> This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in." That's wrong. Period.

"The law of unintended consequences" ... what are they going to do if the target demographic (in this case Asians) start their own merit-based and academic-based colleges and universities?

Sure, it's not cheap, but large communities have done much more expensive things in the educational space before, and of course being pure merit-based means that the graduates will (eventually) be more sought after than the standard colleges[1].

Will someone then cry racism then?

[1] Maybe not to the level that Harvard grads are.

The "personal" ratings might:

> Lee said Students for Fair Admissions had misconstrued data, and that race was used only to a student’s advantage in certain circumstances, and never to his or her disadvantage.

which sounds like a weird argument since obviously "advantage" for one in a zero-sum competition is disadvantage for all others, but counters the accusation that Asians in particular are being penalized.

A close friend of mine had perfect scores in basically everything and Harvard turned him down on the basis of "we already accepted your older brother and it wouldn't be fair of us to take two of you".

A little late to this, but…

1. Your quotes refer to recruiting, not admissions.

2. Even if your conjecture that Asians admitted to elite schools have higher scores on average than other minorities holds water (it probably does), I think this focus on SAT scores and grades sort of misses the point of the admissions processes in many elite schools (including, and perhaps especially, Harvard). Specifically, they are typically looking for people who have been at the top of something or had an impact on something at a regional, national, or international level. Lots of folks (Asians and otherwise) have great grades and SAT scores, but they don’t really stand out in other ways.

> This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in."

It’s more like “sorry, you were only above average (not outstanding) in one of the five criteria we evaluate, so we will take a hard pass”.

Note that academics is only one of five factors used in Harvard admissions (iirc). Getting the top rating in academics might be something like winning a prestigious math or science competition, so having “great grades and high SAT scores” doesn’t even merit the top rating in one category. I think many people don’t realize this.

You don’t need top ratings in any single category to get in, but if you don’t have a top rating for any of the evaluation criteria, you need to be above average in several of them.

Please correct me if I'm wrong..but these are recruitment letters, not acceptance letters, right? A letter asking them to apply to Harvard? My son has been getting a ton of these since he took a PSAT.

This is how US green card applications work too though.