Thanks for weighing in with the detailed information.

I actually had extracurricular activities in mind as one of the "seemingly-objective-and-reasonably-sensible metrics". (It can be harder to judge—e.g. "president of the choir club" could mean anything from "four people got together twice a month to sing" to "organized concerts and musicals in collaboration with the theatre department"—but maybe candidates describe more precisely what they did.) Legacy and athlete stuff make some sense in terms of the university's financial self-interest... most of the other things can be interpreted as demonstrating ability in some way (academic and leadership ability), or motivation/"Big 5 trait Conscientiousness". The "incredible personal narrative" seems like a wildcard that could point to lots of different things, but in Malala's case... in general, public relations could be a reason to take famous people. Department applied to, I assume that's because some departments have lots more applicants or don't need as many people than others. It's the racial and geographical diversity things that seem out of place.

Geographical diversity question: I've heard that, specifically, colleges like to have at least one person from all 50 states. Why is that? Just because it sounds cool? Is it really for some kind of viewpoint or background diversity? (A counterargument to that, at least for elite schools, is the same as for racial diversity: if you think the people from e.g. South Dakota who make it into an elite school are at all typical of South Dakotans, you've got another think coming.) Is it so they'll have alumni everywhere and therefore recruiting help and alumni interviewers everywhere, which wouldn't be efficient if all their alumni were in one place? (How many South Dakotans who go to an elite school actually stay in South Dakota after graduation? That doesn't seem to make sense.) A quick google merely turns up the quote "“Every school likes to be able to stick that little pin on the map and say they have kids from all 50 states,” said Andrea van Niekerk, a college admissions consultant and former associate director of admissions at Brown University", which is basically "because it sounds cool". (I also note that "a student from every state" could mean, at most, accepting 49 students you wouldn't have otherwise—probably less—whereas the extra 19% of Asians that Harvard didn't admit (I mention 42% vs 23% figures later), of a class of 1600, means accepting 300 students they otherwise wouldn't have—so the every-state policy has a smaller impact than the racial-diversity policy, and maybe the impact is small enough that indulging that whim is ok.) Do you know the rationale, for this and/or for geographical diversity in general?

Historical question: I've heard that the reason extracurriculars were originally introduced, as a criterion for candidates, was as an excuse to accept fewer Jewish students. Here's an article asserting this for Harvard specifically: http://web.archive.org/web/20190109180814/https://www.econom... Do you know if this is true?

SAT ceiling question: The maximum score you can get on the SAT is low enough that there are plenty of people that max it out, and plenty of others who would have maxed it out except they made one or two silly mistakes. I suspect that's why you say 750+, in that differences between anything above that are just noise; and that this still leaves a large pool to sort through. (As a data point, would the set of perfect-score SAT applicants still be too large to fit in a Harvard undergraduate class?) If the SAT had a higher ceiling, say going up to 900 or 1000 somehow, where the difference in actual ability between the average 850 and the average 750 was the same as between the average 750 and the average 650, then do you think they'd weigh SAT scores more heavily?

Olympiad question: are academic contests (math olympiad, physics olympiad, etc.) counted heavily in the "notable academic achievement" category? If so, would you say they substitute for a higher-ceilinged SAT—that if the latter existed, then they'd put less effort into researching and evaluating the olympiad contests?

Caltech question: I've heard that Caltech, at least as of some years ago, basically just selected for academic scores, and they had 0.6% blacks. Looking at this year, they have 40% Asians, compared to Harvard's 23%. Come to think of it, I've also heard that the University of California system is not allowed to implement affirmative action, and this year ... they break "Asian" down into subgroups, but if I add together "Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Other Asian, South Asian, and Vietnamese", I get 42%. Anyway, any comments about Caltech or UC?