Now, Harvard, Yale and some other elite colleges receive minority applications in proportions that often exceed those of minorities in the U.S.

Fitzsimmons admits that Harvard has become one of several elite universities to consider adopting a race-blind admissions procedure, something unthinkable just 10 years ago.

One reason is external. Courts and voters have expressed their disfavor with affirmative action. Another reason is that the applicant pool is very diverse and very qualified. The College might be able to disregard ethnicity since its pool is so diverse.

"We have certainly talked about and thought about this issue a great deal," Fitzsimmons says.

But Fitzsimmons says the adoption of a race-blind admissions procedure is unlikely.

"People are very much shaped by the complex set of factors in their environment and you'd be missing a part of a person if you didn't understand what that person may have had to deal with," Fitzsimmons says.

However, if Harvard ever does decide to change how it admits its classes, it faces a problem. Where merit can be measured relatively objectively--such as by the quality of a musical performance--race-blind admissions can be a useful tool to remedy implicit prejudice. But where overall merit depends on a confluence of individual factors, deleting the consideration of race may detract from the big picture.

Orchestral ensembles that were once predominantly male, for example, have achieved a more equal gender balance in recent years, but without affirmative action. Instead, they've used blind auditions since at least the 1970s, during which judges literally cannot see the person who is performing blind auditions.

"We have them perform the same set of excerpts from behind a scene, enter via a different entrance and enter the stage walking on a piece of carpet so you can't tell if they're wearing high heels or not," says Jill Woodward, a spokesperson for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

"[Blind auditions] are designed to try to wipe out all other factors than just sound," she says.

A study conducted by Professor of Economics Claudia D. Goldin and Princeton University's Cecilia Rouse found that using a screen during auditions increases the chance that women will pass preliminary rounds by 50 percent.

But Goldin and Rouse both point out that the goals of a university are different from those of an orchestra.

"The equivalent for an orchestra would be picking across instruments randomly," Rouse says.

Similarly, diversity for the Harvard admissions office means more than ethnicity.

Fitzsimmons says that the admissions office recognizes many more "types" of intelligence than Conant did. Referring to the work of Professor of Education Howard E. Gardner '65, Fitzsimmons says officers take into account intelligence in the form of artistic ability, musical skill, athletic prowess, moral reasoning and inter-personal skills when making admissions decisions.