If any Harvard College (undergraduate) class up to and including the class of 2032 (admitted in the fall of 2028) is less than 10.0% Black, this market resolves yes.
Methodology: the Crimson publishes demographics of each admitted class that remains searchable. From the class of 2017 to 2026 this figure as ranged from 9.7% (2017) to 15.8% (2024). See e.g. https://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/makeup/
1,000
3.00The Supreme Court ruling allows race to be considered if an applicant’s essay meaningfully shows that their race contributed to their life so that they can offer a unique quality to the university. Applicants who would have been accepted into Harvard before the decisions will know that they need to do this, and will do so when applying. I expect that Harvard will treat this as letting them essentially do the same as before.
@Gabrielle There's the smart money I was hoping for! FWIW I don't expect it to go on exactly as before. It would might play badly if the numbers didn't budget at all. It's kind of clear from the data that Harvard had a 10% target from 2014-2020 (decision years, not class years) and raised it to 15% in 2020. I wouldn't be shocked if they went down to 13% (population-representative), but would be if they went all the way back to 10%. One issue is they portrayed the explicit consideration of race as applying very rarely, so too dramatic a shift harms their credibility (in addition to going against their interest)
@Davida Well, they were below 10% just 6 years ago. Doesn't seem like much of a stretch that the ruling would set them back six years. But I wasn't aware they were signaling that they would circumvent the ruling. What are they saying they'll do?
@JosephNoonan Sure, and you could very well be right (32% was low enough to close out my position just now) - it's indeed the fun of the market. And I don't know the intricacies of Harvard itself, but I had messaging from before the ruling like this in mind (an idea whose fate seems less certain now) and related platitudes. But again you could very well be right. I personally also factor in some level of, they clamp down on the reporting and release of this statistic.
@JosephNoonan Part of what motivated me to make the market was this insta-response Harvard sent out. If I wanted to meaningfully trade here, I'd bid down to ~15%
@MattReardon I think it's possible for Harvard to dip below 10%. Princeton is at 8-9% each year, for example, and they aren't as aggressive with AA--they've been recruiting minority students through other means for a while now.