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

Parents Forum
441

I would never claim that all institutions are the same. Yale and University of New Haven do not deliver the same educational experience despite sharing a train station in downtown New Haven.

My point- which I’m obviously failing to deliver, is that colleges already look for the development cases/major donors. They are already looking for accomplished athletes and talented musicians etc. And that a kid who has grown up in the Scarsdale school system is likely to have stronger stats than the kid from a housing project on the South Side of Chicago- more books in the house, a college prep curriculum with challenging academics, etc.

So you don’t need to overlook the talented legacy kid. But you surely don’t need to put yet ANOTHER finger on the scale, given how tough it is for the disadvantaged kid to even get to a HS which has a calculus teacher, four years of a foreign language, and AP Physics.

It’s that extra finger on the scale- the legacy advantage- which I’m questioning. Dad graduated from Harvard- even if he’s a pastor earning in the middle quintile, the kid was already born on third base educationally.

I’m not outraged by legacy. I’m just wondering why it’s needed IF the colleges want to maintain their outreach to lower SES kids, etc. while still admitting the top kids from Groton and Exeter and Roxbury Latin (who are by any measures, top students regardless of their parents- but MORE than likely to have parents who graduated from college).

442

What I find really difficult to reconcile is the degree of difference in admission rates for the most highly academically talented kids depending on which bucket they are sorted into. 12 percent (asian american non ALDC)vs 95 percent (hispanic american LDC)? Knowing that data might change both groups application choices, and could lead to a very meaningful discussion on and off campus about current admission policy. Why did it take a lawsuit to get it?

443

No idea where some of you get your notions, lol. You think rich kids are all doing worthy enrichment things, contriuting to society, in between those squash sets, jetting off and spending money, while poor kids babysit? Yikes. Remember, the thread is about kids who do get into elites.

Get rid of legacy and in most of our lifetimes, there will still be income disparities at elites. It takes time to cycle influence from one generation to the next. But it happens.

I’m no apologist. Far from it. But I disagree with many of the absolute proclamations some make.

444

blossom, you are delivering your point perfectly well. It is just that some of the posters do not want to acknowledge it.

I am fine with Harvard having whatever admissions policy Harvard wants as long as it is legal and the college is upfront about it. In some regions of the country, part of Harvard’s cachet stems from ignorance about how admissions there actually works. So it is imagined that everyone, legacy or not, has an equal chance, and Harvard just picks the best of the best. This does not appear to be the case, exactly, to the best of my ability to judge, from the available data. There does seem to be a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of legacies, and it would not appear to be needed, except for the donations to Harvard aspect.

I have no grudge against Harvard. As high schoolers, people in my family applied to and were accepted by Yale and Princeton. They found Harvard’s representation of itself somewhat off-putting. No one in my family as far back as I know has applied to Harvard for undergraduate work.

445

Legacies are not the only contributing factor to income disparities at “elites”, so eliminating legacy admissions advantage will not solve all of the income disparity problems, but it’s certainly is a step in direction. It appears that legacy preferences are particularly influential in portion of class that is top 1%.

Waiting generations with hopes that wealth will cycle into future legacies decades later is problematic for many reasons, including not having a good SES distribution that will be reflected in future legacy classes.

Another less obvious concern with waiting decades without a change is the degree of legacy admission benefit appears to rapidly increase over time. As summarized in the table below, the legacy admit rate during the 1980s lawsuit was the same as during the recent lawsuit-- 34-35% in both classes. The Non-ALDC admit rate had a huge drop from 13% to 5% during this 25 year generational gap between samples, yet the legacy admit rate was unchanged. Back in the 1980s the legacy admit rate was 2-3x the non-legacy admit rate. In the class of 2014-19 lawsuit sample, the ratio had increased to legacy admit rate being ~7x larger than non-legacy. If the trend has continued, the legacy admit rate should be ~9x larger than the admit rate for non-legacies today.

Non-URM, Admit Rate at Harvard
Class of 1987-89: Legacy = 35%, Non-LA = 13%
Class of 1990-92: Legacy = 35%, Non-LA = 12%
22 year gap between samples
Class of 2014-19-: Legacy = 34.4%, Non-LADC = 5%

The study at http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/divergent.pdf reviews the legacy+athlete admit rate for the 18 classes from 2000 to 2017 and comes to the same conclusion. He describes this effect explicitly in the abstract, which is quoted below. I also listed the specific admit rates.

“Using data on Harvard applications over 18 years, we show that non-legacy,
non-athlete (NLNA) applications grew considerably and that LA applications remained flat. Yet, the share of LA admits remained stable, implying substantial increases in admissions advantages for legacies and athletes.”

Non-URM, Admit Rate at Harvard
Class of 2000-02: Legacy+Athlete = 44%, Non-LA = 10%
Class of 2003-05: Legacy+Athlete = 47%, Non-LA= 9%
Class of 2006-08: Legacy+Athlete = 44% , Non-LA = 8%
Class of 2009-11: Legacy+Athlete = 42% , Non-LA = 8%
Class of 2012-14: Legacy+Athlete = 42%, Non-LA = 6%
Class of 2015-17: Legacy+Athlete =43% , Non-LA = 5%

446

“As summarized in the table below, the legacy admit rate during the 1980s lawsuit was the same as during the recent lawsuit-- 34-35% in both classes. The Non-ALDC admit rate had a huge drop from 13% to 5% during this 25 year generational gap between samples, yet the legacy admit rate was unchanged. Back in the 1980s the legacy admit rate was 2-3x the non-legacy admit rate. In the class of 2014-19 lawsuit sample, the ratio had increased to legacy admit rate being ~7x larger than non-legacy. If the trend has continued, the legacy admit rate should be ~9x larger than the admit rate for non-legacies today.”

@Data10 - is it accurate to say that the drop in non-ALDC admit rates is because the increase in applications was mostly from non-ALDCs? I am guessing the 1%ers, legacies, etc applicant pool was already maxed out. OTOH, there is an enormous untapped supply of non-ALDCs.

I have a couple of thoughts, if that is true:

(1) if the elites think they need a certain raw number of legacy admits to keep the money flowing, and a certain number of athletes to win games, is it wrong if they keep that raw number of those admits stable, instead of proportionally decreasing them to accommodate the exploding number of non-ALDC applicants? If not, then the trend will absolutely continue with the increase in applications, but that is not because of the legacies.

(2) The admissions offices talk a lot more now about seeking out low SES, first gen, urms. (yay!). They are out on the road looking for them. They understand that they have lower stats because of a lack of access to test prep, etc. They know that a job is a great EC. They (rightly) want kids like the one @blossom described in her post a couple pages back. Those admissions numbers will probably/hopefully increase, but that doesn’t mean legacies will decrease.

(3) the average excellent upper or middle class white/orm kids have spent so much money curating their lives for the perfect application are the ones who get hurt, i.e. all that money/time didn’t get them to their goal and likely made the kids miserable in the process. I don’t think the “hurt” is that they weren’t admitted. Heck, there are more of them applying than there are total spots in all of the elites put together. Even without ALDCs most of them won’t get in, even though they are qualified. Legacies and non-transparent buckets have nothing to do with that harsh reality. It is just math. No one rejection can be blamed on any one acceptance.

People shouldn’t have to sacrifice their childhood in pursuit of a golden ticket that will never materialize. Oh, and public flagships should be more affordable so that normal people don’t have to rely on the false hope of a full ride to an out of state private. Imagine if the money people spent on club sports, intensive summer camps, college counselors, tutors and test prep went instead to public schools. And kids got some free time and sleep back. Or heck, what if the middle class just didn’t go into debt to fund these programs? That is a fight worth having - more than one over a fraction of a fraction of college spots.

Btw, I totally agree that we are all hurt by discrimination. I just don’t think legacy admissions is the biggest fish to fry on that front. It is a sardine and there are ginormous tunas out there to be [sustainably and ethically] caught.

447

Just a guess, but most people aren’t spending anywhere near the $77k COA at elites on private coaches and tutors, so I am not sure that will help much. Public university options are severely constrained in many states due to budget cuts and restrictions on class rank, etc, so that isn’t always an option. So I think your position is that the elites should remain elitist-a bi-modal distribution of very wealthy/legacy with a representation of low SES for diversity, and the middle class should go elsewhere. Already happening, to a great extent, but not necessarily a desired outcome.

448

Interesting piece in the WSJ to contrast the road Occidental has taken vs Trinity (see the excellent NYT piece linked upthread). The “Singer” headline is just bait. Relevant excerpts because of the paywall:

"Occidental, a small, private liberal-arts college in Los Angeles, has charted a different path. Two generations ago, it opted out of the chase for well-heeled students and put its money into scholarships for less well-off minorities.

Those decisions, however, have come at a cost. Occidental’s $434 million endowment is roughly $70 million smaller than what it might have been had the school prioritized prestige and wealth, according to Amos Himmelstein, the school’s vice president for planning and finance. While the school boasts beautiful beaux arts architecture and is building a new aquatic center, the infrastructure hasn’t kept up with improvements made by its peers, he says…

A turning point for the school came in the 1980s, as Los Angeles transformed into one of the nation’s most diverse cities. Occidental trustees, many local business owners themselves, felt there weren’t enough educated minorities to fill jobs. Occidental reworked its curriculum and enrollment practices to draw more black and Latino students, said Eric Newhall, a retired Occidental English professor who headed the school’s faculty council at the time…

Today, Occidental is 49% nonwhite and attracts fewer wealthy students than the vast majority of its peers. It also boasts one of the highest percentage of poor and working-class students receiving Pell Grants and has one of the highest rates of economic mobility of its peers, according to Harvard economist Raj Chetty and Occidental.

But financial stress has followed. In 1995 Occidental’s endowment ranked 120th in the nation. By last year it was 208th…

In September, Moody’s Investors Service revised the outlook on Occidental’s $84 million in debt outstanding to negative from stable, citing the school’s “commitment to affordability” and lagging fundraising.

Unlike other schools, it doesn’t heavily prioritize athletes or legacies in admissions…

In September, a study analyzing admission data at Harvard showed 43% of white students are either athletes, legacies or were children of donors or faculty. A similar count at Occidental was 18%, school spokesman Jim Tranquada said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-admissions-adviser-rick-singer-called-this-school-said-no-thanks-11573036202?mod=hp_lead_pos7

449

I am pretty tired of you misstating my position.

450

@blossom

I really appreciated what you had to say about social capital that lower SES kids get when living in proximity, attending the same public schools as higher SES kids. Very insightful and true.

In general, I think legacy admits at elite schools means affluent parents, loyalty and higher yield rate. It doesn’t mean that kids from Exeter, Groton and Andover don’t have well-to-do parents it’s just, perhaps, legacies are probably a better bet for a continued pool of affluent alumni with established loyalty to the school that provide donations and a robust alumni network with a higher willingness to help grads find jobs. The “tribe” and all that. I’m sure the elites are always going to admit affluent kids from prep schools whose parent’s, perhaps, went to less elite schools or “hidden ivies”, and try to establish new dynasties to recruit legacies from. However, given the choice between two full-pay, affluent applicants with almost identical stats, why not give weight to legacies? Chances are their parents will be more likely to remain donors. Perhaps a slightly less qualified legacy who is the scion of a New England patrician family may be a more sure fire bet in terms of long term loyalty and alumni giving/networking that a more qualified affluent kid whose parents went to Middlebury and Oberlin?

It’s sort of like how in a company, referrals make better hires (better interview results, higher offer ratio, better culture fit, better performance, better retention). In the job market hiring the kids of current employees is nepotism, but it seems in elite colleges giving an advantage to legacies may help in maintaining the social capital of it’s student body and it’s alumni.

I’m not suggesting this is right - I’m just trying to see why it may make sense to some schools.

451

Not that it is relevant, but your guess would be wrong. Just taking tournament club sports - families regularly spend $20k+ per year on them per kid, on the representation that it is necessary for a kid to get into an elite college. It is a huge business whose marketing directly targets parents’ fears. There are hundreds of thousands of middle class families taking this path. Yet so few of them play sports at an elite college.

Do 10 years of that, compared to putting that money into a 529, families are spending way more than the COA. I am pretty sure you are aware of this - people comment on it all the time on CC and you have been posting here a long while.

452

Obviously, apps can be coded. Legacy, race/ethnicity, gender, major, region, etc. What you want to figure out is how that affects actual decisions. Not raw numbers or percentages in the class. Because this is still about individuals, first. After that, about the groups they fall into. Eg, legacy.

Imo, a comprehensive look would go further than, “Here’s how it ends up.” What causes disparities? As simple as they “prefer” legacies or full pays? I think not.

Many threads argue for transparency. First, look at the info about expectations that is there. Try to hold your assumptions in check. Cycling back to class composition isn’t a wider view.

Expensive club sports? Not a tip. Not unless you’re an athletic recruit. Lots of books at home, parents guiding you? Not a tip if they make the wrong assumptions.

Carry on.

453

I think this is what almost everyone on this thread is saying too. If legacy kids are already accomplished, why is an extra bump needed? They’ll still do very well competing with the rest of the pool.

Why on earth would an interviewer do this when the legacy info is in the app?

454

Point was about the directions to an interviewer. Was she asked to root out rich kids? (I suspect not.)

455

I think many of us assumed legacy was the tip to which you refer, @Theoden. A bit of a help among otherwise equal candidates. But the Harvard litigation shows that is not the case, with a legacy admission rate of 7x the regular rate and otherwise less qualified applicants accepted due to their legacy status.
Cate I apologize if I misstated your position,but 60% of Americans have a household income between $25-125k (the second, third, and fourth quintiles), so I am reasonably sure they aren’t spending 20k per year on sports. The families you refer to are very likely top quintile (tho not top 1%).

456

People like to talk about 89% chance for recruited athletes vs 5% for regular applicants. But what they often don’t realize is that the chance of becoming an RA is even lower than 5%. Harvard’s women golf team had three recruits last year but had 250 candidates. Sure, the three RAs enjoyed a 89% admission rate but that was already after a 1.2% admission round.

For those 250 families that spent $100k+ over the years—and most of them are not 1%ers— taking their kids to those grueling tournaments on weekends and summers, I don’t think they had an easier time than those having their kids do test preps or work at McDonald’s.

457

I recruit for a living, and there are labor economists who are starting to develop analyses which show that referrals do not necessarily make “better” employees and in some cases, just perpetuate the hiring strategies and policies which make it difficult for a company to achieve its diversity goals. Companies love internal referrals because it’s easy and cheap, but there isn’t a lot of evidence that it yields “better” hires. If historically you’ve hired white guys with finance degrees from Villanova, creating lucrative incentives for employees to refer their friends, freshman roommate, and lacrosse buddy is a great way to hire MORE white guys with finance degrees from Villanova. Then three years later the CEO wants to know why the “about to get promoted to manager” cohort has no Latina women or African American men.

Sigh. Circular. Internal referrals are a better “cultural fit” when what you want to do is to preserve exactly what you’ve historically had.

Back to your discussion, but just wanted to correct the record- studying “internal referrals” in the corporate world by no means is a slam dunk in terms of quality of hires- it’s just getting more of the same at much lower cost. Why get on a plane to interview at UT Austin (one of the top finance/accounting programs in the country) so you can hire some fantastic and diverse young grads when your own employees will serve up same old/same old at almost no cost?

458

“It is just math. No one rejection can be blamed on any one acceptance.”

What do you mean by that? One acceptance to a legacy means 19 rejections to a whole lot of non-legacies.

“Not raw numbers or percentages in the class.”

You keep say it’s not about numbers, if all these numbers were presented at a trial as evidence and Harvard was ok with that or if they objected, the judge overruled and said it was ok, then it’s evidence based on facts that nobody could challenge in court. That should be good enough for everybody I think.

“parents guiding you”

Right and you are going to have a much stronger app if the parent guiding you is a legacy because they know what the college is looking for or not looking for. They’ll know how to write the why us essay, because guess what - they did it themselves successfully. It doesn’t mean they’re in of course, but legacies lose out to other legacies, not non-legacies. There are two parallel admission tracks at places like Harvard.

What’s great about Harvard students and alums fighting against legacy is that it tries to put the needs of a more fair society over their own self-interest. I don’t think Harvard is going to change their policies on legacies but people trying to remove a privilege that would help their kids shows how good social change can happen.

459

In our school district, the land of the great unhooked high-performers, the private college counselors have been dissuading pretty much every unhooked, high performing kid from applying to H and its ilk for a quite a while now (or apply but don’t have expectations, they’re told). They may not have had access to the data, but were aware of the fact that legacy , and other hooks were bigger than most people realized. And every time a a kid gets into H, like every 3 years or so, the kid is in one of the "hooked " categories. And , yes, there were plenty of other applicants, as shown in Naviance.

If these universities want to give such a large tip to legacies and athletes, they should just come out and say so. We heard it through the grapevine of the people who used private counselors. Outside of the well-heeled suburbs, these facts may not be readily available. The actual chance for an unhooked , very high performing kid is really well below the advertised 5% or whatever. I don’t think many students and their parents realize that.

460

As a Canadian whose kids do/will attend Canadian universities, I have no dog in this fight. I admit I harboured dreams of DS19 attending MIT or Harvard but following CC quickly abused me of that notion. Prior to following CC I certainly had the same opinion of Harvard that QuantMech outlined. It’s been an eye opener to me and knowing what I know now I wouldn’t have wanted DS19 to apply (but I still dream that he could have attended MIT lol). Philosophically I do have an issue with legacy, athletic, children of faculty, development admits etc. but that’s mostly a non-issue here. That being said however we also don’t have any schools with the cachet of HYPSM which is why I was dreaming of them for DS19 and I admit to researching to see how feasible it would be for him to attend one for grad school though. An opinion piece I read recently about the undergraduate experience at Canadian schools helped to crystalize my attraction to American elite schools and it outlined for me exactly the types of things I was looking for when DS19 started his school search. These include:

  • a low student/faculty ratio
  • high achieving and intellectually engaged students
  • collaborative assignments
  • access to undergraduate research (working directly with a faculty member)
  • writing-intensive courses
  • signature first-year experiences
  • experiential learning (e.g. internships, co-op, field experience, practicums)
  • international field study and global learning
  • a capstone experience (senior project or thesis, portfolio, etc.)

While we have schools that meet some of these criteria, we have no schools that meets all of them. That’s what attracts me to HYPSM type schools. It has nothing to do with hobnobbing with the rich and influential. For me what makes a school prestigious is the level of it’s academic rigour. For that to happen, you can’t have a large proportion of the school body accepted on the basis of non-academic criteria. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be some diversity, but it needs to be a minority consideration, not the majority.