Carroll says today's fluctuating percentages can be explained by the admissions committee's practice of looking at each candidate individually.

She attributes the impression that the committee seeks to limit the number of Asian-Americans at Harvard to cultural differences rather than to actual statistical trends.

"In a lot of Asian countries they have a very different educational system, based on cut-offs," she says. "If the parents are immigrants, it's a tough thing to learn, that things are not just based on test scores."

"In all its history, Harvard has never claimed to be a meritocracy," she adds. "Harvard always looks for students with diverse backgrounds and talents from all around the country and the world."

James S. Hoyte '65, assistant to the president and associate vice-president, is the University officer responsible for affirmative action. He says he is satisfied with the methods the admissions office uses to secure a diverse student body.

"With respect to any group there's no specific overall target that we have, so it comes out the way it comes out," Hoyte says. "I feel pretty good about the mix of Asian-Americans in the whole variety of different students we see within that community."

Harvard has made great progress since he was an undergraduate in the '60s, Hoyte says. Then, the University began to actively seek a diverse student body.

"Certainly this is an incredibly different place," Hoyte says. "I'm an African-American, and there were quite a small number of us, and to my sense visually, there were very, very few Asian-Americans. So we can see tremendous progress."

Despite this progress, Hoyte says, there has been no retrenchment in the University's efforts to attract and welcome Asian-American students.

"There is no question that we have been more successful in seeing that Asian-Americans participate than with some other groups," he says. "But that doesn't mean there's a feeling that we don't need to have our eye on the ball."

Affirmative Action

Asian-Americans have been caught in the middle of a new national battle over scaling back affirmative action programs.

Earlier this month, 54 percent of California voters approved Proposition 209, which prohibits state and local governments from using racial or gender preferences in hiring, promotion and college admissions.

According to exit polls, support for affirmative action in California is significantly weaker among Asians than among other minority groups. Thirty-nine percent of Asians who went to the polls on Nov. 5 voted in favor of Prop. 209, compared with 26 percent of black voters and 24 percent of Latino voters.

"There's definitely a division in the Asian-American community," says Quach, who opposed Prop. 209. "In San Francisco, in a good amount of the Asian-American community, people do believe that a merit-based system is more worthwhile. The 40 percent who voted for Proposition 209 want to see things decided on merit."