And this remark sounds like a comment on this thread:
“It almost feels ridiculous to have to insist that colleges like Harvard are bastions of privilege, where the rich send their children to learn to walk, talk, and think like the rich. Don’t we already know this? They aren’t called elite colleges for nothing. But apparently we like pretending otherwise.”
Re comment 160: You are right. It does sound that way. I agree with the sentiment. If you remove the chance to rub elbows with the powerful schools like H lose some of their appeal. The reason those schools are elite is that elite people go there. It seems silly to want to go to an elite college and then complain that they let elite people in the school.
FWIW my own kids did not aspire to Ivies. My oldest was turned off by the attitude of the reps at the college fair. My middle would not have had the academic chops. My youngest is really focused on the LACs.
I never get why anyone would want to send their kid to a school whose mission/admission policies one finds so lacking. Vote with your feet!
Maybe I’m an optimist, @QuantMech, but I don’t see development cases and legacy admissions being the cause for the equivalent of World War I 
.
My point, which I should have fleshed out further, is that the courting of alumni and other donors by university development offices is extensive and results in streams of donations, often over many years before anyone applies. The cumulative effect of all those donations on university finances is substantial. Yet, the vast majority of the relevant applicants aren’t admitted - I believe Harvard’s legacy admit rate is about 30% these days (much higher than Yale’s, which is around 20%), and I’m very confident that many of those denied have parents who have donated a great deal since they graduated - also that many of those admitted had parents who have donated little, if at all (as noted by @JHS upthread). Similarly, most gifts from donors with no prior connection to Harvard don’t ultimately lead to someone in that donor’s family being admitted (pace Kushner).
Paradoxically, the truth is actually pretty close to what most people would like to see: “go ahead and give, but we promise nothing and it’s much more likely than not that your kid will be denied” - but it would be unwise for the university to say that too loudly.
Harvard is about so much more than rubbing elbows with privilege. Along with its sister tippy tops, it’s about a level of drives, intellect, energies, awareness, and follow through. That’s what brings their grads success, in whatever field, by whatever definition. You can’t tell if a kid has it, just via stats and some ECs, those are just the bones. Nor by what a 17 year old kid declares he wants to do after college.
And since not everyone gets an admit, the next tiers are also full of great kids. Thinkers and do-ers, as well as top performers.
My kids have zero interest in Harvard and won’t apply there. I can’t imagine why it’s their least favorite elite school. “You might meet the next Jared Kushner,” I keep telling them, but they just won’t listen.
With the possible exception of Caltech, they could easily meet the next Jared Kushner at any elite university, or top LAC. They could easily meet several of him. If Harvard is different from its peers in any way, it’s probably that it’s a good deal harder (and more expensive) to buy your way in there. (I don’t think it’s significantly easier at Stanford, Princeton, or Yale, but I don’t think any of them is pure in the way @LadyMeowMeow would like.) And just to be clear, elite public universities play in this league, too. (As well they should. It’s fair to say that Harvard doesn’t need to compromise standards to build its endowment further. But Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA have a lot more slots to play with, much broader standards, and much less financial security.)
Yes, that’s one point. The saying goes, “Where do you think all those top kids go, when they aren’t admitted to a tippy top?” They aren’t all dropping to the bottom. Nor do they lose all that bright energy when they show up at a tier 2 or 3 or, heavens, the flagship.
What @JHS said, as usual. [Removing my snark, which could be misinterpreted]
@jhs in all seriousness, you’re touching on the substance of my moralizing. Harvard is in the best position to be purer and lead by example. It would be a win-win for them I think (contra deepblue84). They just need enough nudges from the right constituencies. Get nudging, Harvard alumni.
Or Bowdoin, Swat, Duke, Northwestern, and more.
I’m not sure eliminating legacy preferences, or development preferences, or eliminating the football team makes Harvard “purer” or leading by example.
At the end of the day, there is a fixed number of seats. (or beds, however you want to measure it). Any allocation system is going to have quirks and problems and opportunities for abuse or unfairness- that’s the nature of scarcity by definition.
The best thing to be said about “one million isn’t enough but two million might be, assuming your kid doesn’t have 450 SAT scores and a B minus average” is that in any given year, the number of those kids is small. If Harvard eliminated that- it would be replaced by some other allocation mechanism that might fill a significantly larger number of seats.
Lol, DeepBlue86 #163, I was really just commenting that I don’t commend “Realpolitik,” not that Harvard’s practice of it will lead to WW I! 
Truthfully, I think telling Harvard to slow the growth of its endowment is like telling a shark to stop eating. Harvard is programmed to be the apex predator of education, and competition’s OK with them as long as it helps them get bigger and stronger. Any real threat to their position relative to their competitors is not OK. A lot of people at Harvard are quite nervous about Stanford these days - the events described here, in particular caused consternation on the Charles: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/upshot/how-stanford-took-on-the-giants-of-economics.html?_r=0 - and other schools have been snapping at Harvard’s heels in various ways for a long time (and sometimes surpassing them). See here also for how insecurity is beginning to manifest itself even in the president’s office in Massachusetts Hall: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/10/30/stanford-vs-harvard/
If Harvard’s finances shrink, so do its ability to pursue its mission and its power to prevent its position (and, critically, its brand, which is central to its real-life position) from being threatened. This is, of course, the negative way to look at Harvard - the positive way is what I and others have been saying: they want to offer the broadest, deepest spread of academic and other opportunities, with topnotch faculty and facilities and the most generous financial aid, and they want all the best students that they handpick to come. Departments never stop wanting more faculty and better labs/facilities; neither do students stop wanting more opportunities and needing more financial aid. If they don’t like what Harvard’s offering (and if Harvard is underinvesting and falling in rankings relative to its competitors) such that they think they’ll do better somewhere else, they won’t come, or they’ll leave, as described in the first article above. It’s to prevent this that Harvard solicits donations from alumni and others, some of who have children thinking of applying someday, and Harvard will admit a few of these as the cost of doing business (to put it bluntly), but not too many, or stretch very far in quality, since doing so would decrease the number of remaining slots (thus alienating other constituencies), impair the mission and damage the brand.
I don’t see Harvard unilaterally disarming. Maybe if all of their peers agreed to implement the same policy, but probably not even then, because it wouldn’t be that hard to cheat, and everyone wants an edge. Only explicit legal constraints, coupled with admissions audits, are likely to change things, in my view. How’s that for some “realpolitik”? 
Hmmm . . . Well, moving off Bismarck, I have sometimes felt that there is some similarity between Harvard’s drive to increase its endowment and Johnny Rocco’s thinking, in Key Largo.
From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040506/quotes
Frank McCloud: He knows what he wants. Don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Sure.
James Temple: What’s that?
Frank McCloud: Tell him, Rocco.
Johnny Rocco: Well, I want uh …
Frank McCloud: He wants more, don’t you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Yeah. That’s it. More. That’s right! I want more!
James Temple: Will you ever get enough?
Frank McCloud: Will you, Rocco?
Johnny Rocco: Well, I never have. No, I guess I won’t.
Society benefits from well managed philanthropic institutions, even if we can all carp around the margins.
Does the Metropolitan museum need MORE art? It doesn’t have room to display what it owns… and still has to store, insure, and protect the objects that sit in storage. Yet it also has a budget for acquisition. Try telling the Met NOT to buy more art.
Does the Red Cross need the 50 bucks your kids boy scout troupe is going to raise with its gift wrapping campaign (that costs zillions of dollars in parent hours). It gets a billion dollars a year in revenue from selling biologics (blood and by-products). No, it doesn’t need the 50 bucks. But they’ll happily take it.
I see this as the same as b*%^ about Harvard’s endowment. Those libraries cost money. Those archives and rare book rooms and glass flowers and labs cost money. Do I think I’d do a better job allocating Harvard’s money? of course. But that doesn’t mean that Harvard is wrong for having its own institutional priorities and building its endowment as it sees fit.
Sure, and a well-managed endowment ensures the future of the institution. I do understand that. If I had a spare $10 million and a talented high-school student with his/her sights set on Harvard, I would face the same issues that anyone in that situation faces–and I can’t say I wouldn’t make the gift to Harvard. And if I made the gift, I can’t say that it would not enable Harvard to do good. And yet, when I think about other possible recipients of a charitable gift of that size, I couldn’t really feel right about directing the gift to Harvard.
This is a quandary I won’t have to face, of course.
I still don’t believe eliminating development admissions would significantly harm Harvard’s endowment. Harvard hasn’t yet found the courage to change a system that is obviously imperfect, but the minute it does, you can see the NYT headline: “Harvard Throws Down the Gauntlet, Challenges Others to Follow.” And the next capital campaign suddenly has a theme.
As for the ever-popular “Harvard always knows what’s best for Harvard” argument, the history of Harvard admissions suggests that active oversight is needed and change is indeed possible. It wasn’t so long ago that they were assigning “levels of Jewishness” to students…
But let’s talk money @DeepBlue86. Lots of billionaires in the news these days. What if one of them offered Harvard five billion dollars to eliminate legacy and development admissions. Take it?
@QuantMech ftw…
I would note though, that you don’t just have to make out your hypothetical $10m check to “Harvard University” and drop it in the mail. You can tell them that you want to direct it to the oncology research labs at Harvard Medical School because you literally want to help cure cancer. Or to the Fogg Museum, for the conservation of ancient art. Or to financial aid for the poorest undergraduates. Or to any of thousands of incredibly worthy purposes, because Harvard offers those opportunities. And they will make it happen for you, and keep you fully informed about what your gift is accomplishing.
I don’t know if they have any kids applying to Harvard College, but the foundation of the Chan family of Hong Kong made a transformative gift of $350 million dollars to the Harvard School of Public Health in honor of the family patriarch (his son had studied there). This will do an unbelievable amount of good, ranging from support of research in epidemiology, infectious diseases and nutrition to helping shape health and environmental policy around the world. You can accomplish amazing things with a large donation to a place like Harvard.
I would not, @LadyMeowMeow - and here’s why: in September, the current Harvard capital campaign announced that it had raised more than $7 billion over the preceding three years, the largest sum ever raised in a higher-education capital campaign, and it has another year and a half to run (see here: http://harvardmagazine.com/2016/09/harvard-capital-campaign-7-billion). Over 133,000 households and donor entities have contributed, many, I would surmise, because they feel a relationship to Harvard and hope that members of their families might study there someday. I don’t know how much of that would fall away if all those people were told “thank you, but understand that your gift will have no bearing whatsoever on your family members’ admissions prospects”, but I wouldn’t want to find out. Making that the policy for all time would probably be a bad trade for Harvard. At some level, I might do it, but it would have to be multiples higher.