What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?
This article analyzes the findings from the SFFA vs. Harvard trial, highlighting how elite university admissions processes favor specific groups through 'lanes' and complex financial aid formulas. It argues that the current system creates significant barriers for middle-class families while maintaining opaque selection criteria.
Why it matters
It provides critical insight into the systemic inequities and financial pressures inherent in the elite higher education admissions process in the United States.
What did SFFA reveal about "merit" in college admissions?
A domestic student at a given academic percentile has a far smaller chance of landing a seat at an elite university, and of paying for it, than an identical student fifty years ago. Admissions are fundamentally zero-sum, so where did these seats go?
Every applicant is sorted into a lane before the file is even read, and the gates on those lanes are not the same size. A recruited athlete walks through an opening five-sixths of the way open. The unhooked domestic applicant faces a pinhole . Same university, same year, a roughly 17-fold gap in the odds of getting through.
The most-cited number from the Harvard trial comes from a counterfactual . The plaintiffs' economist modeled one applicant profile and swapped only the race field. The model's predicted probability of admission moved from 25% to 95% .
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