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Harvard Legacy Admissions Targeted After Supreme Court Ruling
- pxmpxm 3y agoI kind of enjoy the irony of this policy being supported by virtually everyone, other than the ostensibly-progressive Harvard admissions committee. Someone here has already made the argument that the entire affirmative action set up at Harvard was just a way to hide the rich and well-connected from any meritocratic scrutiny.
- seydor 3y agoIf rich kids can't socialize at school where will things move to? Is there a rich people tinder or something?
- uxp100 3y agoRelatedly, if Harvard isn’t a good place for smart and not rich kids to socialize with rich kids, why would people want to go there? The point of Harvard is that you can become pals with a senator’s son. There are other schools if pure academic achievement is your primary interest. I don’t think some of the students discussing this topic realize why they want to go to Harvard, which is partly because of the legacies. Of course, this is a pretty cynical take, but I didn’t really understand the schools I was applying for at all when I was at that age.
- vosper 3y ago> The point of Harvard is that you can become pals with a senator’s son That's half the point. The other half is to say that you went to Harvard.
- koheripbal 3y ago.... Which is important because it flags you as someone connected to rich people
- alephnerd 3y agoYou can do this at relatively less selective Public Schools as well. One of my friends who attended UIUC was roommates with the son of the CEO of a Fortune 100 Tech Company, and close friends with the son of the CTO of another unrelated Tech Fortune 100. Another one of my buddies at UCSF ended up rooming with the daughter of owner of one of the major DNC SuperPACs. Public schools absolutely have strong alumni networks as well despite not necessarily having legacy admissions.
- lapcat 3y agoWhat are the odds of this, though? I went to a state university, and I didn't meet anyone rich or famous. My roommate peed on our carpet.
- didgeoridoo 3y agoI went to Yale. My roommates were rich and famous. They still peed on the carpet.
- lapcat 3y agoBut that was the most notable thing about my roommate.
- alephnerd 3y agoPretty high if you went to a flagship or top tier public university (eg. UCLA, Cal, Big 10, UDub, etc). This dataset from the economic mobility lab at UCR is great to find which schools have an elite student body - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... Also, I went to an Ivy-or-Ivy Adjacent program and my roommate also vomited on my bed after getting plastered during rush week (I accidently returned the favor a weeks after during my rush).
- lapcat 3y ago> Pretty high if you went to a flagship or top tier public university (eg. UCLA, Cal, Big 10, UDub, etc). I went to a Big 10 university. "Some 843 UW–Madison alumni serve as CEOs, and nearly 16,000 hold an executive management position. Additionally, as of November 2018, the current CEOs of 14 Fortune 500 companies have attended UW–Madison, the most of any university in the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Wisconsin%E2%80%93Madison?#Alumni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Wisconsin%E2%80%... That sounds like a lot, but in any given semester, UW enrollment is 40-50K, and it awards 10K degrees every year.
- alephnerd 3y agoHarvard without Legacy Admissions will still retain the Harvard brand. For example, UCs don't offer a legacy bump, yet Berkeley and UCLA still retain a major brand presence in the Tech and Finance industry both within North America and Asia. In fields such as Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Law, and Business Harvard does hire very strong faculty AND gives them a significant amount of funding and autonomy to continue their own research pursuits. Also, in my own friend group and as someone who attended one of these Ivies+Ivy Adjacent Programs, just getting into either a T20 school overall or a T10 school in your field is more than enough to gain the prestige cachet needed for your field. The alumni networks in these 20-30 public and private universities are strong enough that you'd be able to do well globally. While legacy does play a role in the undergrad experience, it's not like CMU, UT Austin, UVA, UW, or UCLA don't have students from elite backgrounds even though they might not have the street cred of "HAVHAD".
- ivraatiems 3y agoGood. I am affirmative action-curious, in that I do not necessarily have the knee-jerk "this shouldn't have ever been allowed" reaction that many on HN do. I think the case for affirmative action is stronger than many would allow. That said, I am willing to take the SCOTUS decision for what it is, because AA was an extremely unpopular policy with admittedly terrible echoes of past injustices built into it. Legacy admissions, on the other hand, are pure trash, and I think absolutely everyone except the beneficiaries of those policies ought to agree on that. I truly can't think of a good argument in favor of them other than "universities like money."
- remarkEon 3y agoWhat’s fascinating about how this all unfolded is that Yale made a different argument in court when their legacy admissions process was under scrutiny, where they defended the practice saying it was part of upholding “its educational goals through diversity, community, and tradition”. Testimony[1] is linked below from the NYT article[2] on the same topic. [1] https://www.cga.ct.gov/2022/HEDdata/Tmy/2022HB-05034-R000217-Quinlan,%20Jeremiah,%20Dean%20of%20Admissions-Yale%20University-TMY.PDF https://www.cga.ct.gov/2022/HEDdata/Tmy/2022HB-05034-R000217... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/us/harvard-alumni-children-affirmative-action.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/us/harvard-alumni-childre...
- 88913527 3y agoI found the NYT article a bit persuasive in that, very few people end up going to elite institutions anyways. Regardless of race, it's a very small pool. You could allocate 100% of admission slots to one race (not a policy suggestion, but a mathematical exercise), and it wouldn't move the needle much because it's so few slots. We'd be better off trying to solve injustices in ways that broadly apply to everyone. Of course there are second-order effects of the top slots, so AA (or lack thereof) will have some impact. Like you, I think it's well-intentioned but practically there are better policy options for effectively addressing inequalities in a more direct, first-order way.
- massysett 3y agoBut the schools have huge impact beyond what their numbers suggest: for instance, it seems a Harvard or Yale education is a current prerequisite to sit on the US Supreme Court.
- scrubs 3y agoThis is way overdue
- goodbyesf 3y ago[flagged]
- scrubs 3y agoCorrect. And all the more reason to squash it.
- scrubs 3y agoA question and point on resolving racism without giving up on meritocracy: - I tend to think scotus believes racism is/was real but the best way to fix it is for congress to vote into law an actual remedy. Instead congress whines then fund raises off it. That control vacuum does not mean scotus has to fill the void. I'm pretty sure this what Roberts thinks anyway. - on remedy: based on a young adult's background mainly by looking at parent's income and their educational attainment, and school quality k-12, under served kids that appear to have potential could be subsized to take a kind of finishing school with the idea of getting them backfilled education wise so they could take and pass MIT like AP exams in math, science, English. It'd be like a really high end HS to get them current. Kids who don't follow through are evicted, and are required to payback costs. This way they can compete reasonably well for open seats and colleges of their choice. We might call this the National High School Program perhaps mainly online. Congress can create and fund this. Seats are filled in time order of approved applicant only. - remedy includes reducing or eliminating grants to private universities sitting on tons of money or have too many administrative costs. US education is too damn expensive. There has to be a way for the system to penalize stupid cost. If you've done hiring, ivy league credentials doesn't guarantee much. There are some darn good kids from state schools too - a federal run super high school gives parents and kids a choice: state education or fed. Or state then fed later to fix shortcomings. This would also eliminate the fed/state/local control quagmire since US education is locally controlled. The fed could instead focus solely on its own school system letting parents/kids choose. - in summary: congress has to get off their butts. Scotus would have to uphold congress' law. And if the national HS was demanding, nobody would be focused on race, which is the way we want it. It puts the focus on good kids who did good work which is also the way we want it.
- j_walter 3y agoI mean every democrat whined about the SCOTUS blocking the student loan decision and how it's another example of this "extremist" court blocking the will of the people. They didn't mention that decision was unanimous, which is actually really unheard of with the division on the court. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-535_i3kn.pdf (page 4) Lets just face it though...it's easier to hope SCOTUS interprets a law or order a certain way than actually have congress do their job and pass a clear law.
- raincom 3y agoIf Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford remove quotas for ALDC (Athletes, Legacies, wealthy Donors, Children of staff and faculty), these universities cease being elite. That's good for America. However, it is bad for the administrators of these schools, uber wealthy, the elite servant class of this uber wealthy. What happens, if McKinsey, Bain, and BCG recruits more from UC Berkeley, Rutgers University, Vanderbilt? What happens if more of future judges and justices are graduates of LSU Law, UTAustin Law, McGeorge School of Law? Basically, the elites can't congregate around three or four schools. The power gets distributed, as the kids of the elite attend many schools across the country.
- alephnerd 3y ago> McKinsey, Bain, and BCG recruits more from UC Berkeley, Rutgers University, Vanderbilt Cal and Vandy are already top target schools for MBB and have been for decades. Around 15 of my 60 HS acquaintances who ended up doing Cal Undergrad ended up directly at MBB. Another 10 ended up in top PE and VC firms. They did a mix of EECS, L&S CS, Econ, Applied Math, and Haas
- LargeTomato 3y agoVery few people know what Haas is.
- alephnerd 3y agoIt might not have East Coast street cred, but in the West it's the primary undergrad business program other than UCLA Anderson, USC Marshall, and CMC, so it inevitably becomes the primary target for West Coast (aka Tech, Biotech, decent amount of Finance) PE, IB, VC, MC, and PM. Same reason I never heard of Darden or Wake Forest until I went to college out East. Also, McKinsey has had a dedicated recruiting team solely for Haas (both undergrad and MBA) for ages - Undergrad - https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/students/undergraduate-degree-candidates/university-of-california-berkeley https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/students/undergraduate-degr... MBA - https://uat.mckinsey.com/Careers/Students/MBA-Candidates/UC-Berkeley-Haas-School-of-Business https://uat.mckinsey.com/Careers/Students/MBA-Candidates/UC-...
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoLegacy admissions are the point of going to private school. If you want fair, there's plenty of public universities in the country, where meritocracy rules and all that. Private universities, on the other hand, have a different value proposition: If you are rich and well connected, you can go to an extremely good school, where you can meet other rich and well-connected people and the high achieving lower class people. Likewise, for the lower class people, if you can meet their high achievement bar, you can network with other high achieving people and the well-connected, and have your education subsidized by the high costs the school is extracting from the rich students. This is a win-win for everyone involved. Hell, it's a win for everyone else, too, because these conditions are breeding grounds for extremely high-impact individuals.
- lapcat 3y ago> Hell, it's a win for everyone else, too, because these conditions are breeding grounds for extremely high-impact individuals. What do you mean exactly by "high-impact"? And is that good impact or bad impact? The rich are getting richer, and everyone else is treading water at best. I'm not sure how that's a win for everyone?
- massysett 3y agoIn other words, it’s a tool for the rich ruling elite to preserve its hegemony regardless of merit. The rich win, all others lose. This is in my view an absolute disgrace and is the opposite of what America should be even if it sadly is exactly what America often is.
- crazygringo 3y agoPersonally I'd love to see no more legacy admissions, but realistically there's no legal basis to change that. There's nothing the Supreme Court can do, Congress would have to pass an explicit law against legacy admissions. The reason affirmative action was struck down is because the are certain federally protected classes of people protected from discrimination -- race, religion, sex, etc. And affirmative action is discriminatory along the race dimension. But a private university is allowed to discriminate along anything else they want as long as it's a not a protected class. They can discriminate on grades (as they do), SAT score, essays, extracurriculars, athletics, geography, and yes -- legacy. It's true that legacies are usually whiter relative to the general population, but a lot of factors skew towards racial proportions that are different from the general population (e.g. good grades skew Asian). But as long as the purpose of the discrimination doesn't have racial intent (or intent along another protected class), then no law is being broken. And if the intent of legacies is raising money, then there's no winnable case here. Alas.
- stcroixx 3y agoPutting all their dirty laundry out there should be useful towards tarnishing the reputations of the Ivies. If it can be spun that they’re white supremacist institutions, well, good luck to them.
- ashwagary 3y agoHistory of these institutions makes it clear, spin is not required to land the point.
- musicale 3y ago> if the intent of legacies is raising money Precisely. It is the same reason that they give special consideration to the children of large donors. (The main reason universities objected to recent admissions bribery schemes is that they sidestepped the official system and the money did not go directly into the university's coffers.) And it's why they engage in price discrimination based on "ability to pay." As has been noted elsewhere, universities - especially elite universities - are ruthless capitalists.