Privilege vs potential in college admissions

College Confidential Community
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MWolf- I was unaware of the legacy benefit being an attempt to limit admissions of Jewish people. I had however often heard that the move away from quantitative admissions towards the holistic approach was driven for just such a reason. I hope you are not suggesting the Ivies continued use of legacy preference is based on antisemitism?

In terms of legacy Ivies may be the worst offender as you suggest but LACs with smaller classes certainly don’t leave many spots between athletes and legacies.

From Middlebury’s website;

"Does it make a difference if I am the child of an alumna or alumnus of Middlebury?

We value greatly the connection between Middlebury and its alumni; however, a student who does not present a competitive academic profile would not be admitted simply because his or her parents attended Middlebury. About 6–9% of an incoming class represents children of alumni."

and

“Middlebury College competes in 29 sports and has a total of 885 student athletes: 481 men and 404 women.” While the college has a total enrollment of approximately 2,500. That implies 35+% of students are athletes.

Not sure of the Ivy %s but taken together and assuming Middlebury as a proxy for LACs more than 2 of every 5 spots are locked up for athletes and legacies.

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No, you cannot point to some unfortunate actions nearly 100 years ago as proof- or even suspicion- that legacies have some extraordinary pull today. It still comes down to the individual’s application. Legacy is not magic. Threads have gone over and over legacy numbers and generally more are rejected than admitted to the tippy tops.

Plus, “preference” implies preferred. Nah. What top colleges “prefer” is a rounded class of rounded individuals who form a solid 4-year experience for all. Well, I do agree athletes “can” form an exception.

edited

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@lookingforward It’s not suspicion, and it’s not 100 years ago, it was mid 20th century. There is quite a bit of proof of this, and multiple articles that have been written on it. It’s not suspicion when “elite” schools have 60% of their students from the top 20% of the population. Since there is a strong racial element in income disparity, that is also racial discrimination.

@Nocreativity1 While it’s not specifically antisemitic anymore, it’s still a strategy to “keep out the riffraff”. Even the athletic preferences in the “elite” schools benefit rich rich kids, because many of them are for sports like polo and rowing, that are too expensive for poor schools.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/college-sports-benefits-white-students/573688/

And yes, as I wrote, LACs have preference for legacies, but it’s not as strong. In class of 2022, about 14% of Harvard’s incoming freshmen were legacies, and class of 2021 had 18% legacies, so it’s a bit more than twice that of Middlebury. About 12% of Harvards class of 2022 were recruited athletes, and another 8% said that they would join varsity sports, which more or less fits the 21% of Harvard undergraduates who participate in a spots. This is less that Middlebury’s 35%.

We do not know hoe many of Middlebury’s athletes were recruited, since NESCAC colleges do not really share that info. We do not know whether the non-recruited Harvard athlete got [reference in acceptance for their participation in sports, nor do we know the same about Middlebury.

So that would be at least 30%-34% of Harvard students are Legacies or recruited athletes, and as many as 8% more may have been given preference for being athletes, so about 35% to 43%.

For Middlebury anywhere between 6% and 44% of the student population are either legacies or had preference because they were athletes (or were recruited as athletes).

It is likely that the total percent is the same for both schools, but, as I wrote, Middlebury, and other NESCAC colleges provide a bigger bump for athletes, while Harvard and other Ivies provide a bigger bump for legacies.

Exactly why NESCAC colleges have so many athletes is a mystery to me. Yes, preferences for athletes is, as seen above, benefits white kids, but that does not explain why there are so many.

PS. Private schools like Notre Dame, and large public schools often recruit athletes a lot more aggressively than any Ivy, and provide a bigger bump, with athletes who wouldn’t normally be accepted at all, being provided with large scholarships and other benefit.

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A given set of sports teams will not vary much in number of players whether the college has 2,000 students or 20,000 students, although a larger school may choose to have more sports and therefore more teams and players (but probably not ten times as many for various schools in any given NCAA division).

So athletes will consume a much larger percentage of students at a small school than at a medium size or large school.

However, the number of athletes consumes only a small percentage of students at a giant public school, even if the admission preference is large. (It is not large at some giant public schools like University of Mississippi, where Mississippi residents get automatic admission if they meet NCAA minimum academic standards, even if they are not athletes.)

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In any case, we’re getting slightly off topic - I can see an argument about college sports erupting from this way too easily.

To answer the OP - schools prefer accomplishments to potential.

Also, some accomplishments are better than others. Athletic accomplishments have more weight than academic accomplishments, so high academic achievement + athletic accomplishments is better than high academic achievement + academic accomplishments, or high academic achievement + artistic accomplishments.

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I missed the editing window, so a correction - I was writing about selective schools.