“These aren’t just elite institutions, they’re elitist institutions”

Those data from Data10 look pretty convincing to me.

I think anyone who has been on CC for more than 3 days understands that being at the top of one’s local high school is no indication that Harvard is right for the person. I am also happy to stipulate that for 90% of the applicants, the admissions of legacy students have no bearing whatever on their chances of admission. Overwhelmingly, they will not make it into the border zone where they would be admitted if they had the legacy boost.

As far as the statement that one cannot tell without looking at the applications themselves what special qualities the legacies have, so that they should definitely be admitted and the non-legacies left out–well, I think we are entitled to some skepticism about “evidence” that we cannot possibly access.

What would Harvard lose if it simply dropped the legacy preference? Here is my short list:

  1. Donations would fall off from alumni who are giving on a sub rosa quid pro quo basis, hoping/anticipating that their offspring will be treated well by Admissions.
  2. Perhaps the self-assured calmness and guaranteed futures of the legacies currently leavens the striving of the “arrivistes,” and the stress levels of the undergraduates would spiral entirely out of control without the legacies around.
  3. It would be harder for Porcellian club to figure out which people to recruit.
  4. Fewer yacht trips for the faculty, offered by grateful, wealthy undergrads.
  5. A few more students from Kansas might get in, despite having failed to be worldly enough to pick Harvard-College-educated parents.
  6. People might stop sniffing “Harvard University, but not Harvard College” about their colleagues and acquaintances.

You can maybe think of potential losses that I can’t.

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Harvard typically admits 900-1000 students during the early round, which is the majority of the matriculating class. During one of the Harvard OIR years, ~40% of legacies applied during the early round and ~60% of legacies applied during the regular round. So I’d expect a maximum of about 30% of SCEA admits to be legacies or athletes. The majority of early admits are non-ALDC, and that majority still has an extraordinarily high yield that is much higher than RD.

Intuitively this makes sense to me. Students can only apply to one HYPS SCEA school during the early round, and I’d expect most of these HYPS early applicants would apply to their first choice. Among all applicants, the vast majority apply RD. Some of those RD applicants were rejected by their first choice YPS… in the early round, and some did not apply early to any school for varied reasons. Lower SES kids often fall in to the later group.

Legacy admits are only an issue because of having not enough spots for everyone who wants to go. If legacy admits offend, there are a few options: grow the spots (impossible), reduce the applicants (The trend is the opposite), change the rules (goes against the elites’ best interests and not in our control), or make the school irrelevant by making better alternatives.

Short term, on individual level - go elsewhere. Oxford, CalTech, wherever. Reward that school with your talented kid. If the talent goes elsewhere, policies will change. Long term, invest in the pipeline so people don’t view the elites as the only ticket to success. Education is in the middle of an identity crisis anyway. So disrupt the status quo and speed that process along.

Complaining elite admissions aren’t fair, but still applying, changes nothing. Doubling down on the AP/EC insanity in the hopes of your kid beating out a legacy hurts your kid, not the legacy. Expecting all of the elites to hold hands, sing kumbaya, and together all get rid of legacies at the same time, like the NYT thinks is the solution- what incentive do they possibly have to do that right now?

Are you doing anything to help students in school districts who have fewer opportunities than your child has? If not, how is that any different than the wealthy alums not helping your kid? They are higher up the food chain, but it is still people protecting their kids’ opportunities, when others who are lower on the food chain don’t have access to those same opportunities.

Going after the legacies is just dumb, even if the NYT (bible for some) tells you so. The legacy kids are often very well prepared. Believe me when I say that Ivy grads invest in their kids education from birth. These kids are doing extracurriculars at 10 months old. I only realized this whenI had kids and I looked around and saw an entirely different world than the one I grew up in. Your kid is NOT going to compete with a kid who has been doing something since he/she was 3 or 4 years old. And if they are born with a gift, let’s say athletic/musical etc, will you know how to present it to colleges? Isn’t that what makes people so angry? The advantages start at birth and just keep accruing all the way up until acceptance day.
It’s in the Harvard stats that legacies are statistically more likely to get higher SATs, attend stronger public schools and have stronger ECs.
So are how are we going to do better? I think colleges try to reach out and consider advantages and disadvantages that students experience. They cannot level the playing field. Just won’t ever happen. That doesn’t mean they are elitist, it just means people have different life experiences.
Personally, I will not allow our kids to apply to the colleges we attended. They need to pave their own paths. That being said, some parents are nervous about their kids and will do ANYTHING to keep their kids in the game.

I would think that having some legacy families helps with building up a large endowment from alumni giving to help fund low-SES families COA as well as pay for new buildings, labs, programs and top flight faculty that help out ALL Harvard students, not just the wealthy students. I know at least one Harvard family that was asked for donations before their kid even matriculated freshman year.

Lastly, I really doubt that most accepted legacy applicants are academic light-weights (in fact Harvard rejects 2/3 of them). There’s something special about colleges, for example, Notre Dame (almost cult-like) with several generations of kids graduating from their college. I don’t see anything really evil about the process of considering legacy for some colleges, especially the private ones.

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Harvard’s expert did a simulation of how the incoming class would change if all ALDC + URM hooks were removed and replaced with an increased degree of preference for SES “disadvantaged” applicants. This isn’t the same as just removing ALDC. Removing URM favors ALDC, and increasing low SES preference hurts ALDC. The net effect is most likely hurting ALDC, so the actual decreases would be less than above for just removing ALDC. A summary is below, listed in order of largest decrease.

Removing legacy preference is likely to impact many legacy applicants, but little change for non-legacies unless borderline.

With no ALDC + URM hooks and stronger low SES preference…
Athletes decreases by 93% from 186 to 14
Double Legacies decreases by 74% from 78 to 20
Legacies decreases by 70% from 293 to 89
Special Interest List decreases by 69% from 209 to 64
Children of Faculty/Staff decreases by 28% from 50 to 36

Legacies applying without their legacy status would get acceptances in a range that is much higher than the overall population. No “data” needed.

They have higher stats which was cited in all the lawsuit docs. So legacy or double legacy they often are Harvard material (33%) and the rest are given a resounding no.

No one can tell what athletics role would change in terms of holistic admissions. Harvard and others need athletes to field their teams. It is self serving. Not to mention those athletes whose exploits add to their classroom. Good sportsmanship often translates into good leadership. Sometimes the stories are about perseverance and grit. And add in those Olympic athletes and you are talking about holistic points and not even athletics anymore. The athletes need to have the stats. This is not FSU.
I’m not a fan of legacy admits anywhere. But I’m not oblivious to kids being like their parents. And I tend to look at the whole picture. And that point to all the information being considered.

Docs from both sides of the lawsuit show the opposite. Harvard legacy applicants are indeed stronger applicants on average than non-ALDC… stronger in almost every category, often by a large margin. However, the reverse occurs for legacy admits. Specific numbers from the study at http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf are below. Non-ALDC admits have higher average ratings than LDC admits in every sub-rating category except athletics and potential for donations. Note that listed LDC category is mutually exclusive with athletes. LDCs who are also athletes are excluded. These aren’t bad ratings for either group. LDC admits get mostly high 1-2s in every listed category, just not as high averages as non-ALDC admits.

Portion Admitted non-URM Student with High 1-2 Ratings:
Academic – 91% Non-ALDC, 81% LDC
ECs – 75% Non-ALDC, 57% LDC
Personal – 81% Non-ALDC, 67% LDC
LOR #1: 76% Non-ALDC, 61% LDC
LOR #2: 74% Non-ALDC, 56% LDC
Counselor: 75% Non-ALDC, 62% LDC
Alumni Overall: 88% Non-ALDC, 76% LDC
Alumni Personal: 92% Non-ALDC, 83% LDC

I don’t think anyone is asking to fully level the playing field, just not give special additional advantages in admission to a group that as you say has had advantages since birth.

I’ve read a big chunk of this thread and have to say “Why the F**** do we care about this.” There are super small # of schools, enrolling a super small share of students that have a super low admittance rate.

It is possible to have a great life without attending one of these schools. Get over it and move on.

My only interest is that a leading academic institution such as Harvard ought to be completely honest about their admissions practices. Truth is the primary academic virtue. Personally, I think admissions falls a little short in that regard.

If that’s true why do they need the extra tip? If they are stronger thanks to the benefits of having Harvard parent(s), then they should be able to compete with applicants who do not, without extra help from H.

No?

I think a lot of people here think that Harvard admissions boil down to a set of numbers. Once you come up with the numbers the decision is made. Based on what I knew that is not quite true. When I read my DC Harvard admission file—and you can request and see it if you are an admit—I was impressed by how lengthy it was. The seven page file has just one summary page which is what the lawsuit was based on, and the other six pages were evaluations and emails among AOs regarding the application. I think the six pages outside of the summary provided 90% of insight and reason why an applicant was accepted. The file was then distributed among the 40 person full committee who would read and vote on a decision. Of course, for the purpose of the lawsuit all pages outside of that one data page had to be redacted, but you could be missing 90% of the reason for admission. It seems to be me entirely possible legacy applicants as a group may have a better package outside of that one page summary.

Another misconception is that Harvard’s and other elite college admissions is all about picking the brightest students, but in fact its all about advancing their own institutional priorities—perpetuating Harvard’s and other elites immense resources and influences, though they would never admit to that. Is that a coincidence that Trump’s son in law and Xi’ daughter were both admitted to H College despite their mediocre academics? Who wouldn’t want these powerful connections?

“If the talent goes elsewhere, policies will change.”

That’s not how policies change, you have to challenge the organization you think is being unfair. There was a fight against Jewish quotas at Harvard where their leader (Starr)was quote “If admitting all qualified Jews to Harvard meant a change in the traditional social composition of the student body, so be it. Starr refused to hear any hokum about ‘pure’ American stock as a way to limit Jewish admissions to Harvard.”

When a group of women sought to gain the entrance of women into Harvard, it was met with steady resistance.

“We were told not to disturb the present system of education which is the result of the experience and wisdom of the past”.

“even if the NYT (bible for some) tells you”

There are a ton of publications that criticize legacy advantage in admissions, I thought NYT summarized it well when it said perpetuating a class system. I’m not sure there many publications that argue for keeping it, but they’re probably a few.

“They have higher stats which was cited in all the lawsuit docs. So legacy or double legacy they often are Harvard material (33%) and the rest are given a resounding no.”

Legacies have higher stats than Asian applying to Harvard? That seems a little odd since Asians score higher than whites (who are main legacies) and any Asian applying to Harvard is going to be at 75% of their numbers, unless they play a sport.

Also they’re not given a resounding no, many of them are waitlisted, told to take a gap year and then join Harvard.

^ Boycotts are a form of challenging/changing policies. One of the classics.

Anyway, I am not hearing a lot of other viable alternatives for commonfolk to do anything else. How does the NYT propose we get to the point that the schools will change their legacy policies? More lawsuits?

Do you think boycotts would have been an effective way for jews, blacks, or women to challenge Harvard’s past admissions practices restricting them?

@roycroftmom - before attacking my proposal, what’s your ideas?

Plenty of suggestions have been made by prior posters, to whom I defer. I don’t think anyone can reasonably suggest that the way for excluded groups to initiate change at exclusive institutions is to boycott them.

In this example, boycott means not applying, if you’re so inflamed.

Post WW2 era is unique. All our potential competition was in ruins from the war. Consider the state of England, France, Germany, and Japan. Our upside was huge.

My advice to my kids: Don’t complain about people with supposed advantages–become one. Become that lawyer, doctor, CPA, or engineer. Anyone can do it and those who claim they don’t have the wherewithal aren’t being honest with themselves. Cost of college a concern? Well, for a California student you can go to a JC for next to nothing and after 2 years transfer to a UC that you couldn’t have gained entry to as a freshman. Stay reasonably close to home and attend for about 29k total for the 2 years tuition, even if you had to pay full price. In other words, the price of a Honda Accord. Campus jobs insanely easy to come by. $16 per hour for standing in a parking lot kiosk while doing homework. Sign me up.

I find that many students who complain about their situations have the latest iphone, unlimited data, subscribe to multiple streaming services, wear designer clothes, and eat in restaurants regularly. Students today expect a climbing wall, first class gym, and indoor basketball courts. At my college the rec room was a pool table, ping table, and a vending machine. Back then a hamburger at Friendly’s was considered a treat and weekends were spent walking around the mall. However, most importantly, none of us considered ourselves disadvantaged. Self pity just wasn’t in vogue in 1981.

Got it.

As far as I understand the lay of the land, there is a pending lawsuit regarding Asian admissions, that so far Harvard won. The stats indicate that low SES are under-represented and the top 1% is over-represented. People debate why. But it has something to do with legacies, rich people sports, and a lack of transparency in the holistic admissions process. There is a small admissions boost for urms, especially if they are low SES or first gen. The schools give out a lot of financial aid, but it goes to people who have less need than the lower quintiles. Am I missing anything?

Remind me again which protected class is being discriminated against here. It isn’t racial discrimination, unless the Harvard case gets overturned. It isn’t gender discrimination. Not seeing how invoking historical racism or sexism has anything to do with this.

Alternate strategies people have posed aren’t available to outsiders, for the most part. They require being an alum or having other influence. So… lawsuits? Picketing? Letters to the editor? Posting anonymously on a college board?

I am sticking with going elsewhere and improving the pipeline as the most disruptive options. Practicing what you preach and helping those with fewer resources than your child, even if it means more competition for him/her - also an option.