Legacy Admissions Debate

Because Harvard admits on legacy status.

Not just legacy-aware, they grant admission in exchange for large donations.https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/18/day-three-harv...

No, in fact they publicly state their admissions are "need blind". However, certainly a slice of wealthy and legacy students get favored admission. Those two things are not necessarily in conflict.

No, it is corrupt for Harvard to try to solicit donations by tipping the scale in favor of admitting the children of their alumni. "Assuming she has the grades" is exactly the problem here -- legacy admissions are not held to the same standard as everyone else and have an easier time gaining admission.We are also not talking about "one kid," we are talking about 14 percent of their student body. Harvard does not get a new library or big donation for every one of t

At Harvard, there are two styles of pseudo-'legacy' admissions: standard legacy and z-list.The z-list is very small (on the order of tens of students per year) but matches the stereotype.The typical non-zlist legacy student is qualified to attend and has test scores well above the admission median. I am not sure they even consider past donation history for these admissions. A more important factor is that they feel that legacies are more likely to attend vs go elsewhere (the 

Yes, unfortunately in the US we have legacy admissions and athletic admissions without much oversight on how athletically talented the student is."A study, published earlier this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list — applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard.That number drops dr

Prioritizing "legacy" admissions and making it easier to get admitted if you are "legacy" is quite a different thing than what I thought you were originally suggesting, that schools have a disproportionate number of "legacy" students because they are "simply good at promoting legacy."It's because they make it _easier to get in_ if you are legacy. You can consider that a method of "promotion", but it's not that they "simply go th

Legacy admissions make sense to me even if it's unfair. Half of the experience of a university is the student body. I think it's completely acceptable for a university to allocate a certain percentage of the student body to legacies or children of wealthy donors because they can provide networking opportunities to other students.I think this is no different from what Harvard has been accused of with their race-conscious admissions where it seems harder for Asian students to get in t

To be clear, you are claiming that Harvard explicitly does not consider legacy status when deciding on admissions?ya. Well... I think it's unlikely. There might be cases, I went through some math on this once and concluded that maybe 2% of the incoming class at Harvard could be unqualified legacy admits based on the total pool and the SAT std dev, etc. but even that I doubt. I think legacies probably are qualified based on what I have seen but the main reason I think this is more

This is not going to have the effect people think. My experience is that legacy admissions are more or less a tie breaker. Legacy candidates that gain admission due to their legacy status are well qualified candidates (+ you often get the added benefit of a higher yield).HOWEVER, where less than qualified candidates do gain admission is when there is a significant donor involved (there is often a meaningful overlap with alumni for obvious reasons, but not necessarily). Getting rid of legacy a