One reason schools have to de-emphasize grades and test scores in admissions is to limit the number of Asian Americans accepted. A blog post by Steve Hsu, who often writes about IQ, argues that this is being done:
Too Many Asian Americans: Affirmative Discrimination in Elite College Admissions May 25, 2018
Some basic facts: Caltech has race-blind admissions. The fraction of Asian-Americans enrolled there tends to track the growth in the overall applicant pool in recent decades. Harvard does use race as a factor, and is being sued for discrimination against Asian-Americans. The peak in A-A representation at Harvard, in the early 1990s, coincides with an earlier DOJ investigation of the university for discrimination (dramatic race-based adjustments, revealing the craven subjectivity of holistic admissions!). Despite the much stronger and larger pool of applicants today (second figure below), A-A representation at Harvard has never recovered to those 1990s levels.
