@milee30 I have always thought that it was worthless to donate to my various colleges. The reason is, we could never give enough to make a huge impact. Honestly, unless you are donating at least 100K to your alma mater, there is no reason for the college to accept your son/daughter if you are a legacy. A legacy is a legacy. Many do not donate and they still get the boost.
Honestly, for benefactors I am shocked at how high the price is! I would have thought it was much lower.
How do you know a legacy is a legacy? Who has told you that - is it the same people who have been saying it’s not a disadvantage to be Asian or that the stats of admitted legacies are stronger than the other applicants? Because the facts coming out imply that person has - to put it as politely as possible - a case of Truth Deficit Syndrome; not sure I’d trust that source. How do you know the ones that never donate receive the same preference? Legacy boost doesn’t mean 100% are admitted; it would be very interesting to do some matching to see if there is correlation between donation frequency/levels and admission preference.
That is an interesting legal argument! Not sure it would win, but it certainly wouldn’t get kicked out of court. I’d love to see someone try to make it.
@milee30 @Happytimes2001 My understanding is that whether legacy preference might correspond to donation amounts would depend on the particular school. Some admissions offices do not access data from the donations office and only very large donors get a donor preference - the donor and legacy preferences are different categories.
I’m not sure the tax court will be terribly sympathetic to the defense of, “we don’t sell admissions preference! Um, unless someone offers a whole lot of money.”
These colleges are selling admissions and disguising the practice as a tax deductible donation to a legitimate nonprofit. These are sales, not donations, and it’s reasonable to question if a college that exists mainly to perpetuate benefits for private members who are associated with the college (alums) should even qualify as a nonprofit.
@milee30 I have no idea. Here’s what I’d guess. Legacy ( without giving large amounts) goes into one pile. Hey they know some people give as they get older and not many 20-35 kids will give. Also colleges know people are saving for retirement and paying for school so they might not have given but will have a higher propensity to give if they attended and their kid did too. Next, there are lists ( this has been written about) for those legacy and non legacy who have given or plan to give A LOT. And there is a Z list of people whose kids aren’t qualified but they don’t want to insult them so they let the kids in a year later. ( The Z list is very small and filled with household names or big money also).
Legacy means that the family has a connection and for Harvard legacy there is lower risk in accepting these folks as the parent is connected to Harvard in some way so it’s likely the kid will graduate also.
If anyone has written proof that not all legacies ( below 100K) are not equal, I’d love to hear about it. Might make us write a check. LOL. Personally, there are a lot of non profits that need our $ more than Harvard.
The New Yorker: At Trial, Harvard’s Asian Problem and a Preference for White Students from “Sparse Country”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/at-trial-harvards-asian-problem-and-a-preference-for-white-students-from-sparse-country
The gist of the New Yorker article: “Much of the evidence at trial may not create a good look for Harvard, but it also may not be enough to meet the operative legal definitions of discrimination.”
Nevertheless, the social, legal and political pressures are surely to impact the way Harvard has run its admissions business from legacy, development cases, to the way they review all future Asian-American applications. Regardless of the current legal outcome, we will see a bit of jump in the Asian-American student counts in the Class of 2023.
Is that necessarily a safe assumption? For marketing reasons, Harvard probably does not want its white enrollment to fall too much, as that will make the college less attractive to many prospective students, donors, and employers.
“For marketing reasons, Harvard probably does not want its white enrollment to fall too much, as that will make the college less attractive to many prospective students, donors, and employers.”
Is that necessarily a safe assumption?
Yes, it is. Of course H doesn’t want to see its white enrollment to “fall too much” and that’s where a “bit of jump” in the Asian-American enrollment will have to be accommodated.
"Here’s what I’d guess. Legacy ( without giving large amounts) goes into one pile. "
But why would you guess that? It sounds so naive given the evidence of how they carefully evaluate and treat every other facet of admissions. Based on the data coming out of the suit, that’s not even close to what I’d guess. The data shows that this college very carefully slices and dices their admissions pools based on how each admit might benefit the school - either in prestige or money. It even gives direct admissions in exchange for the largest donations. Why would you assume it doesn’t do a similar evaluation of the value, potential value and contributions of the remainder of its alumni? What, they’re all “equal” because they graduated from Harvard yet haven’t donated several million $? No, a better guess would be that they triage their alumni admissions exactly the same way they triage overall admissions - by slicing and dicing based on who gives or shines the most and who has the potential to give or shine the most. Wouldn’t be surprising if they had an alumni rating system which gives each alumni who has a child applying to the college a score similar to how they rate various attributes of admissions candidates - on a numeric scale with points given for larger donations, consistent donations, potential donations, fame, volunteer work, prestige, influence. That would spare the admissions office from having to do something unsavory and directly implicating like asking exactly how much an alum had donated or how prestigious they are, the admissions office likely just receives a simple number rating the alum contribution and potential so it knows if this alum is a valued “1” or further down the scale…
Well it looks like two of the “sparse” states are NH and VT. Heck, I’ve been thinking about moving anyway. Its too late for my 12th grader, but maybe for my youngest…
Not sure about Harvard specifically, but some well known colleges do check with their alumni associations on the degree of “involvement” by applicants’ parents.
I agree with this. Legacy provides a college with a few notable benefits, but a key one is financial.
A large percentage of legacy admits will be full pay, giving a nice high income skew among attending students. Giving a tip to legacy frees the admissions staff from the unsavory process of having to consider family income and allows the college to continue marketing itself as “need blind” while helping make sure the overall finances end up where they need to.
@milee30 @Happytimes2001 In one of the many docs I’ve read about this over the last month or so, one from H discussed legacy (they call it “lineage”) connections and both simple legacy (parent attended Harvard/Radcliffe) or those who belong to an alumni group, can’t recall the name, suggested higher involvement - volunteering, interviewing, organizing reunions etc. In the instructions to app readers there was a distinction to be made.
Those donating large sums are a different group altogether.
This is not the doc, but it is the most current doc that has instructions to admissions readers - just FYI.
Reading Procedures, Class of 2018: https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000166-9690-d166-a77e-9f9c92f10001
Having parents who graduated from Harvard isn’t enough. That would result in every seat being taken up by legacies. The rule is that legacies always get waitlisted then rejected if the parents aren’t big donors or volunteers. By big donors I mean several million so don’t bother cutting checks for anything less if your aim is to get your children admitted.
Milee30, you have a valid point about the tax implications of buying seats with “donations”. Blum would probably love to use that idea in this case.
No, there won’t be. The so-called “secrets” do not reveal that anything “racist,” let alone “illegal” is going on. And by the way, what’s been “disclosed” is hardly all of it. I would know.
@epiphany I hope you are right. At least that race won’t be completely taken out of the equation.
The biggest issue I see from what I have read so far deals with the personality ratings. If those ratings are showing Asian Americans as having the lowest rated personality ratings, year after year, that part of the evaluation could at a minimum be looked at as being biased and struck down in its current form. What I have not seen so far is any other methods used to boost students with lower stats. What other methods are being used currently in singling out race and boost URM applicants (besides what we see in the data)?
The Lop List.
As a former auditor who has worked on forensic accounting for court cases, my reading of the documents suggests that the entire admissions process is carefully crafted to allow one single person - WRF - to freely favor, discriminate, shape each class privately with no trace while still providing appropriate legal cover.
The entire complex admissions system - the ratings, the readers, the colored folders, the committee - works in a very PC way to do one important task - whittle down the unmanageable 35,000 annual applications to a small enough pool that one person can do the admissions dirty work in private. Once the general admissions system does all the grunt work of eliminating the unqualified, identifying the well connected and wealthy, identifying diamonds in the rough, etc., they are left with a list of the “real” candidates. Likely the number varies by year, but it’s probably a few thousand more candidates than H has spaces to admit. This list goes to Fitzsimmons who lops the list to shape the final class - all of which is done in private with no records or notes. Smart move from a legal standpoint because it’s untraceable and you only have to rely on one single person keeping his mouth shut about any impropriety.
Since the structure is so obviously designed to keep the secrets secret and unlike what we see on TV it’s unlikely WRF will break down on the stand and confess to anything interesting, we can then look at the end results to see if the patterns suggest anything. And they do.
The fact that Asian and URM admits as a % of the class have been so consistent (don’t have the #s in front of me, but they vary only by a few % points each year) over multiple years strongly suggests those %s are not random. They suggest targets and caps, which WRF is using as guidelines in his private, undocumented lopping. The lop list and the consistent admit %s are the smoking gun - it’s what is happening behind closed doors.