So, we mostly knew this- except that I had always figured that with the exception of athletes the students who got in were otherwise qualified. That is, their admissions bump was what made the difference between similarly qualified applicants. Apparently not: according to this study:
3/4 of those who got an Athlete/Legacy/Donor/Child bump were not otherwise competitive academically. That truly surprised me (ok, not the athletes, but the others).
If you donāt have access to academic journals, here is a non-firewall article about the findings:
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the Guardian ā 17 Nov 21
Thatās why the recruited athletes need the coachās supportā¦many wouldnāt get in otherwise, so no surprises here.
Iām not advocating for or against Harvardās practices, but I believe they have stated over the years that athletes graduate at the same rate as non-athletes and most have average to above average GPAs.
I donāt know anything about outcomes for the LDC groups, but would be nice to know.
Annoyingly, the one school where I do have legacy cred (UF), and where it could possibly help my offspring get in, does not consider it at all. Middle class screwed again.
This article seems based on the idea that admission is based on grades and test scores, and those seem to be the source of being āacademically competitiveā in the article. I would argue that grades and test scores meet a benchmark for consideration but arenāt a basis for admission for many very qualified Harvard students.
Second, it seems reasonable to assume that admission of wealthy kids supports the costs for the low-income kids on financial aid. Harvard has no loans and 20% pay nothing. The average parental contribution is $12k.
I agree with eliminating ALDC admissions but the university needs to come up with another way to pay for financial aid, which is crucial in addressing exactly what this article is trying to address. The article really misses the generosity of financial aid and the role ALDC admissions plays in paying for it.
I just skimmed this study which is very interesting about the advantages of being an athlete, legacy, donor or faculty child (ALDC). The Guardian article is highly misleading. Do not rely on its summary of the study.
You can certainly argue about the fairness or policy aspects of these different preferences which have a substantial impact on admissions outcomes. The study says eliminating ALDC preferences would have a drastic impact on white admit rates. It also notes that eliminating ALL preferences (including affirmative action) would make Harvard more white and Asian. So choose your preferred preferences. Harvard should be free to make its choices about its preferences
It certainly does not say that admits in these categories are unqualified or are not competitive students once admitted.
My nephew, a Yale graduate, said about his college experience that āIt can be hard to get an A, but itās much harder to get a Cā. The result is that graduating from Harvard or Yale requires little more than a pulse and the difficult part is getting in, not getting out.
And re Harvard specifically, for many topics it has a range of classes that vary in difficulty from some of the most difficult in the country at one extreme, to almost guaranteed A- at the other extreme. If someone wants to be extremely challenged at Harvard, they can load up on the hard classes. If someone has a goal of graduating with a very high GPA with minimal effort, they can do that by loading up on easy classes (except for the required courses for their major, which is usually minimal).
Most Harvard students are passionate about something, and choose hard classes in that topic and choose easy classes elsewhere. Athletes can take pretty much all easy classes if they want so they can boost their GPA.
I would support Harvard in their consideration of ALDC applicants.
A: Sports represent a huge economic opportunity. While Harvard athletes arenāt typically professional-caliber, there are plenty of opportunities for coaching, marketing, management, and sports medicine. Isnāt it in Harvardās interest to have graduates represented in the field?
L: The apple doesnāt fall far from the tree.
D: College is a business.
C: K-12 gives preferences for this, so why not Harvard?
Why canāt Harvard do what they want to do? It seems that opinions have been formed outside the confines of Harvard that have determined what Harvard should be. That is a societal problem, not Harvardās.
What is your source for this? My kidās experience was that Harvard was very difficult, with extensive and relatively dense readings. The high rate of honors is a result of the talent of the students admitted. This comment kind of demeans the hard work of students. And these days not everyone has a prep school background, making the academics even harder, at least at first.
My son is currently at Harvard plus we have heard the experience of other students that attended (we live in MA, so we know a good number). I think the average undergrad GPA is about 3.7 so thereās really very little danger of not graduating.
When did your son attend? These days, there is a great deal of online information about how difficult a class will be and how the professor distributes grades. So outside of the classes required for a major, if a student takes a class that requires a great deal of work or where the professor grades harshly, that is a choice made by the student.
Some of the students there are extraordinary. My son believes he has met a possible future Nobel Prize winner, based upon how this student (as a freshman) found an error in a Physics professorās cutting edge research, to the point that the professor issued a correction the next day. And that class (Physics 16) is widely known as being one of the most difficult undergraduate physics classes anywhere. Most of the students didnāt even fully understand the material being presented, let alone understanding it well enough to find an error.
Not disagreeing with anything you have said in this thread, but for the benefit of other readers who are less familiar, Physics 16 falls squarely into the camp of courses that are self-selected. Itās not required for anything; for the āaverageā student who needs an intro calc-based mechanics course, 15a (which is light years more advanced than AP Physics C) serves quite well.
Nor do I disagree with anything you have written either, but I have to concur with @hebegebe ; it is very rare to flunk out. That said, the āaverageā course will indeed require a ton of work, which may not result in an A. But a modicum of work, particularly outside STEM, will rarely result in a grade below the B-range.
The reason that these preferences should not be applied:
L, D, and C: Harvard receives federal money and is a tax-exempt institution, hence L should not have an admissions advantage
A: Harvard (and virtually every other college in the country) have the mission of education, not sports training. Sure there should be athletics for the students, just as there are musicals, dance troupes, choral ensembles. But the educational mission that makes them tax-exempt does not include training for major league sports. There are minor league teams for that in baseball, itās starting in basketball, and it will come soon in football (that is, if football continues in its current incarnation, what with the epidemic of CTE cases).
Thatās why Harvard (and all other schools that accept federal monies and claim to be tax exempt) should not be able to do what they want.
To clarify yes Harvard has a high graduation rate, 98 or 99%, and they like to keep it that way. They stick through some difficult times with students with various challenges. once in. I just wanted to counteract the idea that it is easy.
Lots of businesses receive federal money and contracts, but they still get to run their businesses for the most part as they like. Hospitals, IBM, Northrup Grumman all have federal contracts but still hire who they want to (as long as it is not for the āwrongā reason) and can give preferences to the children of their employees, to grads of certain colleges, to athletes if they want to. Catholic hospitals receive federal funds but get to exclude some procedures. My daughter was asked more questions in her job interview about her college sport than about civil engineering. They wanted to know about her leadership (she was a captain for 2 years), about her ability to juggle competing demands on her time, to know about her continuing to play for 4 years.
There are very few colleges in the US that donāt have sports, and very few like MIT and Cal Tech that donāt give much of a bump in admissions for athletes. I think there are more who donāt give a bump to legacies or at least donāt do it openly, especially public schools. We were told there was no preference for legacies at Maryland public universities, but I bet the governorās kids would still have an easier time with admissions than my kids would have had, even though we parents are both ājust alumsā.
College sports arenāt going anywhere, and there are going to be admission advantages. There are also still going to be As earned by some of those athletes who get lumped in with other athletes who arenāt top students but who still contribute to the balance of the school.
I think it would be boring to go to a school with all 4.0/1600/36 students, where all the athletes also had to have those stats (or worse, no athletes at all). It works for a small school like Cal Tech, but not so much at Stanford or Duke.
I would argue that Harvard, in particular, does not need to admit legacies, donors and athletes to sustain scholarships for students who need them. Their endowment is bigger than the GDP of many countries and significantly larger than that of any other ivy. Iām amazed that Oxford and Cambridge are approaching 70% state-school representation while the Ivies still struggle to hit 50% from public.
the Guardian ā 17 Nov 21
