[bigcostooge]

I think you can answer that by asking yourself another question: who at Harvard understands supply and demand?

[danieltillett]

A lottery is such an obvious solution that we can only conclude that the people who developed the Harvard admission process are irredeemable racists.

[IvyAdmisions]

A lottery among the academically qualified students would produce a class with many fewer African American, Native American and Latino students which would be politically untenable. Those cohorts score much worse than caucasians and asians on standardized tests.

The data is pretty shocking and closely guarded by the testing people who believe they'd be asked to shut down altogether if it got out.

[nindalf]

A lottery appears to be a reasonable solution but it has a problem. The admissions system has two objectives - selecting students according to criteria that Harvard deems important and second, giving the public perception of selecting quality students. If it was publicly known that getting was a lottery, then the perception of quality takes a hit.

[frockington]

Imagine if the lottery produced only White and Asian males being accepted. The meltdown and tears that a even a less than 0.01% event would cause prevents the lottery concept. I personally agree that a lottery is a valid suggestion but I don't think it would ever happen, at least completely random without "supervision"