?Lopping,? ?Tips? and the ?Z-List?: Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard?s Admissions Secrets
He had perfect scores ? on his SAT, on three SAT subject tests and on nine Advanced Placement exams ? and was ranked first in his high school class of 592. An admissions officer who reviewed his application to Harvard called him ?the proverbial picket fence,? the embodiment of the American dream, saying, ?Someone we?ll fight over w/ Princeton, I?d guess.?
But in the end, the Asian student was wait-listed and did not get in.
Harvard?s much-feared admissions officers have a whole other set of boxes that few ambitious high school students and their parents know about ? or could check even if they did. The officers speak a secret language ? of ?dockets,? ?the lop list,? ?tips,? ?DE,? the ?Z-list? and the ?dean?s interest list? ? and maintain a culling system in which factors like where applicants are from, whether their parents went to Harvard, how much money they have and how they fit the school?s goals for diversity may be just as important as scoring a perfect 1600 on the SAT.
The sorting begins right away. The country is divided into about 20 geographic ?dockets,? each of which is assigned to a subcommittee of admissions officers with intimate knowledge of that region and its high schools.
Harvard says it also considers ?tips,? or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes.
Whether Harvard gives a penalty ? in effect, the opposite of a tip ? to Asian-Americans goes to the heart of the current litigation. A 1990 report by the Education Department found that Harvard was not giving tips for being Asian-American. A 2013 internal report by Harvard found that being Asian-American was negatively correlated with admission, as did an expert analysis for the plaintiffs. But using a different statistical approach, Harvard?s expert found a modest bump for two subgroups of Asian-Americans ? women and applicants from California ? belying, Harvard said, the overall claim of discrimination.
There are other ways to bolster one?s chances of admission, according to the court papers. Savvy alumni hope to gain an advantage for their children by volunteering for Harvard, perhaps by being an admissions interviewer.
It also helps to secure a spot on the ?dean?s interest list? or the ?director?s interest list.? These are not the familiar lists from academic deans recognizing students with good grades. These lists are named for the dean and director of admissions, and include the names of candidates who are of interest to donors or have connections to Harvard, according to the court papers.
How about, the plaintiffs? lawyer asked, ?if a candidate is of interest to a donor to Harvard, is that something that might land them on the interest list?? Over another objection, Mr. Fitzsimmons replied, ?It is possible.?
After an exchange running three fully blacked-out pages, Mr. Fitzsimmons explained that candidates on the dean?s list could receive a separate rating, in consultation with people connected to the alumni association and the development office, the chief fund-raising arm.
The plaintiffs? lawyer asked, ?And are you rating the applicant, or are you rating the level of interest that other people at the university have in this applicant?s admission prospect??
Over an objection, Mr. Fitzsimmons replied, ?The latter.?
The plaintiffs? lawyer asked whether the bigger the financial contribution from a donor, the more it would affect the development office?s rating of someone on the dean?s list related to that donor. ?It would tend to go that way,? Mr. Fitzsimmons replied.
Court filings also explore Harvard?s little-known Z-list, a sort of back door to admissions.
Harvard is reticent about the Z-list, and much of the information pertaining to it in court papers has been redacted. The list consists of applicants who are borderline academically, the plaintiffs say, but whom Harvard wants to admit. They often have connections. They may be ?Z-ed? (yes, a verb) off the wait-list, and are guaranteed admission on the condition that they defer for a year.
Court papers describe a continuing process called ?a lop,? which the plaintiffs say is used to shape the demographic profile of the class.
The plaintiffs say that admissions officers then fine-tune the final class using a form that lists five pieces of information about the applicant; they give an example of a form that has spaces for the applicant?s name, LIN (lineage), ETH (ethnicity), ATH (athlete), and HFAI (financial aid).
Along the way, Mr. Fitzsimmons, the dean, consults what are called ?ethnic stats,? which he defines as ?any statistics that would give us a sense of where we are in the class regarding ethnicity at that moment.? Ethnicity is one of many factors considered in a lop, Mr. Fitzsimmons said in his deposition.
The plaintiffs accuse Harvard of jiggering its selection process to create a remarkably stable racial profile from year to year. This year it admitted a class that was almost 23 percent Asian-American; almost 16 percent African-American; and just over 12 percent Latino. The share of admitted students who are Asian-American has risen from 17.6 percent in 2009, and other minorities have gained in concert.
But if Harvard were race-blind, the plaintiffs say, its freshman class would be about 40 percent Asian-American, like the University of California, Berkeley, a public institution that has to abide by a state ban on racial preferences.
The plaintiffs say that the personal rating ? which considers an applicant?s character and personality ? is the most insidious of Harvard?s admissions metrics. They say that Asian-Americans are routinely described as industrious and intelligent, but unexceptional and indistinguishable ? characterizations that recall painful stereotypes for many people of Asian descent.
In the recently unredacted court filings, several Asian-American applicants were described in conspicuously similar terms. One was described as ?busy and bright,? but the ?case will look like many others without late info.? Another was ?very busy? but ?doesn?t go extra mile, thus she looks like many w/ this profile.? Yet another was ?bright & busy? but it was ?a bit difficult to see what would hold him in during a lop.?
One student was ?so very bright but lacking a DE.? DE, the court papers say, stands for ?distinguishing excellence.? Another got a backhanded compliment: ?hard worker,? but ?would she relax and have any fun??
In Friday?s filing, Harvard countered with examples of its positive assessments of applicants of Nepalese, Tibetan, Vietnamese and Indian descent, who were described with words like ?deserving,? ?fascinating? and ?Tug for BG,? an abbreviation for background. None of the examples the university gave appeared to be of applicants specifically of Chinese or Korean background.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/us/harvard-admissions-asian-americans.html