4 ms·

The original study does address whether ALDC applicants are "as good" as typical applicants - > Overall, our results show that only one-quarter of white ALDC a

by e1g 3y ago

The original study does address whether ALDC applicants are "as good" as typical applicants - > Overall, our results show that only one-quarter of white ALDC admits would have been admitted if they had been treated as a typical applicant. And on athletes - > Being a recruited athlete essentially guarantees admission even for the least-qualified applicants. An athlete who has an 86% probability of admission—the average rate among athletes—would have only a 0.1% chance of admission absent the athlete tip

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
But the article doesn't deal with whether recruited athletes as a category are diverse. Probably, they are diverse and these statistics mean something remarkably different from the knee-jerk narrative in the article and many comments here.
- kemayo 3y ago
  Article doesn't, but the study it's based on does. Recruited athletes are less-diverse than the general applicant pool: > For example, recruited athletes, legacies, and dean’s interest list applicants are all over 68% white, yet the share of non-ALDC applicants who are white is less than 41%. All other racial groups see higher representation among non-ALDC applicants and admits than in any of the corresponding ALDC applicant and admit categories. - https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w263... page 16 My anecdotal understanding is that "recruited athlete" often functions as a way for rich people to get their kids in. Get your kid on an expensive-and-niche sports team in high school -- lacrosse, water polo, etc -- and that puts them into a much-smaller pool of students that can be "recruited" by the college team.
  - thrill 3y ago
    "For example, recruited athletes, legacies, and dean’s interest list applicants are all over 68% white" 75% of the US population is white, so it sounds like that group is underrepresented in athletic admissions. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045222 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045222
    - jgwil2 3y ago
      The claim was made about the applicant pool, not the general population. The white population skews considerably older than other groups.
    - kemayo 3y ago
      You're looking at a misleading data point on two levels. First, note that the 75.5% figure in that table includes Hispanic/Latino people, which not all sources will -- importantly the study I was quoting doesn't include these under "white", so we can't compare those numbers. There's a different row in your table that excludes those to get 58.9% white. This alone gets us back to the ALDC group being disproportionately white. Second, it doesn't matter if 75% of the US population is white, but rather what percentage of the college-admission aged US population is white. (Not that people outside of the 17-23ish bracket don't apply to Harvard's undergraduate program, but I suspect that they do so in insignificant numbers.) Here's a source that breaks out US racial demographics by age: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_101.20.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_101.20.a... It says that in 2021 amongst 18-24 year olds, 52.8% were white. Thus the ALDC group is even more disproportionately white than the whole-population number would make you think.

by e1g 3y ago

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago

But the article doesn't deal with whether recruited athletes as a category are diverse. Probably, they are diverse and these statistics mean something remarkably different from the knee-jerk narrative in the article and many comments here.

kemayo 3y ago
Article doesn't, but the study it's based on does. Recruited athletes are less-diverse than the general applicant pool: > For example, recruited athletes, legacies, and dean’s interest list applicants are all over 68% white, yet the share of non-ALDC applicants who are white is less than 41%. All other racial groups see higher representation among non-ALDC applicants and admits than in any of the corresponding ALDC applicant and admit categories. - https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w263... page 16 My anecdotal understanding is that "recruited athlete" often functions as a way for rich people to get their kids in. Get your kid on an expensive-and-niche sports team in high school -- lacrosse, water polo, etc -- and that puts them into a much-smaller pool of students that can be "recruited" by the college team.
- thrill 3y ago
  "For example, recruited athletes, legacies, and dean’s interest list applicants are all over 68% white" 75% of the US population is white, so it sounds like that group is underrepresented in athletic admissions. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045222 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045222
  - jgwil2 3y ago
    The claim was made about the applicant pool, not the general population. The white population skews considerably older than other groups.
  - kemayo 3y ago
    You're looking at a misleading data point on two levels. First, note that the 75.5% figure in that table includes Hispanic/Latino people, which not all sources will -- importantly the study I was quoting doesn't include these under "white", so we can't compare those numbers. There's a different row in your table that excludes those to get 58.9% white. This alone gets us back to the ALDC group being disproportionately white. Second, it doesn't matter if 75% of the US population is white, but rather what percentage of the college-admission aged US population is white. (Not that people outside of the 17-23ish bracket don't apply to Harvard's undergraduate program, but I suspect that they do so in insignificant numbers.) Here's a source that breaks out US racial demographics by age: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_101.20.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_101.20.a... It says that in 2021 amongst 18-24 year olds, 52.8% were white. Thus the ALDC group is even more disproportionately white than the whole-population number would make you think.