We can only see the effect of race on admission at a very coarse resolution, because universities try their hardest to obscure it I agree, that we can only see

We can only see the effect of race on admission at a very coarse resolution, because universities try their hardest to obscure it I agree, that we can only see the effects at a coarse resolution, but disagree that universities try to "obscure" that effect. I think the reason for the coarse resolution is that there isn't a simple formula for each individual student. Admissions officials look at each application and weigh factors depending on each student's particular circumstances. This would be consistent with another post in this topic about so many Asian applications being similar (assuming the post was true) which would make it harder to tease out unique factors (I'm speculating here). they show very large group differences on all the characteristics that the universities will admit they're looking for. I don't agree with this at all, especially looking at all U.S. universities in aggregate. There are a lot of universities that look for different aspects rather than pure academics, and look to serve different audiences (HBCU's being the obvious example). Can you give an example of a college or university that claims to look for a particular set of characteristics but has a student body that conflict with those characteristics? Although minority enrollment in the UC system dropped after Prop 209, we still see these large differences. California has a population that is (as of 2011) 40% white, 7% black, 14% Asian and 38% Latino. [0] The U.C. System (undergrad) is currently 30% white, 4% black, 34% Asian and 18% Latino. [1] Are the "large differences" you're referencing referring to the overrepresentation of Asians and underrepresentation of everyone else? [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Racial_and_ancestral_makeup http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#Raci... [1] http://www.cpec.ca.gov/StudentData/StudentSnapshot.ASP?DataReport=UCEth http://www.cpec.ca.gov/StudentData/StudentSnapshot.ASP?DataR... We fail to observe significant differences among the racial groups at CalTech. CalTech (undergrad enrollment) is 2% black, 30% white, 42% black and 10% Latino.[2] That's a lot closer to the UC system than to CA's population. [2] http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/198-cds2014_final.pdf http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/198-cds2014_final.pdf table B2