"Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard"

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
21

Why would a school want an athlete over some other applicant when the academic stats are similar or even identical? Maybe history has shown them that athletes make good students.

I often read on CC of parents having to wake up students to go to school, remind them to hand in homework, to attend classes. Never once did I have to wake my daughter up to go to school. I had to keep her home when she was sick because she couldn’t play or practice if she hadn’t been in school and she ALWAYS went to class. She usually had projects completed early because she might have a game on the day the project was due.

Good habits carried over to college. She never missed class, she didn’t go out drinking (thank you Coach and NCAA rules), she did a lot of volunteer work with her team, participated in other clubs. She was the kind of student colleges look for.

22

@twoinanddone
As a parent of a swimmer who gets up at 4:00 am every morning to go to swim practice, and goes to bed at 8 pm so that he could get an 8-hr sleep, I couldn’t agree with you more that student athletes are good students to have.
The thing is, same characteristics: perseverance, focus, good time-management, strong work ethic,…, have been exhibited by students who are musicians, debaters, dancers, painters, writers…
It just happens that America (college) culture values sports more than many other equally important/valuable traits/talents.

23

Not what I said, droppedit.

Nor does it have to be a unique Why Us. I know of no adcom who says it must be. But CC does. See the risks in going on what a non college source insists on? Ime, most kids do specify a major or two. The right lors do matter.

Lol. It’s not mission statement I don’t tell kids what they should find themselves. After all, they think they qualify for a top. But consider the number of Duke wannabes right now who haven’t found even this https://admissions.duke.edu/application/overview

Or https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/10/duke-university-admissions-tips-christoph-guttentag-2018

Some schools are harder to read. But what about the kids who don’t even find the MIT blogs? ?? But they’re “desperate” to get in. .

24

There is no shortage of available good students in the Harvard applicant pool, and as an empirical matter the athletes at Harvard are not academically strong as a group (by the standards of Harvard). There are many reasons to grant athletic preferences at the elites, mostly having to do with maintaining culture and encouraging alumni engagement, but academic quality or being good students is not one of those reasons.

It should be noted, though, that reasonably smart athletes, of the type that you find at the elites, often go on to very successful careers in business. Wall Street, in particular, values former athletes for their often good interpersonal skills, willingness to “power through,” work ethic, etc. They often thrive in institutional sales and private wealth management roles (less so in trading these days as it has gotten so quant-based).

Academics aren’t everything. Harvard and all the elites understand this. I actually don’t get mad about athletic preferences. It takes all types. I just think we should be honest about the extraordinary preferences that are being granted to academically less than extraordinary athletes and legacies. The subject report in this thread is another step into the sunshine in that regard.

25

I think if you read the entire report, it’s very obvious that Harvard has implemented an admission process that is skewed heavily towards excluding certain groups and rewarding ALDC in a disproportionate number. I will share some of the “nuggets” with you this weekend when i have more time.

When you peal back the curtain, it’s very eye opening to what’s really going on and you get an insight on how admissions to the nations and worlds top schools really operate.

26

Or perhaps, at smaller schools (particularly LACs), the sports teams need a large enough pool of potential walk-ons to fill their teams?

27

Wow, snooze thread #6003 or so. How many times can the same things be rehashed?

28

Is it admissions that’s skewed? Or the sort of info coming out that’s skewed?

29

Skimming through the paper, there are some interesting nuggets of new information, such as rating (some) of the Dean’s Special Interest list applicants based on future donation prospects; but the the overwhelming majority of the content was already provided in other public documents and isn’t news to persons who read the trial documents. It is good to see some of the lawsuit content in a peer reviewed journal format, and I hope other researchers will also publish information using the public content.

One of the key points of the paper is it’s not just a matter of just favoring athletes and other ALDC over non-ALDC “when the academic stats are similar or even identical.” Instead recruited athletes are regularly admitted with academic and other stats for which admission would be near impossible if unhooked.

The paper states that the author’s logit regression model found that being a recruited athlete increased odds of admission by 5000x, The actual rate of admission for weaker academic stat applicants was similar to this almost impossibly large increase in chance of admission. For example, table 2 of the paper shows non-ALDC applicants with a weak 4 academic rating had a 0.02% admit rate while recruited athletes with the same weak academic rating had a 79.52% admit rate – approximately 4000x higher. The author writes:

While Harvard athletes do have a very high graduation rate, the primary reason for this massive boost in chance of admission is not " history has shown them that athletes make good students." Instead history has shown some negative academic issues with a significant minority of Harvard recruited athlete admits, much more so than the overall student population.

30

Another working paper from the same authors:

The authors conjecture that “increases over time in the admissions advantages [legacy and athlete] applicants receive result in relatively lower quality LA admits.”

Figure 1 on page 25 is remarkable, showing the divergence in numbers of applicants by legacy/athlete status.

http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/divergent.pdf

31

I’m not droppedit either, @lookingforward (Is this is like writing a “Why Us” and accidentally leaving in the previous college name as one copy/pastes?)

I certainly agree that kids need to research the schools they are thinking of applying to, to see if they are a good fit for it but also if it is a good fit for them. The more info the better and direct form the source is always best.

I’ll leave the nitpicking about my use of “unique” and “mission statement” to you.

32

That comment was directed to that poster. The rest to you, your comments. @OHMomof2

Yes, they need to research if a college meets their wants. But to get in, top colleges expect the applicant to know them. That’s more than rep in some media ranking. Or some generic bit about what you want to do in life, post grad. Or just naming some profs or classes.

This competition for a slot is ridiculous. I took you at your word that you meant “unique Why Us,” when you wrote it that way.

How H numerically rates applicants (and/or the resulting balances) doesn’t tell anyone the content of apps, the ways adcoms frame their reactions, how kids win a slot or not. Or even whether there is actual “preference” applied.

Using sports, (in general,) if 74% of the NBA players are AA, does that telll you race is a “preference?”

I can’t name a firm number, but to me, it feels like the public info on the lawsuit reflects a minority of how H actually reviews. The rest of the story is missing. I understand why plaintiffs would go this way, not why H didn’t present a more balanced view of what goes into the process. (Hence, skewing the info that comes out.)

I used the example of the Why Us, because that can be a a showstopper, no matter the seeming stats and titles. Or race. Other elements, as well. There’s a full app to fill out and it forms a self presentation. Great, good, or meh.

Athletic recruiting is a whole 'nother story.

33

You have to admit, the fact that Harvard has created a separate coding system to rank future donation prospects is pretty revealing. We are not talking about a small group of potential admits on the special interest list either. It’s 10% of the entering class, fully 15% of the white admits.

I think the rest of the story is being filled in pretty nicely. It takes time, Harvard resists, but there is power in the numbers for those who understand how to interpret them.

34

@lookingforward, there is no reason to expect that certain subgroups (be it legacy, URM, others) are as a group better at your ephemeral “why us” application than other groups, so that statistical correlation shown in the report is more than sufficient to establish the preferences Harvard uses. It really isnt magic, after all.

35

The numbers only reflect what is revealed.

It’s futile to take this into deep debate. People have taken their sides Throughout the many long CC discussions of race, prefs, wealthy families, the lawsuit, and more, I can’t help but recall the first lessons of my own college research classes: to try to identify and strip away the prejudices or pre-formed notions one brings to an exploration. Here, that would be the conviction many have that admissions IS slanted. Biased against Asian Americans, unfair, crapshoot, etc.

Seriously, you can’t do this just with numbers, after the fact, groomed to make a point.

And none of that helps a great kid with her or his applications. When I suggest to bright, accomplished kids, that they dig a little deeper into what makes a match, from the college’s perspective, the ones who take on the challenge generally have a ‘light bulb’ moment. Those kids don’t say, “It’s too hard” or “No, this study shows otherwise.”

My Duke and MIT examples are because so many kids right now are naming Duke or MIT. And yet, they seem to have missed the info that IS available. Nothing about how Duke assigns ratings can replace that.

36

Based on the data that have come out - or at least been repackaged - in this latest Arcidiacono piece, I have actually changed my view on whether Asians are being discriminated against in the process.

I actually think that unhooked Asians now face an easier time getting in than unhooked whites. It’s obvious that Harvard has maintained soft quotas on many demographics, and the institutional priorities of development, athletics, and race floors and ceilings have had the effect of increasingly diminishing the odds of unhooked whites. The second Arcidiacono paper linked in post 34 is particularly enlightening.

As for SES preference, low-income whites and perhaps blacks appear to face the longest odds at the admissions stage to Harvard, although in general low SES blacks and Hispanics face the longest odds of getting to college at all.

37

@roycroftmom Agree, it’s not about groups being inherently better. The focus is on how the individual applicant does it.

But many realize that legacies have a better view of the college, to begin with. Not all, but it happens. I’d add, kids who’ve experienced the great mentoring programs out there (for low SES kids.) Legacies are not admitted just because they are legacies.

Sports advantages? Have at it! Bugs me to no end.

38

Here’s where that analogy fails. The NBA, first and foremost, wants the best basketball players on the planet. That’s the standard.

If Harvard was the NBA, Asians would make up the majority of the students based on academics (basketball prowess) but Harvard doesnt want a class of 2/3 Asians so they create additional, more subjective criteria for admissions to form the demographic makeup of the college.

It’s seems pretty obvious what they (and probably all the top private colleges) are doing with admissions.

They can’t have criteria like the NBA as their class makeup would not results in their desired “institutional needs”.

39

[quote=“lookingforward;c-22396431” Legacies are not admitted just because they are legacies.

[/quote]

Legacies are significantly more likely to be strong donors.

40

Frankly, the level of “strong donor” that has strong pull is a huge $$$$$ number. Just giving generously is no “it.” And in general, ime, mega donor kids get an inital vetting (not an admit) early. A development rep will need to tell the family if their kid is out of range. And they do. And adcoms will reject the unsuitable.

The idea all H legacy families are wealthy is also off. Someone can quote how many are, but not every legacy applicant is privileged.