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Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard (2020) [pdf]
- pc86 3y agoPrevious discussion in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21037400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21037400
- ttrn 3y agoI have HTTPS-everywhere and the HTTPS version of this page has an SSL certificate that expired 2 years ago. Maybe with a smaller legacy student fraction they could keep their SSL up to date!
- petesergeant 3y agoIt is indeed pretty weird that public.duke.edu has an expired cert
- endisneigh 3y agoThese discussions have never been about fairness, it’s about special interest groups getting what they want. Believe it or not, but American universities have never been about simply taking the highest scorers. They want their graduates to be among the elite in all areas, which inherently requires representation from all relevant backgrounds. If you want elite artists it doesn’t serve that interest necessarily to pick a mediocre artist with a perfect SAT vs award winning high school artist with mediocre grades.
- Timon3 3y ago> These discussions have never been about fairness, it’s about special interest groups getting what they want. Ascribing intentions to everyone who takes your opposite point isn't an honest way to discuss things. There are many, many people who care about fairness, not about special interest groups getting what they want.
- endisneigh 3y agoEmphasizing scores is not inherently more fair than a holistic approach. The process is inherently opinionated.
- Timon3 3y agoI fully agree! I am for a holistic approach because I want fairness.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoAll interest groups will argue that whay they want is "fair". There is no impartial group "outside" the system with an objective fair view, and this includes the supreme court. The discussions will never be about fairness, because there's no such thing.
- endisneigh 3y agoExactly. No score had a deterministic admissions process to begin with.
- Timon3 3y agoSo we can't look at the statistical distributions of students and the entire population to see whether individual groups have statistically significant advantages? Why not? Even if we can't get to 100% fairness, we can move away a bit from unfairness.
- lozenge 3y agoActually, Harvard was about taking the highest scorers until the growing number of Jewish students at Harvard would “ruin the college.”, according to its president. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universities_and_antisemitism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universities_and_antisemitis...
- endisneigh 3y agoThough I personally disagree with their opinion then private schools are free to do as they like. Wellesley college for example does not take men at all, half the population.
- crhulls 3y agoI’m glad affirmative action was shot down. I hope legacy goes away too. While legacy admissions might not be a judicial issue, what about legislation that says no federal funding will be provided to institutions who use special standards for legacy applicants? If you are a private institution and want these programs, that is your legal right (since it likely does not cross legal lines around protected classes), but the taxpayer shouldn’t subsidize it.
- bradleyjg 3y agoCongress is completely dysfunctional and can no longer pass transformative laws of any kind.
- crhulls 3y agoAgreed, but we still need to envision what good legislation would look like and it does occasionally happen.
- Uehreka 3y agoThis kind of idealism is nice, but the truth is that the American government isn’t a computer we can program with just and elegant code. It’s a vending machine we have to pound on and shake until it dispenses not the just outcome we asked for, but whatever imperfect scraps it will give us. Affirmative action may not have been an elegant way to counterbalance legacy admissions or compensate people who had been wronged, but it was the only thing that came out when we shook the vending machine, and now people have thrown it in the trash and are acting like something better is going to happen.
- metabagel 3y agoUnelected and unaccountable people who were appointed for the express purpose of entrenching established wealth and power threw it in the trash.
- bradleyjg 3y ago
- ren_engineer 3y agolegacy student preference is obviously an issue, but my question is why haven't any billionaires started their own universities to compete with the established Ivy league schools that are rejecting talent? Almost all of these elite private universities were started by random rich people and gained prestige over time. Modern rich people seem unambitious compared to people in the past. People forget that Harvard and Stanford are named after people, they weren't always these giant institutions
- opportune 3y agoFor starters, there are two schools like that already: MIT and Caltech. I think most people rich enough to pull this can afford to buy their kids into Harvard/Stanford so it would take someone with a real principled interest in this approach. Starting a research university (which you need to attract top professors) from scratch seems really challenging though because you need to build up your grants and either poach existing professors or hire junior ones. You could start a teaching or liberal arts university but a lot of students who want to go on to PHDs or take advanced classes would skip based on that.
- EA-3167 3y agoI guess for the same reason that few of them are building architectural wonders, museums, or really doing anything that isn't totally focused on themselves and their wealth. The closest you get is the "give away half of your wealth to foundations you control, as charity" move that's become very popular. Actually building something for the future, not because it will make you even richer, seems to have fallen out of favor.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoSociety used to get museums, universities, and great works of art out of the ultra wealthy. Besides SpaceX, not sure what other goods there have been from this social contract recently.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
- temporalparts 3y agoHarvard has over $50 Billion in its endowment. If it wanted to expand its exceptional educational access across America, it very well could. Harvard is primarily a brand for wealthy people, and they need the non-wealthy cohort to justify the legitimacy of their degree. Harvard does have world class institutions, but that’s primarily to reinforce the brand they’re selling to wealthy alumni and donors who wants their kids to enter the exclusive club.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoYeah most don't know they have far more wealth than the Vatican.
- speed_spread 3y agoThe Vatican's wealth is made of all the churches they own. Like McDonald's, its primarily a real estate business.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThis is a common misunderstanding. They don't own the land.
- jncfhnb 3y agoI feel like you have to pick a lane between saying it is a world class institution and “it’s just a brand”. A world class institution likely deserves to be a good brand
- raincom 3y agoHarvard ‘buys’ faculty, that’s how they have become a world class institution. They rarely tenure their assistant professors. Whenever some professor becomes a rock star in some a second tier school, or non-elite school, HYP/S just buys these faculty with fat salaries, chairs, generous lab funds. Definitely, this makes many prospective Ph.D students flock to HYP/S. All the talk about affirmative action is about undergrad/law school/medical school/business schools. Not so much about m.s/ph.d admissions. Because this exclusiveness is perpetuated; otherwise, Harvard ceases being Harvard. What happens if MBB recruit many UC Davis undergraduates; what if Louisiana state university law graduates become Supreme Court justices/interns at elite govt institutions. HYP/S, uber wealthy, and their elite servant class(media, admission committees, c-level execs) don’t want to lose their power by distributing power across many schools, states, geographical centers.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tehjoker 3y agoThe Ivies are about reproducing their own power and influence, not about "merit". Merit plays a role in that, but accepting rich kids with influential parents, even if the kid is a dumbass, still advances their goals by creating network effects with the parent. This is why they do bullshit like reject Chelsea Manning for a fellowship and accept Sean Spicer instead. They are laser focused on being a hub of establishment influence, not about being "right". This is why Brown just appointed Ashish Jha as their Dean of Public Health when he has demonstrably contributed to the deaths of many many people without resolving the pandemic. Why would you appoint a loser? Because he has an in with establishment power and did what they wanted.
- TigeriusKirk 3y agoYes. As much as the idea of legacy admissions offends my personal sensibilities, they do in fact provide a good deal of value to the institutions and even some to the other students. Part of the reason Harvard is appealing is that you can rub shoulders with the establishment. For that to work, the children of the establishment have to be admitted. I don't like it, but it does make sense and add value that many are looking for.
- MattRix 3y agoWhat’s the problem with Ashish Jha? I’ve never heard of him (I’m Canadian), but just searched his named and found almost entirely people praising him (ex. this article from a week ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/21/ashish-jha-covid-pandemic-preparedness/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/21/ashish-jh...)
- tehjoker 3y agoThat's kind of my point. This dude is a COVID minimizer and that's why he's been praised institutionally. He objectively failed at his job and helped move the US COVID response to the private market, so now the pandemic is invisible and few of the so-called "tools" are available to people.
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
- oh_sigh 3y ago[flagged]
- nonethewiser 3y agoOf course it is
- print_goto_ten 3y ago[flagged]
- commandlinefan 3y agoAt least this is HN and not reddit, and the commenters here do seem to recognize that these are actually two different things. (Not that I personally have any love for legacy admission practices myself).
- oh_sigh 3y agoThey are clearly two distinct things, the question is "why is this on the front page now?" I guess I'm just bored of partisans injecting their cause du jour into every possible context.
- nonethewiser 3y agoThank God the Supreme Court ruled against the systemic racism at Harvard and elsewhere at least.
- LordDragonfang 3y ago>Among white admits, over 43% are ALDC. Among admits who are African American, Asian American, and Hispanic, the share is less than 16% each. Yeah, not so much. They're just back to the old (or old boy) kind.
- DrBenCarson 3y agoThere is still racism, now just the usual kind.
- jay754 3y agoI am surprised the number isn't higher
- KingOfCoders 3y ago"[...] recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean’s interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs). Among white admits, over 43% are ALDC." Nearly half of white students get (got) a VIP lane into Harvard.
- mchanson 3y ago[flagged]
- oh_sigh 3y agoOhh, now what are the odds a black person you meet at Harvard are deserving of their place in the world? Anyway, it's not really a coin flip. Per this article 25% of legacies would make it on their own. And why aren't athletes deserving of their place in the world? And odds are staff children have a goodish chance of getting in on their own.
- cpr 3y agoI resemble that remark! Hey, I was one of the "get some fresh middle class white nobodies from the San Diego area for diversity" legacies in 1972. ;-)
- TigeriusKirk 3y agoI would argue that athletes are deserving in this framing. They were outstanding enough in a particular way to earn a spot at the most prestigious school in the country.
- rory 3y agoI think that's fair so long as you exclude e.g. sailing "athletes."
- KingOfCoders 3y agoBecause you're good at football you get free entry into a university? I can understand a football school or something, but why do they need to get into Harvard? Just because I'm an excellent coder (I wish!) should not mean I can get into the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
- blululu 3y agoWhile this issue this is clearly beyond the scope of the 14th ammendment, I suspect most Americans would strongly support legislation to ban the use of family relations in university admission decisions where public funds are in play.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoYet that is never brought to the courts. Funny how that works out in the end.
- some_random 3y agoI know everyone has been conflating judicial review with legislation but come on. There's no law against it, go call your congressperson.
- flyingfences 3y agoIt's never brought to the courts because there's no law about it. Complain to Congress; it's their job.
- scarmig 3y agoBack in the 90s, there was a push to pass legislation banning or limiting legacy admissions, coming from a staffer in Ted Kennedy's office IIRC. Lobbyists from Harvard went nuclear and scared Democrats into opposing it. I barely even need to point out that Republicans didn't need to be scared into opposing legacy admissions, as they eagerly supported them, for people who might be taken in by their meritocratic facade from the decision yesterday. This is all documented in The Price of Admission (https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Outside/dp/1400097975 https://www.amazon.com/Price-Admission-Americas-Colleges-Out...).
- honkycat 3y agoNow do marijuana legalization!
- blululu 3y ago
- blindriver 3y agoFor institutions that try to paint themselves as the epitome of equity, the fact they maintain legacy is a glaring point that shows they really don't care about equity, they care about money and donations.
- Ialdaboth 3y agoRuling classes are always very concerned about appearing to be "moral", because a large part of what legitimize their domination overs us peons depends on it.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoTo me, a more interesting question is how the students do after four years. Are the legacy students clustered toward the bottom 20% of the class? Are they evenly distributed in a way that suggests that legacy status didn't matter? Or did they do better, at least on average? The admissions formula is so non-scientific that I don't think you can measure whether they would have gotten in or not.
- smashface 3y agoWhile that's an interesting question, legacy students likely also have access to better resources outside of the classroom and office hours.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoReally? Pretty much every school I've ever seen has a special office of tutors that takes care of the various affirmative action admits. And also athletes. Definitely athletes. I don't think I've ever seen any such office for legacy students. Ever. Or even heard about some covert version. Can you explain a scenario where this might be the case? The only one I can imagine is assuming that legacy students are rich and so they can just toss around more money on private tutors. Perhaps. But then the right statement is to say that rich students have better access.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoThat's the point... They're accepted because their family resources make them more likely to be successful which is what Harvard is trying to select for.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoI've long believed that universities' non-profit status should depend on admissions not considering legacy or donor status. If Harvard wants to preference legacy students, that's their right. But they (and their endowment) shouldn't get a tax break for it.
- Ialdaboth 3y agoSome people are more equal than others.
- camel_Snake 3y agoI couldn't agree any harder.
- lr4444lr 3y agoThis always barks up the wrong tree: why, as Peter Thiel asked, haven't colleges with decades or centuries long track records of successful graduates been interested in expanding their student body 2,3 or even 10x over a phase in period to scale up the gifts its institution brings to the world? For most people, outside of technical training, scarcity of "high quality" education is either artificial, or education is more about signaling competitive success by mere admission to these "elite" institutions rather than anything actually learned.
- petesergeant 3y agoMany are at least somewhat space constricted. It’s not like there’s ready zoned growing room in Cambridge MA, Cambridge UK, or Oxford UK
- paxys 3y agoThe blocker for every major university expanding its enrollment is student housing. There's no space to build more dorms, and housing policies in all such cities actively blocks such efforts (look up Berkeley for a recent example of this). They all want to accept more students. There's simply no space to keep them.
- lr4444lr 3y agoYou'll have to pardon me if I find it highly dubious that given the option to attend with no guarantee of student housing for a secondary set of matriculants that thousands upon thousands more would not still _jump_ at the opportunity - even if they had to commute dozens of miles a day.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoPublic universities want to accept more students. Private ones don't, the exclusivity is the point.
- twic 3y agoSo, firstly, because that assumes that a successful university has some sort of secret sauce that makes it better at education than others, which it can apply to more students. They don't. Everyone knows how to run a university. Success is basically a coordination game, where you win by owning the point where the top 0.01% of students and top 0.01% of academics want to go. By definition, that doesn't scale. Secondly, they have. It's now quite common for UK universities to have spin-off campuses a long way from their original sites: https://www.lborolondon.ac.uk/ https://www.lborolondon.ac.uk/ https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/currentstudents/study-abroad/international-campuses/china-malaysia-campuses.aspx https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/currentstudents/study-abroad/in...
- jgalt212 3y ago75% of all students would be rejected if you took away one selling point. - Johnny got in b/c he was all-state lacrosse. Probably would not have got in if just all-county. - Sally got in because she was an underreprestent minority--probably would not have gotten in if she were Asian. - Jean-Luc got in b/c something thinks he's the next Jonathan Safran Foer. His math scores indicate he'd be a good candiate for Lehigh, though.
- zactato 3y agoI didn’t go to Harvard but lived in Cambridge and had a bunch of friends there. Everyone I met was pretty fucking smart, but I guess that could be selection bias.
- DrBenCarson 3y agoIf you're born into wealth, you learn pretty quickly how to cosplay smart. Doesn't hurt that a large segment of society correlates intelligence with wealth.
- Pulcinella 3y agoPrivate education is a failure. It should be a public good. Admissions processes shouldn't need to turn away applicants who otherwise meet some minimum requirement (e.g. completed highschool). If they are, its a sign that demand exceeds supply and more schools should be built and/or existing ones should be expanded.
- academia_hack 3y agoSomething of a hot take, but I'd contend the Legacy admissions are there to the benefit of the people who earned their place! As someone who got into an "elite" university despite not coming from an "elite" background - the Legacy admissions are the reason people like me got the opportunity to integrate with people who otherwise wouldn't have given me a second glance. Being in a study group with a prince, going to a club with an heiress, or sculling with a billionaires' kid is not an opportunity most parents can give their children outside of sending them to a place like Harvard. It's horrible that the world is so fixated on status, but you don't get to choose what game you play always - just how you play it. Ingratiating yourself with a Fortune 100 CEO's son can reap many orders of magnitude more benefit than being surrounded by randos who are better than him at calculus. The value prop of a place like Harvard isn't that they're particularly good at teaching, it's the idea that, as a sufficiently smart and lucky regular person, you might have a shot at getting into an otherwise exclusive circle. No guarantees, and may people can't crack it (or choose not to, because it feels so slimy) even when given the opportunity - but Legacies are part of Harvard's value proposition.
- opportune 3y agoI also went to an elite university from a non-elite background, and in technology, it has not benefitted me - few of the Uber rich people I met went into technology-proper, those that did are largely mediocre and not valuable connections, and as far as I know none are VCs either. I would have rather gone somewhere like MIT or Caltech where there are fewer legacy admissions/admissions from uber wealthy feeder schools, as I feel the value of my connections would have improved. I don’t think those schools are particularly suffering for reputation either
- uoaei 3y agoInteresting angle, but feels like post-hoc rationalization more than anything. Events where students can meet alumni seem far more productive, if slightly harder to organize. I'm sure Harvard can incentivize their alums well enough to attend, considering their sizeable endowment.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
- huitzitziltzin 3y agoDon’t miss that the effect on athletes is quite a bit larger than the effect on legacies! See page 4. Legacy admissions are indefensible, but athletic admissions are even less so. (Less than 0, I guess?) No one outside of Harvard cares how their fencing team does and (I presume) 99% of current Harvard students don’t either. If you want to find the group that is most unjustly benefitted by a dumb feature of the admissions process it’s in my view athletes.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoNot sure I understand this take. Maybe you're under the impression that Harvard is trying to maximize academic success? They're not. They're trying to maximize alumni power and career success. It's quite reasonable to assume that someone who is the best in the world at a sport will be able to succeed at other things they focus on.
- lallysingh 3y agoAren't the legacy students the real benefit of going to Harvard? AFAICT the social network you get from Harvard is the real benefit. It's not really the education there that makes the name stand out: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/harvard-university-2155/overall-rankings https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/harvard-university-2155... doesn't show any trends of it being particularly good at any subjects. Maybe CS theory, but that's not exactly a competitive area for universities.
- a2tech 3y agoYes. Which is why these places are never serious about removing legacy students. The networks are what you're buying into at these places--if you get anything more than an acceptable education that lets you be a non-embarrassment to the network and the school, thats just a happy coincidence.
- LanceH 3y agoWhat would Harvard look like without the contributions from the people who make these students legacies? Serious question. Seems like it's just part of the cost of accepting the money from donors. Everyone wants the brand of Harvard without donating a couple million. There is your avenue to compete for admission. It's their place, why do people feel entitled to make their own rules to get in? Seriously, just go somewhere else. Harvard is status without necessarily having substance. Clamoring to get in only lends to the status.
- sandstrom 3y agoInteresting! And if they only based admission on the actual skills [test scores] of the students, it would likely look more like Stuyvesant. - ~75% Asians - ~20 White - ~2% Hispanic - ~1% Black - ~2% Unknown/other https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School#Demographics_and_SHSAT_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School#Demogra...
- ajross 3y agoThe rhetorical pivot here is really stunning. Seemingly the same people who 24 hours ago held that Elite Universities are Drowning Themselves in a Toxic Woke Culture... ... are now, without irony or introspection, arguing that, no, Elite Universities are Cloistered Hives of In-Group Kleptocracy. Which is it?
- whatscooking 3y agoWhy not both?
- paxys 3y agoIt's sad that the entire discussion around college admission policies starts and ends at Harvard. Harvard (and the rest of the ivies in general) are a special case in the education system. It is private, has possibly the strongest brand in the world and a $50B+ war chest. It also graduates a few thousand students every year. It is a university by the rich and for the rich. Harvard is really not what we should be using as the barometer for education for the masses. The conversation should instead be focused on admissions and funding for the hundreds of public universities in the country. It's the responsibility of your state's university system to educate you, not Harvard. If you have a problem, knock on the doors of your state legislature instead. Why exactly does a university fully funded by taxpayer dollars have a system of legacy admissions?
- outcoldman 3y agoNot raised in US, but live in US now (with my European master education). Took me a while to read it "Harvard Legacy" and not "Hogwarts Legacy".
- charia 3y agoPeople complaining about the fairness about legacies and donor children miss the point that these people are half the reasons people care about these top private schools. If you want a meritocratic institution that is actually reasonably priced and provide great educations, then that's what a state school is for. Or like the few private institutions that are actually meritocratic (MIT, caltech) Elite schools are for the children of elites who will inherit some amount of that power (political, wealth, ect) and for a small cream of normal people who have the iq, eq and luck to be chosen. The goal is to let these people mix. That way in 20 years after graduation when a brilliant mathematician has discovers a powerful algorithm that he has an inkling that it could apply to the stock market, he can phone up a college roommate that had an extremely wealthy dad in finance. The rich heir roommate can join and fund the venture that might billions on the stock market. Or the fact that an official in the state department went to college with the then daughter of South Africa's president, chances are that daughter still is influential. They can talk and maybe broker some aspect of foreign policy. They are finishing schools for the elite. Whether we like it or not, society's next generation of elite includes the most capable children of the current elite. Evn if those children are less capable than the most capable of the general populace, they stand to inherit quite a bit and they will have an outsized impact on the country and world. Their parent's and ancestors influence is important in their acceptance process because it's important in real life. There is no real solution to this. There's a reason that despite America growing in pop insanely, foreign applications increasing exponentially, billions being donated to them and everyone going to college, these elite institutions have barely changed class sizes. The exclusivity and mixing of the different types of people is a feature of these places. If you somehow get these top institutions to be more meritocraric like MIT or Caltech or increase overall student body size like ASU all that will happen is that individuals with power, wealth and influence will simply slowly coordinate to send their kids to different schools and soon enough those schools will face this scrutiny again. Now I can understand that it is extremely unfair that when all our Supreme Court justices, significant numbers of national politicians, power brokers and many individuals with outsized influence come from a few institutions. If you are one of the many intelligent, hardworking and capable individuals who don't get in when others who are probably just as good as you might, it is extremely annoying. Their entire trajectory of life is changed because of luck that you didn't get. But sometime life is like that. College does not exist in a vacuum and just like most things in life, influence and wealth are powerful. Those with power tend to want their descendants to have some of that at least and they will do what they can to perpetute that. I want to say I'm not saying that this is perfect or even great. I'm just saying the way humans work and the way incentive structures are setup, this is how it is. To not mention this is to be ignorant. If you want to improve the status quo you need to acknowledge the reality of the situation and plan around this. I did not attend one of these institutions for the record.
- dudeinhawaii 3y agoDisappeared off the front page almost as fast as it arrived.
- pcurve 3y agoIf you aren't legacy and managed to get into these Ivy, definitely pat yourself on the back. You more than earned it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]