Harvard does not admit students on meritocratic grounds.

Judge as of 2025-09-24. Treat 'meritocratic grounds' as admission decided mainly by academic and achievement merit, not by preferences unrelated to merit (legacy, donor or dean's-interest status, children of faculty or staff, recruited athletes, and race before 2023). True: authoritative evidence, such as the SFFA v. Harvard trial record and expert reports or Harvard's own admissions documents, shows that admission is not determined primarily by merit, and that non-merit preferences or subjective criteria decide outcomes to a large degree. Mostly true: merit measures matter, but non-merit preferences are large and decisive for a substantial share of admits, so the claim is substantially right but stated too absolutely. Mixed: merit is the main factor, but non-merit preferences are significant. Mostly false: admission is predominantly merit-based, with only limited preferences; the claim takes a real but partial practice and presents it as the whole. False: admission is shown to be essentially purely merit-based.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard National Bureau of Economic Research (Working Paper 26316, authors Arcidiacono, Kinsler, Ransom) · September 2019

   “Among white admits, over 43% are ALDC. Among admits who are African American, Asian American, and Hispanic, the share is less than 16% each.”

2. E2 Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard National Bureau of Economic Research (Working Paper 26316, authors Arcidiacono, Kinsler, Ransom) · September 2019

   “Although recruited athletes are less than 1% of the applicant pool, they make up over 10% of the admitted class.”

3. E3 Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard | Journal of Labor Economics: Vol 40, No 1 Journal of Labor Economics (University of Chicago Press) · 25 October 2021

   “Our model of admissions shows that roughly three-quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected absent their ALDC status.”

4. E4 Case 1:14-cv-14176-ADB Document 672 Filed 09/30/19 ... U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, SFFA v. Harvard), hosted on Harvard's case website · 30 September 2019

   “The variables with the largest effects on the probability of admission are athletic rating, personal rating, and legacy status.”

The SFFA v. Harvard court findings list athletic rating, personal rating and legacy status as the variables with the largest effects on the chance of admission (E4). An NBER working paper on legacy and athlete preferences at Harvard finds that recruited athletes are under 1% of applicants but over 10% of admits (E2). It also finds that over 43% of white admits had ALDC status (E1), and that about three-quarters of those would have been rejected without it (E3). This shows that non-merit preferences are large and decide outcomes for a substantial share of admits. However, the evidence does not show that academic merit plays no main role, so the absolute claim is substantially right but overstated.