https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21037400

ALDC (or at least LDC) preferences remain the most unjust (elitist) aspects of college admissions. Sadly, there seems to be limited political pressure to ban them (by which I mean extending various civil rights acts to ban institutions receiving federal funding from preferring LDC status).

A cynic would even point out that Ivy League schools heavily use race-based affirmative action to change the narrative and appear diverse. Sadly, no one looks at how poorly they look in terms of socio-economic diversity - typically around 15% of students receive Pell Grants compared to 30% at the top UCs that don't practice LDC preferences (https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-unive...)

I was shocked when I first learned what legacy students were. Everyone talks about the uk bring super classist but legacy students would never fly over here. The US seems to have some seriously blatant classism. The other obvious one is the teeth obsession.

It's illuminating to also compare Harvard demographics vs the US. Sorted by most to least represented:

    Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x)
    Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x)
    Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x)
    Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x)
    African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x)
    Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x)
    non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x)

https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics from 2019

https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduat...

https://features.thecrimson.com/2016/freshman-survey/lifesty...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews, upper estimate used

Always found the combination of non-profit status and legacy or donor-enhanced admissions to be odd bedfellows.

What's interesting are the odds of non-ALDC whites being admitted.

I hate to say stuff like this, but the more I learn about Harvard, the more I think it exists to sustain itself so that it can serve the interest of handful. Education is just a byproduct.

I have a question about the abstract for anyone that looked deeper at the paper- does the following statement take into account rejected student stats or only those of accepted students? Because it seems plausible to me that white students "on the cusp" are more likely to get rejected to "make room" for ALDCs. Meaning that removing this preference may actually benefit a typical white applicant more than others. I could of course also imagine that not being the case though.

"Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students, with the share of white admits falling and all other groups rising or remaining unchanged."

I do recall the popular line about how everyone at orientation could be replaced with a new cohort that has similar academic profile, which implies that there is quite a bit of judgement call going on.

Overall, it is unsurprising yet disappointing that they estimate ~3/4 of ALDCs would not get admitted without that status. This system is probably a big reason that most elite schools have ~15% of their students from the top 1%, while MIT is closer to 5%. MIT definitely does not do legacies and of course gives little weight to athletics. I am not sure about children of faculty though.

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Another interesting stat- 55% of Harvard graduate students are Jewish.

https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/harvard-uni...

Students whose parents went to Harvard tend to grow up aiming for Harvard themselves. It's likely that a high percentage of the Harvard applicant pool are legacies in the first place. If their stats are as good or better than the average of the admitted class, then what's the problem?

Is there clear evidence that legacies have an easier time getting in on a per case basis compared to a similar student without that that designation, as is the case for applicants with the URM designation?

I know of a professor, who used to be at MIT, then Microsoft research. He joined Harvard a few years ago; one of the side benefits is to secure admission for his progeny.

Do we really need to include race in our analysis? Why not look at all Harvard students?

Mix the smart and the rich paints and call it one color.

I'd need to know what the percentage of ALDC students across races and across the total population is in order to interpret this statistic

And when Harvard puts quotas for "minorities", it doesn't limit offers for these people, it limits them for the other 57%.

Non paywall access: https://sci-hub.se/10.3386/w26316

Shocking

Does "white" include jews? Make em seperate, and watch that percentage halve, at least.

Why is this news? Flagged.

Including jews with white? Make them seperate, and watch as these figures halve, easily.