I don’t know what the statute of limitations might be on bringing such suits, but given that MIT rejects more than 10,000 applicants each year (they accept around 1500 out of 12,000 applicants) there must be some potential litigants out there (if anyone cares enough to bother at this point).
There must be some former applicants with top-flight numbers and credentials who were rejected from their first choice MIT and ended up “stuck” at an Ivy or Stanford, Berkeley, CalTech, etc....... they could argue that such an obviously well-qualified app was passed over by a ditzy fraudulent dean who chose to undermine the objectivity of the process .... but it wouldn’t fit into any of the politically correct categories for the Mass. judiciary, since it would be someone who was either not an “approved minority” or else someone who was judged “too narrow” in their personality and character, etc.
Marilee Jones seems to have been the leading edge of changing MIT’s admissions criteria somewhat to de-emphasize their traditional hard-core “nerd” profile in favor of more “well-rounded” and “diverse” applicants, but as you well know, there is enough variability in debates about admissions criteria for “elite” institutions that any litigation would probably have much less of a chance of success than a rejected applicant suing because their high scores and grades were passed over for some “minority” applicants.
It would be interesting to find out (as though they would ever tell the public) how far MIT has pushed affirmative action in recent years, since there are probably some really stellar students rejected when they are white or Asian-American males and don’t strike the admissions committee as “interesting” enough. I don’t expect that there will be any successful suits, or even that anyone will bother to try, unless they really just want to generate some publicity for the issue of rejecting more highly ranked students in order to pursue “diversity” in the entering class.
MIT classifies minorities into two groups; "minorities" and "underrepresented minorities". The difference being whether or not the percentage of the particular minority being referred to in the MIT student body is at least equal to or greater than the percentage of that minority in the U.S. population. Qualified members of underrepresented minorities are automatically accepted.
Before you consider this as a free pass, consider that the same minorities are underrepresented minorities every year. If members of such minorities were being accepted with lower academic credentials just to build the numbers up, they would in fact climb until they were no longer underrepresented. But that's not the case. It is well recognized that accepting an unqualified student into the Institute does neither them nor the Institute any favors. They'll just wash out. There are no easy courses or majors for unqualified students to hide in.
Americans of Asian heritage are not "underrepresented". In fact, they're about 2 or 3 times more prevalent than in the overall population.
When I was at the Institute, the gender ratio was about 9:1::male:female. Now it's about 55:45. American society has changed to the point that girls are expected to do as well in math as boys, and it's showing up. I've had a chance to talk to a number of them. MIT has not dropped it's academic requirements, let me assure you. And at least now a guy has a shot to get a date on campus (not that there aren't plenty of places to go in Cambridge or Boston to get a date), and one who he can talk to about the travails of student life to boot. It always put a damper on my social life when I'd be standing around with a bunch of B.U. students who'd be talking about their classes and how tough they were and then one of them would ask me about mine. Any honest answer from me would pretty much kill conversation.