Largely due to winning the genetic lottery and then marrying someone who also won the genetic lottery. Not largely due to his own accomplishments outside of that and family connections.
Do we really want to return to the aristocratic past when access to great educational opportunities and political/social leadership positions were largely allocated on the basis of aristocratic birth/high SES status and connections with others of the same status?
Another item for food for thought, do scions of high SES/well-connected families really need more advantages on top of the already privileged background and upbringing their family’s status availed to them from birth onwards?
This assumes that admissions to the school is made purely on merit* considerations. It is clear that at least some of the admissions decisions at many elite colleges and universities are based on factors other than purely merit considerations (legacy, developmental, relation to some person of interest, etc.). Students and parents who dislike such policies can choose other colleges and universities to attend, and donors who dislike such policies can direct their donations elsewhere.
*Merit can be and often is evaluated holistically considering many aspects (including achievement in context of familial advantage/disadvantage), so it is not synonymous with a GPA/rank/test-score formula or some such.
I guess where we differ is that I don’t think that’s the point of holistic admissions, at least not from Harvard’s point of view. Harvard’s in the business of maximizing its impact on society by educating the people who will be leaders in all society’s segments. That’s why they look beyond stats - so they can justify taking that dancer, or this quarterback, or that URM whom they think is going to be a leader in her community, or Jared Kushner.
I’d suggest that Harvard is most interested in outcomes (who will become leaders), and overcoming adversity is just one thing that may count in your favor. We don’t know what was in Kushner’s file - and therefore the extent to which Harvard Admissions anticipated this - but I would suggest that he alone (leaving his father’s donation out of it) has done more to advance Harvard’s mission than the vast majority of his classmates by becoming possibly the most influential adviser to the next President. I’d note that the first sentence of Harvard College’s mission statement reads as follows (the full text is here: https://college.harvard.edu/about/mission-and-vision):
One may think the mission should be different, or have an issue with Kushner personally, but it looks to me like Harvard lived up to that mission by admitting him.
There are a lot of winners and losers in the lottery of birth. Not sure why being born into wealthy and connected families would be singled out.
There are a lot of kids who are excluded from great educational opportunities (or even good or decent ones) because of their families’ SES. And that is without looking at correlations between test results and SES.
There’s a lot of questions on the edges of this discussion and how you answer those influences a lot how you think about this issue.
Do elite colleges, such as Harvard, add value in terms of income and a more prestigious career, or just admit students who would have been successful no matter where they went to college?
To the extent, HYP adds value, how does that vary by major and occupation?
What about HYP adds that extra value, which you couldn’t get at any top 30 college? better classes? better undergraduate research opportunities? the Ivy name on the resume? making friends with the children and grandchildren of the rich and famous, and getting to ride their coat tails?
Re @Hunt’s question: Ten years or so ago, I was told that $4 million would do it at Princeton. But it wasn’t $4 million out of the blue; it was $4 million in the context of a pre-existing history of support (though not at that level). And I imagine the price – if that was indeed the price – has gone up considerably since then. The person who told me this was not in the market for a college for his kids at the time. He was essentially repeating gossip at the hedge-fund water cooler. There’s no question he actually was at the hedge-fund water cooler, but that doesn’t mean one of his partners wasn’t just making it up for self-aggrandizement.
I have more reliable knowledge of at least a couple of situations where people whose cumulative donations to a university far exceeded that level did not allow children they thought were not up to snuff to apply.
Slightly different perspective: the goal is first for the four year experience. Pick well for the four college years, life in that community, and the post success will follow, in large and small ways. Small roles in society can still be citizen leaders.
How do you even suggest rich kids need higher stats than the best of the rest? And then what, rack and stack, deny holistic?
The article at http://patch.com/california/paloalto/inside-stanford-s-exclusive-admission-path-c38ea20a mentions multiple persons involved in Stanford admissions claim a threshold of $500k for preferential treatment, which is different from near guaranteed admission. The quoted former admin officers in the article mention that a different “golden halo” group is “still expected to perform up to Stanford’s academic standards and typically will have SAT scores and GPA in the normal range for the incoming freshman class.” Something similar probably also applies to donations at this level.
I am wondering what the expectations of the posters on this board were regarding the outcome of the presidential elections. If one can believe the Forbes article - Jared singlehandedly accomplished an amazing feat due to his visionary approach and organizational abilities.
We should celebrate the grandiose success of Harvard Admissions that was able to recognize the hidden talents and potential of the young man despite his non-perfect academic record. Instead, we have this traditional semi-annual thread bashing developmental cases. As it turned out Jared is not a very good poster child for this thread.
If Jared had been talented and visionary then he could’ve demonstrated that in an application to Harvard unaccompanied by $2,500,000 and phone calls from politicians. He was born rich and powerful. He married into a rich and powerful family. Now he’s rich and powerful. Not sure what Harvard has to be proud of, exactly? Another rich, coddled white American aristocrat shepherded through the finishing school?
It’s interesting just how little support one finds in Harvard’s publications for the kinds of logic being advanced on this thread:
“Some admission candidates will demonstrate extraordinary promise in academic or research endeavors. Some will show uncommon talent in other areas, such as leadership, performing arts, or athletics. Most of our students combine the best of both scholastic and extracurricular achievement. Personal qualities—integrity, maturity, strength of character, and concern for others—also will play an important part in our evaluations.” https://college.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/viewbook_1617.pdf
There are people shelling large amounts of family money to open doors.
There are many attending for free.
It is surprising to see that people don’t equate the two. Someone had to shell out the money to support all those other poor students who attend the same schools.
Well being an URM is also an artifact of birth but it is still considered in admissions. Holistic admissions is in place to ensure that the class looks whatever way the administration of the university want it to look. That look includes a certain number of scions of wealth, a certain number of URM, a certain number of oboe players, etc… I don’t see how being connected is any different from other hooks. Part of what a top school can do for a student is to help make connections. If a student is going to make connections there have to be people at the school who can help the others do that.
