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Comment by anonAndOn | Hacker News Reader

If race is barred then the next method could be increased emphasis on perfect price discrimination to distinguish applicants socioeconomically. Outrageous tuition prices coupled with generous "scholarships" can also create a diverse student body.

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Presumably if you cannot use race to decide who gets a place, you cannot use race to decide who get's a scholarship. At least as Harvard University, different rules might apply for the NAACP etc.

Who said anything about race? If you can afford Choate, you can afford $250k/year at Harvard. But the kid from Biloxi, MS gets a "scholarship" so she only pays $25k/yr.

Of course, for 250k*4y I could probably just buy a house in Biloxi... And many of the people the current system removes from the pool come from areas that would be just as economically under-performing as other groups.

Sorry if I have missed your point?

Wealth is a proxy for race.[0] Good luck to any court striking down wealth based admissions.

Also, Biloxi is very affordable![1]

[0]https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/weal...

[1]https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/bilxi-ms_rb/

Less clear than you might think. Choate isn't as rich as Harvard, but it's still on a tier with, say, Wesleyan (for context, not as a fair comparison), with the finaid apparatus to match. They are absolutely capable of letting you "afford" to attend if they want you there, not quite orthogonal to whether you can afford $250k/year (more than Harvard sticker price anyway) but maybe at a 60-degree angle or so.

US private colleges cost about $250 to $330k for am entire BA.

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