Originally Posted by Val
IIRC, the article said that National Merit Scholarship people publish an annual list of 16,000 top high school students (presumably based on SAT scores alone? Not sure). Less than 1,000 Jewish students make the list. Roughly 15,000 non-Jewish Asian and white students are on the list.

Ergo, if >2,000 non-top-student Jewish people were admitted to the top schools, the admissions people were favoring Jewish students by dipping into the low end of the Jewish talent pool. And as a result, they were probably rejecting some of those non-Jewish people who were "better" students (which could really mean "had higher SAT scores," I don't know.").

I'm recalling this information, not pulling it out of the article. Correct me if I'm wrong.

This is correct. They had to dip into the 98th percentile or lower.