<p>The brochure from #196 shows the endowment funds used for scholarship are THREE percent, a big whoop. They can easily add another 2 or 3% without missing a beat and find savings elsewhere.</p>
<p>^ If they keep requiring the high profiled and expensive ECs in their admission criteria, they do not have to increase the percentage. They will likely recruit many students whose parents are capable of paying a higher price.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the connection of legacy to this suit.</p>
<p>According to the Harvard Crimson class of 2018 survey, the average SAT score of Asian students was 2304.5 and of legacy students was 2296. So the suit is claiming that an 8.5 point average difference on a test whose score increments in steps of 10 and which is hardly that reproducible anyhow shows that legacy “preferences” are illegally discriminating against the Asian students in favor of the legacies? The average score for whites was only 2239–that’s 57 points lower than the legacies, and similar for non-legacies (2237.2) so by the logic of this suit, the white legacies are being wronged a whole lot more by the admission of non-legacy whites than Asians are by the legacy policy–which seems more like an anti-legacy policy if you inflate the importance of SATs as this suit likes to do.</p>
<p>What does the suit say about the plight of the Indian students, whose average SAT scores are 2312.6 and if we apply the singleminded logic of this suit, it shows that the University is discriminating in favor of non-Indian Asians at the expense of Indians. That 8.1 point difference is nearly as large as the apparently intolerable difference between the Asians and the legacies. Did they forget to mention it?</p>
<p>A few more points:</p>
<p>If it happens to be true that Harvard is using legacy preference in order to recruit more full pays, that would be entirely rational, and would be neither illegal nor racially discriminatory. I don’t think Harvard will admit that it does this, but if it did, it would help Harvard in terms of this lawsuit, not hurt it.</p>
<p>I think it’s possible that admissions officers might take into account how sad or disappointed an applicant might be if rejected. It’s not the best reason for a decision, maybe, but if you have a lot of close decisions, you might take something like that into account.</p>
<p>As for SAT scores, I think selective colleges do value a 2400 over a 2100. As a result, they will admit some students with 2400 scores who do not have the whole “package” that they prefer to see. Just as they will admit a football player, or a published novelist, or a really rich kid, without the whole package (including scores).</p>
<p>It may be rational & legal, but it’s also shameful. A school spouting social justice ideology, w a $36 billion endowment, enjoying generous taxpayer support, shouldn’t be practicing affirmative action for the affluent.</p>
<p>But where do you think these $36B came from? Shouldn’t schools pay back at least to some of the donors?</p>
<p>Well, I didn’t say that Harvard is actually using legacy to get full pays. Personally, I doubt it. I’m actually in the camp that thinks legacy doesn’t matter very much, and that the schools say they consider it because alumni would be annoyed if they didn’t. I just think legacy kids are able to put together the kind of package that the selective schools are looking for better than the average applicant. That’s been the case for the legacy kids I know–including some who didn’t get into the legacy school, but who got into comparably selective schools.</p>
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<p>They want alumni to believe that it is a large preference, but they want others to believe that it is a small or insignificant preference. So they leave the magnitude of the legacy preference vague – what they do put out (e.g. acceptance rates for legacies, percentage of class that is legacies) is not sufficient to determine the magnitude of the legacy preference.</p>
<p>You’d have to know much more data to know if there is a preference. You’d have to know how many legacy students applied. You’d also have to know how many hooked legacies there were. You’d also have to know where all the other applicants with Harvard ties applied and enrolled, as well as everyone’s full application.</p>
<p>It’s possible that there are competitive Harvard legacies who do not apply. Does Harvard manage to enroll the best Harvard legacies? As holistic admissions takes many factors into account, this is not a simple matter of test scores.</p>
<p>I am amused, though, that the lawsuit talks about legacies, not athletes. If Blum really wanted to charge some students with high test scores are being overlooked in favor of other students, he should have tackled the athletic question. No American judge would have ruled that universities should prioritize academics over athletic competition, though.</p>
<p>UCB, you keep saying this as though it’s a universal truth, but my school is very transparent about what their legacy acceptance rates are. They send out the regular acceptance rate and the legacy acceptance rate every single year to all of us alums on their mailing lists. And yes, the legacy acceptance rate was roughly 2x the regular acceptance rate the year my son got in - but it was blindingly obvious to anyone who knows how to count that the vast majority of legacies are still rejected, so any legacy who considers it anything other than a feather on the scale, or who was hoping that it would resurrect the dead, is a fool. So, no, I don’t agree that they are “leaving it vague” at all. </p>
<p>You missed the point. A higher or lower acceptance rate, by itself, does not necessarily say anything about the magnitude of the legacy preference (if any), because the strength of the applicants is not publicly stated.</p>
<p>“It may be rational & legal, but it’s also shameful. A school spouting social justice ideology, w a $36 billion endowment, enjoying generous taxpayer support, shouldn’t be practicing affirmative action for the affluent.”</p>
<p>If you want to get incensed over affirmative action for the affluent, go after the recruiting of lower-stat athletes in sports that are historically only offered by wealthy prep schools. Now THAT is affirmative action for the affluent. As if “normal” public high schools in Everytown, USA offer water polo or rugby or lacrosse. (OK, I get lacrosse is a big deal in Maryland, but not nationwide.)</p>
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But athletic prowess is a personal achievement. Squeezing thru the birth canal of a harvard alum is not.</p>
<p>^^actually, lax is one of the fastest growing sports at the HS level. Quite a few California public high schools have started men’s and women’s lax teams in the past few years. Of course, those same publics also have water polo. </p>
<p>OTOH, fencing…</p>
<p>Many of the local public schools in Houston seem to offer Lacrosse for girls.</p>
<p>I know of at least one such public school kid go to Stanford for Lacrosse.</p>
<p>Squeezing thru the birth canal of a Harvard alum is not.
Legacies fill out the same app as non-legacies, go through the same review process.Clearly, adcoms aren’t afraid to reject those who don’t pass muster.</p>
<p>Women’s crew can be a nice tip.</p>
<p>Ask yourself this question: why does Harvard reject 70% of its legacy applicants?</p>
<p>Some seem to be saying, they’re the ones who need FA. As if this were all so easy to determine.<br>
For elites, some seem to be pretty darned annoyed, whatever the topic is.</p>
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<p>Fifteen years ago, St John’s was already a hotbed for Lacrosse in Houston. The school imported great coaches from the Baltimore area. Dallas was not far behind and the girls trailed just a bit. </p>
<p>Obviously, it started as a private school sport in Texas. </p>
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<p>I could not agree more. </p>
<p>Beating the statistics to death and especially the uber-narrow SAT scores will never shed any lights to the distortion of admission, if there were any. At best, and to beat a different equine and cliché to death, it is one of 'em correlation versus causation. Even though the sentence is rarely understood completely, it is just impossible to draw much conclusive evidence for such data. Again and again, we simply DO NOT KNOW what were the compelling facts in an application package. Only people with access to the entire pool of applicants and the ability to rediuce a couple of dozen “ingredients” can see who presented the right sauce for the cooking. </p>
<p>I find it highly logical that the children or grandchildren of legacies at schools such as HYPS would have had a leg up in terms of preparation via what in an expected higher SES and a history that values education and a reasonable set of contacts. It is the opposite that would be shocking! While obviously not universal, the odds are in their favor! As they should be. </p>