https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/6/20/admissions-docs-legacy/
“Over 33 percent of legacy applicants—Harvard hopefuls with at least one parent who graduated from the College or Radcliffe—gained admission to the Classes of 2014 through 2019, according to documents filed Friday in an admissions lawsuit against the University.”
We’ve been over this legacy issue time and time again.
Yes, have talked about the legacy issue often. But, the public disclosures associated with this case are meaty indeed. Once and for all I hope many people realize that after legacies, recruited athletes, development cases, URMs, and first gens there are not many slots left in Harvard’s class each year.
^^^and international students too. And half are another gender. So any specific male or female whom is not in the above categories is so so very limited
This issue isn’t Harvard specific, the public release of details just makes it topical. You could make a thread for this on most top 10-20 universities. @privatebanker comments apply broadly.
Another empty, useless “legacy” article sharing admissions numbers but not revealing the academic stats of those admitted students or whether or not they were admitted into peer universities.
Not useless. In broad terms for the elite universities it is helpful in building expectations for thousands high achieving students. It’s a tough ticket and admission to any of the top 50 schools in a competitive major should be cherished. And denial is not an indication of value or accomplishment. Data is data.
Dont forget about development admits–there are more than you think.
Yes, legacy admits are clearly going to be significantly weaker, on average, than non-legacy admits. The math requires it, as the legacy pool is so much smaller than the broad national pool.
The more interesting statistics to come out of the Harvard Asian discrimination documents so far relate to the applicant pool from “Dean’s and Director’s” lists. These run from the kids of large donors, through to children of politicians, right on down to friends of various administrators and officers. They constitute about 14% of the entire admit pool. There is a separate smaller pool for faculty and staff children. All these groups enjoy extraordinary admissions rates, well above even legacy (only recruited athletes - at 86% acceptance rate - are higher).
Add legacies and all these special groups - which largely skew white - together, and you are looking at 45% of the white admits at least.
My guess is that if you look at that part of the white admit pool that does not consist of these special favored categories, their stats and non academic holistic criteria will be as strong as non hooked Asians. I hope people are starting to see that the elites are all about hiding privilege within a holistic smokescreen.
According to the lawsuit admissions regression coefficients, being legacy is a strong hook, on par with being Hispanic. As I recall, Aricidiacono says something to the effect of legacy being stronger than Hispanic somewhere in the text as well. Nevertheless, legacy matriculants at Harvard average higher SAT scores than the rest of the student body in the freshman survey.
Regarding the legacy boost in general, this can vary quite a bit among highly selective colleges. Some highly selective colleges say they do not consider legacy status in admissions decisions, and the lack of effect for legacy has been confirmed via external, peer reviewed studies.
Even if there is no purposeful intent to discriminate against Asians Americans, would disparate impact of the legacy policy be enough to convince the judge of racial discrimination?
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
We’re not going there on this thread. The OP posted a link about legacy admissions. The discussion of race and admissions is limited to one thread only:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1843141-race-in-college-applications-faq-discussion-12.html#latest
The fact that that thread is closed to the moment does not mean that discussion can occur elsewhere.
This is not unique to Harvard. Stanford and Yale are on the record as giving a substantial boost too. I’me sure there are others. The general rule is that legacy boosts chances by 30%. That’s not a 30% increase, as say 6% to 8%, but a boost from 6% to 36%.
So Harvard is not above the foray of “competing for dads/moms”! How surprising (not!)
I would be curious to see what the pure legacy boost is, after you take out factors like mega donors, local interview organizers for Harvard admission office, academic superstars etc. I imagine just by checking the box that your parents or grandparents went to Harvard is not much of a boost.
If you figure Harvard has about five thousand graduates each year(from the university) and each alum has two children and four grandchildren on average there can be potentially 30000 legacy applicants each year. If legacy acceptance rate is 33% and you assume about 300 admits it implies that only 3.3% (1000) among all legacies even apply to Harvard each year. Fitzsimmons was probably not incorrect in saying that they were a “self-selecting group”.
The regression coefficient for legacy (+2.403) is actually about twice as large as for Hispanic (+1.232), according to Harvard OIR’s own model, which was presented in the lawsuit in the statement of material facts in connection with the motion for summary judgment (which I urge people to read in its entirety).
However, not all legacy kids will have high enough academic and other achievements (despite the advantages on average of growing up in a Harvard parent family) to be realistically competitive for Harvard admission, and some may prefer to attend some other school, so the number of actual legacy applicants will be significantly lower than the maximum possible number of legacy applicants based on age demographics.
Would you mind sharing the link to the lawsuit? I’m a bit of a data-nerd and would like to take a look at the regression details.
Only attendees of the College have “legacy status”
for purposes of undergraduate admission, not attendees of the various graduate and professional schools
I can also assure folks that many, many legacy admits are spectacularly well-qualified, gain entrance without any donation from family members, and eschew offers of admission to other great schools.
Look at the Parchment cross admit data.