that time comes, hard work will pay off without the risk of someone being able to nullify it in an interview...

I'm am not surprised at all. A classmate of mine was a National Spelling Bee champion, Valedictorian, as well as captain of various school clubs (Debate Club, Science Olympiad, etc.) and HE was deferred from Harvard.

The funny thing to think about is that the world’s population is made of more than 60% of Asians. And we have to be put into one category that is sometimes an expectation. All of this stuff is overwhelming. I understand that they are doing this for diversity on their campus but 60% of us. I mean from what I think is correct there are still quite a lot of Harvard that are Asians. So I understand both sides and have been reading these comments but can’t decide to hate Harvard or support them but who cares I’m just one person right. I want equality but how can we truly measure it if we all think differently.

Looks like a lot of BS about these argumnts. Expecting to see similiar video for every group of people in the US.

can you pls share the documents in the description so we ca also read them

Interesting...you’d intuitively expect a school to prefer those who more most likely to excel academically...if nothing more than a business standpoint.

MIT does the same thing.

so we should ditch real world competency for pc? it’s sad that harvard’s standards might perpetuate the higher society circle, but I would take a meritocracy over a giant kindergarten

I hope you know that not only good grades get you into good schools, who’s a college more likely to pick a person with good grades and joined no clubs? Or a person with clubs and good grades? Clubs and things out of school make people interesting for interviewers.

Could I get a link to acces the documents myself

I mean, I kind of get where Harvard is coming from. I don't think it's right, and it should change, but I get what they're trying to do. They don't just want kids whose parents forced them through life, and they want kids who think out-of-the-box, and the kids who only did honors and AP classes thoughtout school might not have that. But still, it should change

0:25 wait, KORN is an actual name and not just an edgy name that suits a metal band??? Woaaoohhh

Finally, I heard about it on JRE.

I work within a large corporate setting, alongside graduates of ivy league universities, state colleges, and even community colleges. You can't tell the difference at all.

Both journalists remind me of vampires, before and after. Both ways.

Definitely ALL Asians don't fit that stereotype, but how about the population of Asians that applied to Harvard? Do they? No one here has the facts on that population except Harvard. Anyone can work hard and get a 4.0, especially if you're in the middle or upper class and can get a private tutor and payed help. Also, they look for people who can contribute to the atmosphere and environment of their campus in an immeasurable way. Most high ranking schools look beyond grades because of that. That's what essays and/or interviews are for. More people than Harvard can admit have perfect SAT scores and 4.0s, and you should have developed a personality during your formative years as well as worked hard. They're trying to push out leaders.

About time wsj posts some real news

Where can I get these court documents?

There is a reason why Harvard is one of the best schools in the world. Their admissions screening is part of why it’s so successful. If you don’t meet their stringent criteria then you don’t get in. Bash Harvard all you want but it’s as simple as that.

Dammit, I'll stop working so hard, so I can be more interesting.

Where can I find these documents?

Any updates 10 months later?

Chinese culture raises children who work hard to game the academic system and achieve high test scores for the sake of getting into a good college and landing a stable, lucrative job. Harvard’s legacy isn’t built by people who want a stable job and not rock the boat, it’s built by brilliant and curious minds, leaders with brains and a backbone of steel, entrepreneurs and scholars who go where no person has gone before. If I were an admissions officer for a school like Harvard, I wouldn’t take cookie-cutter hard working but slave of the Chinese parochial culture kids that come my way. That’s not to say all Chinese kids are this way. This video has portrayed a portion of the admissions process that would feed the anger of Asian Americans who feel they’ve been cheated, but it’s not like Asians in general are not accepted Into Harvard.

Just say youre native American Indian. Worked for Elizabeth Warren.

Any chance of a follow-up?

It's interesting to me that the response is always to fight the establishment rather than to abandon it