Bok Defends Admissions Prerogatives

In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday, President Bok defended the University's right to give special consideration to the admission of minority students.

Bok said he is "strongly opposed" to a recent California Supreme Court decision that declared the University of California at Davis Medical School's preferential admissions program for racial minorities illegal.

Grades and Test Scores

He said that grades and test scores are important factors in admissions decisions but that they should not be the only factors.

"We are interested in educating students who will make a distinct contribution to the nation," Bok said. "And in a country where there are so few minority persons in leading businesses, law firms, hospitals and government agencies, we feel a minority student may be especially able to make such contributions."

No Reduction

In response to figures cited to show that the number of blacks attending Harvard has dropped since 1972-73, Bok said there has been no reduction in the University's commitment to educating minorities.

The figures reflect the fact that "other institutions are competing heavily for able minority students," he said.

He said that one-third of all black students in the country who annually score over 700 on the SAT attend Harvard and that 15 per cent of those scoring over 600 attend here.

When asked to comment on recent federal legislation which would require medical schools in this country to admit American students from medical schools abroad, Bok said the legislation was "unwise from both a government and public standpoint."

"The process of putting together an effective class in our nation's medical schools, of making fair decisions about who will be admitted and who will not, are decisions that are better made by universities than by government decree," Bok said.

In response to a question concerning the difficulty of middle-income families in financing a Harvard education, he said the University has tried to develop an "imaginative series of loan programs" to deal with the problem