Harvard biased about ethnicity of it's students?

It is a common belief among Asian American families that their children are held to higher academic standards than college applicants from other ethnic groups. Such practices were openly acknowledged after investigations at Universities like Berkeley and Stanford in the 1980s and 1990s. The United States Education Department is investigating complaints that Harvard University and Princeton University discriminated against against Asian Americans in undergraduate admissions.

Statistics seem to support the claim of bias across most elite higher education institutions. For example, in comprehensive data compiled as part of Duke University's Campus Life and Learning project, Asian Americans who enrolled at the school in 2001 averaged 1,457 out of 1,600 on the mathematics and reading part of the Scholastic Assessment Test, compared with 1,416 for whites, 1,347 for Hispanics and 1,275 for blacks. There is every reason to believe that a similar pattern holds at nearly all elite universities in the US.

Credits: The Straits Times