In 2016, Harvard accepted 12 students from one public high school, which is located in a Boston suburb. MIT accepted 10 students from the same class.
Many Harvard & MIT professors live there, so that might be a factor.
My public magnet HS graduating class in the mid-'90s sent 20 to Harvard…and the vast majority of them came from lower-middle class/lower income backgrounds. At least a quarter of that portion were kids who were not only first generation Americans, but also had parents who were working in small restaurants as waiters/waitresses, garment factories, day laborers, etc.
Only common thread among them were that they were genuine genius types who were off-the-charts brilliant even at my public magnet with several Westinghouse semi-finalists/finalists among them. A couple are tenured STEM Profs at respectable/elite colleges commonly namedropped here on CC.
In comparison, Kusher’s post-college accomplishments are largely due to being born into a wealthy connected family and marrying into another with a dash of good salesmanship skills due to personality disposition and training within that family.
In short, being born halfway between third base and homeplate with him and many here arguing he brilliantly and solely engineered his entire home run himself.
Was that an exam school (Stuy, etc.)? I am all in favor of exam schools, but they are distinctly different than an open-enrollment school.
Thank you for the kind words, @LadyMeowMeow. I guess it comes down to what you see the purpose of Harvard to be. If it’s anything other than to accept the best-prepared kids with the highest grades and stats, it’s failing miserably - anecdotally, maybe a quarter of the kids there have been admitted because they’re in the cockeyed genius bucket - and Harvard will continue to fail at this even if it stops taking development cases, because most of the remaining students still wouldn’t meet that academic standard. But that’s not Harvard’s acknowledged purpose anyway, per the mission statement I quoted upthread.
Harvard’s not a music school (they only recently started dual/joint degree programs with New England Conservatory and Berklee) - why are they accepting that virtuoso violinist? Football arguably has nothing to do with a university degree - why does Harvard recruit dozens of athletes to play it? Beating the bushes for first-gen college students who may have demonstrated ability to overcome obstacles but are at greater risk of getting worse grades and dropping out than the legions of high-stats kids that Harvard rejects every year? Trying to recruit someone from every state in the union just because? Consciously keeping various racial groups within unstated but relatively clear bands? Who decided all those were good ideas, or that the mix that Harvard has is the right one?
Everyone and no one, is the answer, because a class is assembled to satisfy the various constituencies that make up a great university as this concept is understood in the United States - where the faculty in the various departments are only one interest group and the result emerges by consensus (and occasionally in response to legal and moral pressure). I truly believe that there isn’t a clear moral difference between recruiting an acceptable-stats rich kid who may be destined for leadership and an acceptable-stats quarterback, or doing any of those things I mentioned in the previous paragraph, because they’re all deemed to satisfy some institutional need that isn’t purely academic. And, crucially, because there are so many constituencies to be satisfied, the composition of the mix can’t change very much without encountering resistance - it’s difficult for there to be more than a small number of development cases (much as some in the financial administration department might wish it) - because too many other interest groups want pieces of a finite pie. Of course, over time the power of the different constituencies waxes and wanes, and progress is made.
Although I acknowledge it can seem distasteful to bring money into it explicitly, ultimately the university is making an investment in its own future with every kid it admits. The investment pays off if the university’s reach in the world is enhanced, through its alumni’s achievements in various spheres and also in what some of those alumni do directly for the university in order to advance its mission. I don’t see this as hypocrisy, although I understand why some others do.
Very thoughtful post, DeepBlue86, #143.
The first discussion of mine that hinged on what the definition of “is” is (long pre-dating Bill Clinton) was a discussion about what Harvard university is. The discussion involved a Harvard grad and three large public research university grads (LPRUG’s.) The LPRUG’s held the idealized view that a university is an institution for the creation, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge. The Harvard grad held that the university “is” whatever function the university actually performs, in the country as it exists; this includes a lot of effects of the university that are not related to knowledge, specifically.
One’s view of wealth-based admissions is probably correlated with one’s view of what a university “is.” Harvard is entitled to define what Harvard is. The definition can change over time.
I just would like for “what Harvard is” to be openly acknowledged. There seems to be a poster or two arguing that “development admits” do not occur; rather, it’s just that the children of very rich donors add something unique to the class, and they are admitted on their own holistic merits with no connection to donations. Maybe, maybe not. I wish it were possible to perform the experiment I suggested back in Six Degrees of Jared Kushner.
Presumably there is more art than science in terms of selecting a class. Benefits you are seeking to obtain are subjective. And long term in nature. And interaction between different admits with different things brought to the table. And all of those issues exist to one degree or another with all of the various holistic selection criteria.
@lookingforward you assume… yet again!!!
I wonder why?
Why would you think those on this thread who dont agree with Harvard’s policy is “sitting on their hands” "don’t know if his/her kids “have it”?
What “information” makes you draw that conclusion? “Unprepared parents” in your rulebook don’t have the right to express their opinion about Harvard?
What does poster’s kids “having it” have anything to do with expressing an opinion about Harvard’s admission policies?
Did you follow the same preconceived notions you did when you deemed Harvard admission decisions fair and just?
The problem with this, and it goes way beyond Harvard, is that any holistic admissions process is somewhat opaque. I’ld love it if Harvard or any other top school published information explaining how they actually admitted the students with less than exceptional academic stats(X% athletes, Y% musicians, …).
@QuantMech “I’m all for people recognizing that life is unfair. I’m all against using the idea that “life is unfair” to justify unfairness, when fairness would be just as easy.”
Great line
I fully agree
You make this thread interesting and riveting.
Thank you
@DeepBlue86 Again we’re largely in agreement. Harvard doesn’t have a single “purpose.” It is a multifaceted entity composed of, and responsive to, many different constituencies. Once again, and I hope for the last time, we also agree that Harvard is not Caltech, not some collection of top GPAs and SATs. Nobody as far as the eye can see is suggesting that Harvard should admit only brainiacs.
Where we differ is that I find your view to be too realpolitik. You’re willing to give the “benefit of the doubt” to development admissions for pretty sketchy financial reasons, whereas I think you underestimate the damage that such (perceived) hypocrisies can do to the image, brand, and viability – financial and otherwise – of an institution with such symbolic value in the U.S. & the world. It would cost very little to do away with developmental admissions – I keep hearing there are hardly any 
– and I believe the gains would far outweigh the losses. Lots of good press. A new batch of donors who approve of the move. No more angry donors whose kids don’t get in because of false expectations. No more CC threads devoted to Jared Kushner. In fact, my spider sense tells me that the main difference would be that the number of students who fall in the “wealthy and connected” bucket would not diminish at all: the well-heeled would still have the necessary advantages to prepare for Harvard. Rather, the wealthy and connected students admitted only on the merits of their applications would have personal qualities more in line with Harvard’s own description:
“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
Harvard – and you, too – can eliminate the embarrassing hypocrisy of defending developmental admissions without giving up any of the secret, special recipe that makes Harvard Harvard. The fact that no official document argues for developmental admissions suggests that Harvard would only become more true to itself.
Harvard has some very bright people setting admit policies. Seems to me they understand the pluses and minuses and potential reactions to various policies they establish and knowing all of that they went with the current admit policies. There would be some number of people who would take exception to any set of admit policies ever conceived. You cannot avoid some people being unhappy, crying foul, unfair, etc. So you establish procedures which you think best serve the interests of the given institution (again acknowledging its more art than science) and make adjustments deemed appropriate along the way and more forward.
My kids go to a day school in New Haven that has a big crossover with Yale Deans, Profs and Docs. Every year they send between 8-12 kids (out of a class of 140) to Yale. The CC office claims there is no official relationship and that the admissions office at Yale does not want to hear from them. Children who are not connected (like mine) who do not show a strong interest in Yale are not encouraged to apply. Children who are not connected who do show a strong interest are given the same support from the school. New Haven is a small town and it’s fairly easy to figure out who will be attending Yale by 4th grade - and it’s not the kids, it’s the parents. LOL.
DD2 is a legacy at Penn. We are not wealthy, her dad attended on a full ROTC scholarship. The CC office made it very clear that Penn is the only Ivy that publicly states it gives preference to legacies. However that is only extended to ED applicants. DD2 is applying RD, we’ll see what happens.
@LadyMeowMeow, that argument is made constantly at CC. Not necessarily in this thread, but on a regular basis. There is a dearly held belief that someone with higher grades and SAT/ACT is more “qualified,” and if a spot goes to someone with lower stats, it has been given to someone “less qualified,” no matter that the student in question had quite respectable grades and test scores, but also possesses talents in music, drama, debate, leadership, ability to overcome extremely difficult circumstances, or any other number of qualities. For those people, it should be ALL about grades/SAT and nothing else matters. Anything that deviates from that is “unfair.” This theme is incredibly pervasive.
So fair/unfair is in the eyes of the beholder? Now what is an institution to do in terms of establishing “fair” procedures?
To be fair I wouldn’t say the kid with a 35 is less qualified than the kid with the 36.
However, the kid in the bottom 10% stat wise of the applicant pool is arguably less qualified than the kid in the top 10% of Harvard’a applicant pool. Especially if the kid has had every advantage financially for education.
From your description, it seems like NYU then would have had mostly not-so-great students from wealthy families who could spend for NYU (instead of CUNY or whatever), which should mean a larger percentage of inherited wealth, not a smaller one.
@LadyMeowMeow I’m with @Nrdsb4 on this - there are an awful lot of people on CC who implicitly or explicitly believe stats should trump all.
I’ll add another bit of “realpolitik” to this mix, if I may: regarding development admit candidates, as with legacy admit candidates, it’s in the interest of schools like Harvard for the potential beneficiaries to believe that the advantage is meaningful but no guarantee, and for the wider world to believe that it barely matters. That way, the family will give more and for longer in the hope that it may move the needle, but the school never promised anything and can point to the many rejections as evidence that the system is less influenced by money than is actually the case.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, in my view - it’s the best course for the school to take if its budget is meaningfully dependent on donations, cold as that may sound.
When a university is in the business of encouraging people to believe things that are not the case . . .
“Realpolitik”–wars to start off, followed by a period of peace for Otto von Bismarck, but setting the stage for what followed?
Hope you don’t mind these comments. I liked your earlier posts better, DeepBlue86. 
Ancient by CC standards, https://newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere, but interesting food for thought from William Deresiewicz if anyone hasn’t seen it already, especially the part about the day with the Yale adcom.
I found this to be an interesting comment from the article:
“If there is anywhere that college is still college—anywhere that teaching and the humanities are still accorded pride of place—it is the liberal arts college.”
This is precisely the reason my son wants to attend a LAC.