Economist David Card, who later won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics, served as Harvard''s expert witness and submitted a detailed report analyzing six years of Harvard admissions data — the same underlying dataset used by the opposing expert.

Card''s models found an overall effect of Asian American ethnicity on admission probability of negative 0.05 percentage points — effectively zero and statistically not significant. He argued that the opposing analysis by Peter Arcidiacono omitted critical variables that legitimately influence admissions decisions, including high school quality, economic disadvantage, personal adversity, and the full range of holistic factors Harvard considers.

Card demonstrated that many characteristics explain more about admissions decisions than race does, including profile ratings, teacher ratings, socioeconomic context, and intended career. He argued that including these variables — which the opposing expert excluded — eliminates the appearance of an Asian American penalty because they capture legitimate differences in applicant pools.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs issued a 130-page decision after presiding over a three-week trial that included testimony from admissions officers, statistical experts on both sides, and extensive documentary evidence.

The court found that SFFA "did not present a single Asian American applicant who was overtly discriminated against or who was better qualified than an admitted white applicant when considering the full range of factors that Harvard values in its admissions process." The judge also found "no credible evidence that corroborates the improper discrimination suggested by SFFA''s statistical model."

Judge Burroughs concluded that Harvard''s consideration of race was consistent with Supreme Court guidance on holistic review established in Grutter v. Bollinger. She acknowledged the statistical evidence showed some unexplained racial patterns but determined these did not rise to the level of intentional discrimination when weighed against the full trial record and Harvard''s demonstrated commitment to individualized review.

In a 104-page opinion, the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the district court''s finding that Harvard''s admissions program was lawful. The three-judge panel conducted a thorough independent review of the trial record and statistical evidence.

The court held that Harvard does not engage in racial balancing (pointing to year-over-year variation in racial composition), does not use race as a mechanical plus factor (since each application receives individualized review through multiple readers), and has not overlooked workable race-neutral alternatives (having implemented and studied alternatives like socioeconomic preferences that proved insufficient to maintain diversity).

The ruling concluded that Harvard''s process was "narrowly tailored" to achieve a compelling interest in educational diversity, consistent with decades of governing Supreme Court precedent. The court acknowledged statistical patterns but found they were adequately explained by legitimate holistic factors rather than discriminatory intent.

The Department of Education''s Office for Civil Rights conducted a compliance review of Princeton University beginning in 2006, expanding the scope in 2008 to address two separate complaints alleging anti-Asian discrimination in admissions.

OCR found "no evidence that the University does so [considers race] in a discriminatory manner." The investigation found no evidence of racial quotas, no separate admissions tracks by race, and no systematic pattern of discrimination. The report described Princeton''s detailed holistic process and concluded that "each applicant who was offered admission competed against all other applicants for admission" on an individual basis.

The investigation spanned nearly a decade and involved extensive document review and data analysis. Princeton cooperated throughout and made changes to further document its process, but OCR found no substantive violations requiring corrective action.

Published by Princeton University Press in 1998, former Princeton president William Bowen and former Harvard president Derek Bok analyzed 20 years of records and personal histories from more than 60,000 students at 28 highly selective colleges and universities.

They found that Black students admitted under race-conscious policies to elite institutions graduated at higher rates, earned higher incomes, and achieved greater civic engagement than similarly qualified Black students who attended less selective schools. This directly contradicted the "mismatch hypothesis" — the argument that racial preferences harm their supposed beneficiaries by placing them in environments too difficult for them.

The study also found that white students'' outcomes were minimally affected by the presence of race-conscious admissions. The admissions system was not zero-sum in practice: whites lost less (in graduation rates and economic success) than Black students gained, because the selective institutions'' resources and networks amplified outcomes for all students who attended.

Filed with the Supreme Court in August 2022, nearly 678 economists and social scientists signed an amicus brief summarizing decades of peer-reviewed research on race-conscious admissions. Seven major research associations (including the American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and American Sociological Association) filed separately in support.

The brief argued three main points: first, that substantial research demonstrates campus diversity is a compelling educational interest that benefits all students through improved critical thinking, cross-racial understanding, and preparation for a diverse workforce. Second, that Harvard''s holistic process is narrowly tailored because it considers race only as one factor among many in an individualized assessment.

Third, the scientists argued that SFFA''s expert statistical models were methodologically flawed — specifically by omitting legitimate explanatory variables that correlate with both race and admissions outcomes, creating the appearance of discrimination where none exists. They noted that when these omitted variables are included, the apparent Asian American penalty disappears.

This 2023 study used University of California administrative records to compare the effectiveness of different admissions approaches at maintaining racial diversity after Proposition 209 banned affirmative action in California in 1996.

Race-based affirmative action had increased underrepresented minority enrollment by over 20% at the most selective UC campuses. After the ban, the university tried various race-neutral alternatives: top-percent plans (admitting students from the top of each high school''s class) increased minority enrollment by less than 4%, and enhanced holistic review emphasizing socioeconomic factors achieved about a 7% increase.

The research demonstrated that race-neutral alternatives — even when aggressively pursued over decades — failed to approach the diversity levels achieved through direct consideration of race. This supported the argument that race captures a genuine dimension of lived experience and disadvantage that income, neighborhood, or school quality cannot fully proxy — and that considering race was not invidious discrimination but a response to real structural inequality.

Published in the Texas Law Review in 2014, legal scholars William Kidder and Angela Onwuachi-Willig synthesized dozens of social science studies examining what happens to underrepresented minority students at highly selective institutions.

Examining graduation rates of nearly 200,000 Black and Latino students at approximately 100 research-intensive American universities, the authors found that the mismatch hypothesis — which argues that racial preferences place students in environments where they cannot compete and thus harm them — is not supported by the weight of evidence. Instead, underrepresented students tend to achieve better life outcomes when they attend the most selective school that will admit them.

This matters for the discrimination question because a key argument against race-conscious admissions is that they harm the very students they claim to help. If students actually benefit from attending more selective institutions (even if their credentials are somewhat below the median), then the practice serves its stated purpose of expanding opportunity rather than constituting harmful discrimination.

Researchers analyzed detailed enrollment and graduation data from the University of Texas at Austin, which switched from a race-blind top-10% plan to holistic review including race as one factor in 2005.

After introducing holistic race-conscious admissions, the university saw graduation rates increase for all racial groups. The gap in six-year graduation rates between white and Black students narrowed by several percentage points. Hispanic student graduation rates improved substantially. Critically, white and Asian students'' outcomes did not decline — they continued to graduate at the same or slightly higher rates.

These findings undermine the argument that race-conscious admissions constitute unfair discrimination against any group. If the practice were truly discriminatory — admitting unqualified applicants at the expense of qualified ones — we would expect to see declining outcomes for either the beneficiaries (through mismatch) or the displaced applicants. Instead, the holistic approach appeared to benefit the institution''s educational mission broadly.