Better make sure you’re good enough, then.
As the saying goes, nice guy is not a profession.
To be clear, 45% of Harvard students are full pay. The average family contribution for the others is $13K, with another $3K expected from the student themselves (combination of cash and work study money.) Financial aid can be provided to families making $250+K per year.
All of the schools in the Ivy League act, and have always acted, as finishing schools for the rich. This is why they have always defended their high percentage of rich (and ultra-rich) students. A school filled with too many non-rich strivers, no matter how intelligent or accomplished, will not suit.
From the $53 billion endowment?
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Absolutely, make sure you are good enough.
But as we have discussed throughout this thread once good enough is hit in a core area then other factors come into play. The work world is no different in this respect, once you have a pool of all ‘highly competent’ in the core skill it is other factors which become the deciders.
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Table A.6 an A.7 break this down further. Among kids with comparable test scores, top 1% income kids were generally more likely to apply to Ivy+ colleges than high income kids, but there were some exceptions, some of which are listed below. I suspect the tech emphasis hurts Caltech/MIT. Top 1% kids may be less likely to favor engineering than upper income kids and more likely to favor “elite” finance. Engineering does not explain Chicago… It’s possible that some top 0.1% income kids might not be a fan of the “where fun goes to die” reputation, but it’s not obvious to me why that would impact top 0.1% kids notably more severely than top 1% kids.
- Harvard – Both top 0.1% kids and top 1% kids 1.2x more likely to apply
- Chicago – Top 0.1% kids 0.8x less likely to apply, 1.0x more likely
- MIT – Top 0.1% kids 0.7x less likely to apply, top 1% 0.8x less likely
- Caltech – Top 0.1% kids 0.6x less likely to apply, top 1% 0.6x less likely
Table A.7 shows another unique discrepancy for Chicago. At all Ivy+ colleges (Caltech is not grouped as Ivy+), top 1% income kids with a particular high test score who applied were more likely to attend than kids with the same test score who were upper income The author implies this is both due to a higher rate of admission and a higher yield. In general, the higher income you go within top 1%, the stronger this effect, so top 0.1% is effect is larger than top 1%. However, Chicago and Caltech do not follow this pattern. Some specific numbers are below:
- Harvard – Top 0.1% 2.0x more likely to attend, top 1% 1.2x more likely to attend
- MIT-- Top 0.1% 1.7x more likely to attend, top 1% 1.2x more likely to attend
- Chicago – Top 0.1% 1.3x more likely to attend, top 1% 1.6x more likely to attend
- Caltech – Top 0.1% 0.9x less likely to attend, top 1% 1.0x more likely to attend
Some of this unique pattern may be noise due to small sample size. Chetty’s earlier study mentioned <1% of students were from top 0.1% income families at both Chicago and Caltech. That may be too small of a sample size to draw meaningful conclusions.
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@circuitrider , I’m sure I speak for us all in thanking you for giving us the elegantly concise version of @Data10 's data!
Here’s what the authors of the study said in the paper:
CollegeAdmissions_Paper.pdf (opportunityinsights.org)
In other words, by removing such “non-academic credentials (e.g., extracurricular activities,leadership traits, etc.)”, fewer such rich kids would be admitted over students from lower-income families.
I think what you quoted was actually from David Leonhardt of The New York Times. Here’s what he said:
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Mathematics and laws of physics dictate that a system with a persistently positive feedback loop will eventually blow up and destroy itself. 
I believe Canada also has more (and more frequent) mostly-provincial-level standardized exams for primary and secondary students (at least in the more populous provinces).
List of Canadian primary and secondary examinations - Wikipedia.
I read the info on the website as saying the average parental contribution is $13k for everyone, but if that figure is only for those receiving aid, it is very misleading and needs to be corrected.
As for the ceiling of $250k, here is what the site says:
"For families with annual incomes below $85,000 (increased from $75,000 beginning in the 2023-24 academic year), the expected contribution is zero. Families with annual incomes between $85,000 and $150,000 will contribute between 0 and 10 percent of their income. Those with incomes above $150,000 will be asked to pay proportionately more than 10 percent based on their circumstances. "
To be clear, I am strongly opposed to legacy as well as athletic preferences in admission. However I am also obviously a supporter of need blind aid that meets need without loans, and am hopeful that the endowment will cover those costs. Eliminating legacy will open up spots and is all the more needed in light of the court decision on affirmative action.
I believe admissions genuinely seeks talent from lower income families and that the reasons behind the statistics are complex. Eliminating legacy would certainly help (quite a lot), but some of the other advantages will remain for those who have money.
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Right. Once it’s hit.
I don’t think this NY Times article (gift link) has been discussed here. It quantifies the legacy advantage, which also varies by income. For high income applicants, the legacy advantage provides a 4x likelihood of admittance over not having it:
What would be interesting to see is the impact of academic vs non-academic factors on the ultimate “fat-tail” top 1% post-Ivy+ outcomes, to test the “good enough” theory.
But that is such a thin sliver to study that we will probably never know.
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The main unstated but real mission of Harvard is to help the Harvard “brand”. Their entire admissions policy is set up to maximize the chances that Harvard graduates will increase the prestige, influence, and wealth of Harvard, without generating PR that is too awful.
Their students are their “investments”, and they do their best to “diversify”. The students from the wealthy families are more conservative “investments”, since these will almost certainly do well in the future. Middle class kids with top academics are the best bets for success in places like academia/research, startups, and the tech world. All the Tech Billionaires come from this group. Kids of the very wealthy, powerful, and famous, as well as kids who have earned fame themselves, provide immediate benefits in terms of PR and influence (having a movie star or the child of a president helps the college’s reputation immensely). Finally, having high performing kids from low income families is very helpful for PR, and are an investment that may be more risky, but also potentially have a better pay-off. After all, a rag-to-riches story, in which Harvard can cast itself as the main contributor to this transformation, is excellent PR. Moreover, Harvard can assume that these individuals will be very grateful and will both donate generously and expand the influence of Harvard.
Having individuals who fulfill more than one of these are the best, such as wealthy or high performing upper middle class URMs, star athletes from very wealthy families, etc.
For most of those categories, having a higher GPA correlates with a higher chance of future success, and consequently high positive impact on the “Harvard Brand”.
That is why Harvard will only ignore GPA when admitting students who are children of serious donors, children of the powerful and influential, etc, and kids who have already achieved fame in fields that do not require academic excellence. It really doesn’t matter what the children of past or present presidents do in the future, since they have already contributed substantially to the Harvard “brand” by publicly announcing that they will be attending Harvard. High high school GPA also does not increase the contributions to the Harvard Brand made by kids who have already achieved high levels of success in fields in which academic talent is not important, like athletes or film actors.
While I expect that other universities do the same to some extent, nobody does it “better” than Harvard. There is a reason that in the CDS, Harvard only has “considered” for every admissions factor, including GPA and class rigor.
PS, this does nothing to lessen the achievements of students who attend Harvard. In fact, they should be encouraged by the fact that Harvard accepted them because Harvard needed something from them, rather than because because Harvard wanted to help them.
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IMHO, if any college, including many that consider themselves “fellow travelers” in the prestige game, had Harvard’s money, they would be concentrating their efforts on that second pool of middle-class kids with top academics. Not only is the sort of pooling of “conservative” assets as represented in the first pool increasingly unseemly, but also subject to the Law of Diminishing Returns as the legal profession, Fortune 500 CEOs, the communications industry all become more diverse.
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Reminder that the SCOTUS decision on race based admission is being discussed only in the Political Forum. Thank you for understanding.
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It isn’t just about money. It’s more about influences. The son of a corrupt minister from a corrupt country would have more influence than a middle-class kid from America, so he’s likely to have a better chance of admissions, as long as these colleges feel that they can still maintain a semblance of what The Economist called “skin-deep” (not in the racial sense) diversity for marketing and branding purposes.
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I can almost hear Harvard alum everywhere screaming, “Don’t help!” 
@1NJParent , there’s not in fact a lot of standardized testing going on at the high school level in Canada, at least in Ontario, where I live. None of my kids (three in number) took any of the tests mentioned in the wikipedia article. Yes, six decades ago there was a highly standardized curriculum which culminated in universal tests in all subjects administered to all students in the province and ranked them all. It’s long gone, though I myself thought it was a good thing. And the SAT/ACT tests are almost never taken here (they may not even be administered), certainly not by my kids, all of whom got into good Canadian schools easy as pie (all our schools are pretty good and all have ridiculously low tuitions). That includes the child who went to the U of Toronto on the basis of extremely mediocre high school grades. Going off to college is just not that big a deal here, and historically fewer Canadians than Americans actually did it.
I would therefore confirm much of what my fellow Canadian, @gwnorth , has said on the subject above. However, unlike him, I miss the more richly textured American educational landscape, the high-stakes choices and gambles, the general level of emotionalism and drama, the self-invention, in a nutshell, that constitutes leaving home for school in the States.
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Although in some cases, it is because Harvard wanted them because of their parents’ achievements (donations, fame, or social positioning that will be bequeathed to the student) rather than their own achievements.
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