Amherst to stop offering legacy preference in admissions

BKSquared
Thu, 28 Oct 2021 17:32:22 +0000

I was not addressing whether or not legacy gives a boost at Harvard. It certainly does and a strong one. The boost may come from a soft quota where legacies are competing for a proportionately larger number of spots relative to the number of legacy applicants vs the general pool, using my example. Or the boost could come from lower standards for legacies. Or, more likely a combination of both. The question I was addressing was whether the avg legacy admit had a lower academic qualification/rating than the general pool. Looking at the Arcidiacono ALDC report Table D2, it appears within the 4 race groups, there are a smaller percentage of LDC admits in the Academic 1-2 group vs non ALDC, with the exception of Hispanics where the LDC percentage is in fact higher:

| White | | African American | | Hispanic | | Asian American |
| Typical | LDC | Typical | LDC | Typical | LDC | Typical | LDC
2 or better | 88.77 | 78.34 | 59.39 | 43.21 | 65.4 | 70.49 | 94.4 | 85.56
3 | 11.19 | 20.93 | 40.52 | 56.79 | 34.6 | 29.51 | 5.6 | 14.44
4 or worse | 0.04 | 0.73 | 0.08 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0

So this does mean within race groups, there are a lower proportion of higher academic rated kids in the LDC group (as a group less qualified) vs the non-ALDC group (other than Hispanics) for this period at Harvard. How much of this is driven by the DC’s I am not sure, but the L’s do make up most of the LDC’s.