Has Harvard been doing staff interviews for applicants (in addition to alumni interviews) in the past couple of years during COVID?
There’s data in an exhibit (Trial exhibit P619) from the SFFA lawsuit that suggests this specific type of interview is super-important for legacy Harvard applicants:
Of a six-year total of 7,384 Athletes, Legacy, Dean’s List, and Faculty applicants (ALDC) who applied over 6 six years, 43.6% got in. (Higher than the legacy average because of the inclusion of recruited athletes). (That would be over 1,200 staff interviews per year…)
1,478 of these 7,384 were interviewed by the Staff, of which 1,161 were admitted. That’s a 78.6% admit rate of those interviewed by the staff.
Among the 7,384 total, other exhibits specify that 1,343 of these are recruited Athletes of which 1,179 were admitted (87.8%). That suggests:
If only LDC candidates and not athletes are interviewed by the staff, then for the 4,563 remaining LDC applicants that were not interviewed, their admit rate was 19.3%.
If Athletes are interviewed by staff in the same proportion as all other ALDC candidates, then the remaining LDC candidates not interviewed by the staff have a 23% admit rate.
There’s a massive difference between 78.6% and ~20%. This also implies that more than half of the legacy admits had gotten a staff interview.
I thought these were just interviews for people who might have been physically visiting… but maybe they are important?
I reached out to admissions via email to request one for my legacy daughter, but was told to wait for an alumni interview assignment. No other info was given to me. So I am not sure if they were not doing any staff interviews at all or just not giving one for my daughter.
Not sure. When I was applying myself as a student decades ago, my mother requested a staff interview because we were visiting. I was not a legacy but received a staff interview on campus. So, I just figured they may just provide one if requested and if there is availability.
The numbers of applicants was so much lower. Even at the time of the lawsuit, didn’t about one third of early applicants get in? Up until 2017, 30% got in. There were only 4K that applied. And no covid. This has gotten so competitive, even for legacy students.
I don’t believe the large increase in total applications is relevant to this thread.
Over the last few years, the numbers of recruited athletes (with 85% acceptance rates) is flat and total legacy applicants (with 33% acceptance rates, higher in EA) also has not grown by much.
Meanwhile, the impact of staff interviews specifically for legacy applicants appears to have been exceedingly large.
The questions are, a) are these staff interviews still relevant and impactful for this subset of applicants, and, b) is getting one a function of the admissions personnel reaching out only to half the alumni applicants, or just a subset of applicants reaching out to staff and getting interviewed?
More than half of legacy applicants got a particular kinds of interview - from
Staff and not alumni. Why did that happen?
I don’t see a big mystery here. Legacy applicants have a small advantage in general. Some legacy applicants are coming to the table with even more of an advantage. If the alumnus is heavily involved in the alumni network, makes large donations, conducts applicant interviews, or knows important people at Harvard (none of which would be surprising for legacy applicants,) then it’s probably much more likely that they might be offered a staff interview over a random applicant.
When my late husband was fundraising from his class, there were people who donated millions, but their kid did not get in. Maybe they interview these applicants. Where there has been a large donation and they were trying to figure out if there was any way they could admit him. I wrote that as a joke, but maybe it isn’t. I think there would be more concern on candidates that are questionable. Or if there are a dozen legacies at Andover, all looking the same. I would think they may interview them. If your kid is a strong 2 across the categories and the only one coming your region, they may not feel the need to interview.
Also, on the Sunday of the holiday breakfast at the Harvard club in NYC, there used to interviews. Hundreds of students coming to get interviewed. Maybe, in the olden days, before covid, the staff would set up rooms there, and the kids would file through. Being NYC, there would be a lot of legacies. Just guessing.
Two other factors to consider as to why staff interviews may not be offered: 1. COVID (are staff interviews being conducted virtually or not at all because Harvard buildings are closed) 2. Not enough time for AO’s to do interviews because of the overwhelming volume of applications to sift through in a short period of time. Even in these scenarios, there may still be a handful of ALDC’s getting staff interviews. I don’t have any inside knowledge, but just hypothesizing.
Meaning no disrespect, that’s a surprising comment from a “Super Moderator.” At Harvard, Legacy applicants have an enormous advantage, and this thread was started to discuss a further, apparent enormous advantage within that sub-group. From the actual data available on 6 years of Harvard applicants, non-athlete legacy applicants in the top two deciles of the academic index were admitted at rates over 55% versus rates of 10-15% for non-ALDC applicants. That’s both four times the admit rate, and means a majority of them got in. That’s already corrected for academic index performance and recruited athletes, and generally the data support that this sizable legacy advantage holds over all the academic deciles.
I think that’s probably correct, that staff interviews are given to this subgroup of total alumni. But, to be clear about the data, especially relative to @Torontobase 's comments about “people who donated millions,” just over half of all legacy applicants had this kind of interview, while fewer than 3% of all graduates “donate millions.” Staff interviews were not limited to a small number of high-gifting alumni… it was the minority who did not get them.
The implications seem important to Harvard alumni whose children are applying: Be sure to get a staff interview, or do whatever qualifies for one. Or, put differently, if you give zero money and don’t help with alumni interviews, you probably should expect only a small advantage for your kid’s admissio.
What maybe hasn’t been ‘known’ is, perhaps, a) during the process, getting a staff interview implies it is ~80% likely you’ll get in, nearly 4x the admit rate for those candidates that do not get a staff interview, and b) if that’s true, the parent of a legacy applicant parent should try to figure out how these staff interviews are selected.
PS I have no issues with advantaging highly-qualified applicants whose parents went to Harvard over similarly highly-qualified applicants whose parents went to Princeton or Stanford. I’m just curious about these staff interviews.
The legacy advantage is not what it used to be. It appears, for the subgroup you mention, that there is indeed a large boost. You asked why, and I said I don’t think there’s a mystery about why. If current trends are influential at Harvard at all, I expect legacy preference will become even less of a boost, excepting the subgroup of which you speak.
I’m a regular user with my own opinions, like everyone else. I’m not moderating this particular thread, I’m commenting on it. I wish I was a font of all knowledge, but moderating isn’t the same as fact checking and running statistical analyses. I’d have to get paid more to do that😂
Which means, if my husband was still alive, still participating in the class fundraising, donating his decent amount every year, not millions, my kid may have gotten a staff interview. I still hope she gets in.
Does it matter? No staff interview anyway, 3 days and counting. Her application is in, she had the alumni interview. She thinks it went well. Nothing more to be done. We wait until Thursday evening and hope for the best. Assuming anything doesn’t matter. Doesn’t change anything.
Just a hunch, but I would bet schools like Andover/Exeter and the like will have counselors who are in the know and would be able to advise students and parents how to pull the staff interview lever. The further away you are, the less likely you are to know if there even is a lever to pull. It’s not like there is some legacy newsletter telling everyone how things work.
I do think this “matters,” certainly not in driving any results on Thursday (obviously, any posting on CC will have zero impact for that outcome), but in understanding and maybe changing behavior in the future (for future applicants, or a younger sibling applying in the future, or one applying RD this year even?).
Regarding “does it matter,” the data suggest that more than half of all LDC admits used to get a staff interview, or, put differently, the probability of an admit associated with a legacy applicant is four times higher if that applicant had a staff interview. If these are allocated purely based on a “request,” then it would appear that such a “request” is an important thing to do. If these are allocated simply on the quality/nature/review of the particular applicants, then it doesn’t matter other than as an indication, once you get one, that your chances of being admitted just “went up”, and if you get to decision time without one, then you likely should moderate your expectations downwards from whatever “norm” you had expected.
A lot of “ifs” in that paragraph without mentioning the most important “if.”
If there are no staff interviews as the result of the lawsuit or COVID or whatever, speculation on what Harvard will do next cycle is pretty pointless.