Without discriminating against non-blacks the number of blacks would be <1%, but the outside view here is that universities usually find effective ways to circumvent courts that try to restrict their affirmative action programs, and meet their racial targets anyway.

@JonathanRay I ... doubt that. Number of blacks in the general population is about 10%, so that's what it should be. If Harvard didn't look at race at all, it would probably be lower due to the discrimination they face in earlier education, but not as low as <1%.

Edit: Didn't know there was such a disparity. Thanks for clarifying.

@ShadowyZephyr If the cutoff to get into Harvard on merit is equivalent to an IQ of 130 on an SD15 scale (based on their median SAT score being in the 98-99th percentile) then can refer to a z-table and racial averages to approximate how many of each race would get in, in the absence of admissions discrimination. zlookup(3)/zlookup(2) = 0.0013/0.0228 = 0.057 = 1/17.5. A randomly selected black would be 17.5 times less likely to meet the merit threshold, and they're 13.6% of the population, hence probably <1% of admittees would be black in the absence of admissions discrimination.

@JonathanRay Where did you find statistics of IQ by race? I think IQ is not the only thing that matters, but that is still genuinely surprising to me, and it shows how much is still wrong with our society.

@ShadowyZephyr It's pretty well-replicated in psychology that the US black-white mean IQ gap is about 1 SD. Pick basically any source on the topic.

@JonathanRay What makes you think IQ is a relevant metric for university admissions?

@JonathanRay What makes you think those admitted ‘on merit’ (whatever that means) have an an IQ of at least 130?

@JonathanRay It's a poorly-guarded secret that most black undergrads at Harvard are of recent African immigrant descent. As such, the IQ distributions to compare are those of rich young people in Africa (vs rich young people in the US). I suspect rich African immigrants are on average healthier and perform closer to the mean of rich people in the US than to the mean of descendants of slavery.

@brp Only about 0.6% of Americans are recent African immigrants though. If they outnumber native-born blacks at harvard it's pretty remarkable that they're 13/0.6=22x or more times more likely to get into Harvard. But point taken that the assumption of a normal distribution doesn't necessarily hold when you have heterogeneous subgroups.

There was a study showing that currently Asians have to score 450 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of getting into ivies as blacks. Black admissions would be much lower without such a massive amount of discrimination.

@JonathanRay Speaking from personal experience, it is absolutely correct that most blacks at ivy league schools are either immigrants, intl, or recruited athletes.

@jeremiahsamroo Of the remainder like 90% are rich.

Also, that study is outdated.

Won't bet on this actually, because it's too long term, but my guess is ~12%