<p>Harvard may not explicitly take into account race, gender, etc., but it definitely plays a role. Like most other colleges, Harvard doesn’t want to consist solely of whites and asians, so they’ll make more of an effort to snag a quality black student over a quality white one. Race may be fairly low on the admissions checklist, but given the level of competition most good applicants are fairly equal with regards to everything else, so that can be a tie breaker.</p>