Study on Harvard finds 43 percent of white students are legacy, athletes, related to donors or staff

This is ASTOUNDING NEWS.

And this is surprising? Look at every elite school and you'll see the same. The rich rule the US and the world and the rest of us do nothing about it. Fucking sad.

How come everything racists say about minorities receiving preferential treatment in hiring and education turns out to be the exact total opposite?

R2 said it best but I'll repeat: every elite school does this. We're only noticing it now because we're into the THIRD generation of this shit. When it was second generation, it meant only one or two legacies. But now the legacies have gained traction exponentially. They get in easily and graduate easily. No effort and no loans. A generation of entitled greedy assholes in the making.

We're looking at you, Jared Kushner.

I went to an elite university (Notre Dame), and I could count on one hand the number of people I knew who didn't fit into one of those categories, including myself. I was an athlete.

Poor and non connected white kids have it harder than everybody else

Surely R7

What's going to happen to AA under a 6-3 Supreme Court?

It's also old news, OP.

Since the story was published last September, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled that Harvard [bold]does not violate the civil rights of Asian American applicants as she gave the university an across-the-board victory in a closely watched case scrutinizing the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions.[/italic] Her decision followed a 2018 trial in Boston that featured testimony from Harvard officials defending their methods of sifting and choosing from among tens of thousands of applicants a year.

You might not like her decision, OP, but it's odd you neglect to mention this subsequent development.

R3, because the white racists benefit from it. Everything is projection.

Even if the percentage wasn't that high, I always wondered how anyone (aka assholes who think they aren't racist, they only want "fairness") got more angry at the underprivileged black kid who got in with like an A-/B+ average rather than get angry at the white, wealthy/privileged kids who genuinely had no right to even get into a state school, let alone the Ivy League. Dubya even went a step further and parlayed his stellar C average at Yale to get into HBS. Sickening beyond belief.

I can understand the financial greed, but I'm not impressed when I hear a Bush Jr. got in because we know he's a moron. That doesn't exactly make the school look good even if you use the line about how many "presidents" went to your school because we know at least one of them is a fucking dummy.

I went to Harvard for grad school in the 90s, and if you’d asked me the percentage of the undergraduates I taught who belonged to one of those four categories I would have thought it was closer to about 55 or 60%.

In the four years I was there I saw exactly one Asian athletic recruit: a female student of Chinese descent who was recruited to play volleyball. She was an absolute fucking beast with rope-like veins down her arms.

A large portion of non-white students the are wealthy children of international scions as well. Harvard fudges it's diversity numbers with African immigrants instead of admitting more African Americans.

Aren't a good number of black Americans admitted to colleges based on athletics?

R14, and many of those schools are not known for their stellar academics. Don't start pulling this bullshit. We are talking specifically about the gold standard of academia and the fact that a large percentage of the white student body has no business being there at all. You're going to now turn this into some black kid going to Jackson State on a football scholarship?

I assure you these numbers were far worse 40-50 years ago. Let's break down these numbers:

1) Legacy kids - I've seen numbers where this is around 8-10%. I went to an Ivy and, for the most part, these are still very good and competent students. They're just not the top 1% academically - but they have great grades and test scores. It's not a foregone conclusion that they'll get in. It's not fair - but everyone knows and accepts this.

2) Staff - staff and family can take classes. As with every university.

3) Related to donors - money talks. These are the most egregious cases, but they're usually not total fuck-ups. You can donate a lot of money but it doesn't automatically get your kid in.

4) Athletes - These are usually very good athletes that spent a LOT of time practicing and working out that took away from their studies or added to their workload. Ivies have academic standards for athletes - most have VERY good test scores and grades. Usually the worst cases of this are for the football and basketball teams - the other sports attract extremely good athletes with extremely good academic records. Sure - without the athletic ability they may have not had admission - but the time and dedication to the sport is taken into consideration.

Now, if you look at the black and latino applicants, over 90% did not have test scores or grades to get them in if race was not a factor. Asians have it hardest - there are vast numbers of Asian applicants who have the grades and test scores but do not get in because of an Asian 'quota' and the need for diversity. Still, Asians are over-represented in Ivy league schools - around 20% of the students are Asian, but only 5% of the US population. So it is 4x - sometimes higher - than what you see in US society.

There's a lot that goes into admissions - it's not all test scores and grades. It never has been and never will be. If you did, all you get are perfectionist robots who study how to take tests and regurgitate information. (Many Asians are described like this - with not much ability to synthesize information, just spit it out).

Legacy kids and donor kids have the most unfair advantage and that should be looked at. You can't keep providing admission because a parent or grandparent went there. And you shouldn't be able to sell degrees to the highest bidder either.

Yes. It doesn’t seem right. The legacies and rich kids whose parents donate shouldn’t be fast tracked.

But saying that 43% of whites or 12% of Asians or whatever received preference doesn’t tell us the overall mix of the student population. what are the percentages of the incoming class? I don’t know if they staged it, but I remember seeing a piece on Harvard freshman and they seemed pretty diverse.

It is as if we said that 90% of the incoming Native Americans were admitted based on affirmative action but there were only 10 of them.

Before you blast me.

Look at what’s being quoted.

Gee, one would think that Harvard is a cesspool of humanity that continues to deserve a reputation of grotesque fuck you human production.

Um if students getting in to college based on athletic ability is being criticized R15 then yes that's what it's coming down to. Criticizing legacy or donor admissions is fair and legitimate but when a lot black Americans get into college based on athletic scholarships then I don't see why that should be used against white students

Appeals court debates fate of Harvard's affirmative action policies

Joan Biskupic, CNN Digital Expansion 2018

By Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer

Updated 7:22 PM ET, Wed September 16, 2020

(CNN) US Appeals Court Judge Sandra Lynch pounded lawyers challenging Harvard's affirmative action policies on Wednesday, implicitly disputing their claims of bias against Asian American students and assertions of Supreme Court precedent.

"You started out by saying that the Harvard system is intentionally discriminatory because it uses subjective criteria," Lynch, the most vocal of the three judges hearing the case, told William Consovoy, representing the challengers to Harvard. "But in the Bakke case, which of course binds us, they also used subjective criteria and talked glowingly of Harvard's plan at the time."

Lynch was referring to Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the 1978 case in which the Supreme Court first allowed colleges to use race as a "plus" factor in admissions for campus diversity.

"We're saying it is more susceptible to bias infiltrating the system," Consovoy responded, clarifying his argument, "because it uses subjective criteria. ... I think that's just common sense."

Lynch had the sharpest queries for Consovoy and a Department of Justice lawyer, also challenging the practices that have traditionally benefited Blacks and Hispanics.

Judge Juan Torruella asked few questions during the 80-minute hearing yet was similarly skeptical of arguments of Harvard bias against Asian Americans, questioning what evidence existed. Yet neither Torruella nor Chief Judge Jeffrey Howard tipped their hand as did Lynch in the long-running case now at the federal appellate stage.

Howard, at one point, homed in on the claim of "racial balancing" at the core of the lawsuit brought by Students for Fair Admissions. "On the one hand, an institution is seeking a diverse student body and diverse community. On the other hand, there is a real concern about improper balancing," said Howard, asking about so-called "yield rates."

Lawyer Seth Waxman, representing Harvard, said the admissions rates for Blacks, Hispanics, Asian Americans and others have sufficiently varied over the years to demonstrate individual assessments and conform to Supreme Court precedent.

Bakke and other Supreme Court decisions have forbidden quotas and related "racial balancing." The case against Harvard, filed six years ago, has always appeared destined for the Supreme Court and a significant test of that 1978 Bakke milestone.

Under review by the Boston-based panel Wednesday was a 2019 decision by US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs that rejected arguments that Harvard unlawfully discriminated and could gain diversity through non-racial factors, such as a family's economic status.

"Harvard has demonstrated that there are no workable and available race-neutral alternatives, singly or taken in combination that would allow it to achieve an adequately diverse student body while still perpetuating its standards for academic and other measures of excellence," Burroughs wrote.

The lawsuit was initiated on behalf of Asian Americans by Edward Blum, a conservative advocate who has long opposed racial policies and previously sought white students to challenge them. After President Donald Trump took office, the US Department of Justice joined the case, siding with Blum's Students for Fair Admissions group.

Closely watched from the start because of the prevalence of affirmative action practices nationwide, the case has taken on new salience as the country focuses on systemic racism, newly ignited by the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

...

...

'Personal' score

One point of contention is Harvard's use of a "personal" score, in addition to academic and extracurricular ratings, that SFFA challengers say allows admissions officials to enhance the prospects of Black and Hispanic applicants and disadvantage Asian Americans.

On Wednesday, Consovoy argued that the flexible "personal" rating has led to the racial stereotyping of Asian Americans. During the trial, SFFA contended Asian Americans were typecast as one-dimensional or merely "book smart."

Justice Department lawyer Eric Dreiband reinforced that contention, telling the court that Asian American applicants have routinely, but suspiciously, drawn lower personal scores. Dreiband also argued that Harvard constantly monitors the racial composition of its entering class to achieve certain levels.

Under questioning from Lynch about how the Harvard program differs from affirmative action programs upheld by the Supreme Court, most recently in 2016 at the University of Texas, Dreiband said Harvard fails to take the requisite narrow, or limited, approach. He contended Harvard looks at students' race at every step of the admissions process, "saturating" the entire process with it.

Harvard lawyer Waxman disputed that emphasis and urged the appellate panel to rely on the findings of Burroughs, who heard testimony from 25 witnesses and reviewed hundreds of pages of exhibits during a three-week trial in 2018.

Waxman said Harvard admissions officers engage in comprehensive "individualized" assessments as they consider who should obtain a place in the college. He said a committee of 40 admissions officers weighs many academic and extracurricular characteristics and asserted that the personal scores targeted by the challengers were being overblown.

"In this appeal," he said, the personal ratings "have assumed a Frankenstein-like significance."

It's before a three-judge panel at the First Circuit Court of Appeals. I think the panel will affirm the district court's ruling in favor of Harvard. After that is the Supreme Court, where I think it'll be selected for a hearing. Roberts won't be able to restrain the five-judges to his right. They'll rule against Harvard and eliminate AA in any school receiving federal funds.

R16:

[quote] (Many Asians are described like this - with not much ability to synthesize information, just spit it out).

This exact sentiment is going to provide plenty of fodder for the SC majority.

For Harvard, just substitute "the U.S. economy." What else is new? Read Vonnegut on "the money river."

One comment - there are NO athletic scholarships in the Ivy League. It helps with admission, but it's not a financial factor at all.

There are also other things that can bump your application - if you're the first person in your family to go to college, if you have extraordinary music/theater talent, and also if you're from a rural area or from a state where Harvard receives few applications.

Ivies want people from all over America, so if you apply from Idaho, Iowa, Alaska, or Alabama, it can boost your admission potential.

What's not talked about much is the presumption that all Black and Latino students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Not necessarily true. A good 1/4 or 1/3 of them came from UMC families in my student body.

As for Asians - it's tough for them. But it's not just their race that makes it more difficult. A lot of the applicants are 'one note' - they only bring academic success and the ability to study and test well to the table. And adding piano or violin expertise is commonplace - that doesn't make them stand out.

But what's not understood is that many Asian applicants apply from heavily Asian-populated cities or high schools. Colleges have a quota on how many people to accept from a certain geographic area or even a specific high school.

Many white students don't get in for the exact same geographical and high school quotas.

affirmative action for white people

R20, if you're an athlete getting into a school like JACKSON STATE, that's not quite the same as getting into an Ivy League school solely based on athleticism. The point of getting into the Ivy League -which separates it from a school like Jackson State- is that you aren't merely a "dumb jock." You're actually supposed to have the academic prowess to go with that athleticism. Otherwise, it's assumed you got in because your mother took fake pictures of you rowing.

[quote]affirmative action for white people

No, dear, it is not the same. AA didn't mean any black person could just be given a job or a position at an Ivy League being a moron. A black kid with a C average would not have been allowed at Yale based on AA the way Bush was based solely on the nutsack from whence he came.

[quote]I assure you these numbers were far worse 40-50 years ago. Let's break down these numbers:

You don't have to assure anyone of something that is obvious based on how these same people have created the power structure that allows a Bush or a Trump or a Kushner to be stupid as hell and to fail upward to the point that that they are given an insane amount of power and get to destroy the lives and opportunities for anyone they deem lesser.

[quote] As for Asians - it's tough for them. But it's not just their race that makes it more difficult. A lot of the applicants are 'one note' - they only bring academic success and the ability to study and test well to the table. And adding piano or violin expertise is commonplace - that doesn't make them stand out.

Analysis of years of admissions records showed that generally the extracurriculars of Asian applicants were equal to or better than those of other applicants, and not limited to the stereotypical activities. It's the "personality" evaluations that knocked Asian applicants down enough so they could be passed over. Somehow on average Asians were given low personal characteristic scores by admissions staff, with the scores being derived from staff members' interpretations of interview reports and letters of recommendation. Lower than any other ethnic group.

It's going to be a slam dunk if the Supreme Court is 6-3. Roberts is firmly against AA in education, as are the others, and even if there's an O'Connor-esque moderate conservative in the group when it comes to AA, he/she won't matter in the final outcome. It'll be 6-3 or 5-4 ending official consideration of race in institutions that receive federal money. Harvard may just end up ending its acceptance of federal funds (hundreds of millions of dollars annually).

In two to three years, AA in education will be struck down.

The district court's findings of fact and ruling, not that it's going to be worth much after the First Circuit affirms and it heads to the Supreme Court.

Sorry link corrected./

[quote] It's the "personality" evaluations that knocked Asian applicants down enough so they could be passed over. Somehow on average Asians were given low personal characteristic scores by admissions staff, with the scores being derived from staff members' interpretations of interview reports and letters of recommendation. Lower than any other ethnic group.

Yet Asians were so stereotyped that staff would give them low scores whether or not they had good personalities.

If SCOTUS eliminates Affirmative Action, it's the Asians that will take the places of the other minorities, not whites. Check out what happened in California when it took race out of the application review process.

If it weren’t for this and affirmative action top schools would be 90% Asian

R33 - that was the plaintiff's argument in the brief. It's not substantiated fact. You're cherry-picking just the arguments, not what the court decided.

In that same link, it concluded that there was no determinable evidence of racial discrimination in personality score against Asian Americans.

Read the conclusion.

"The testimony of the admissions officers that there was no discrimination against Asian American applicants with respect to the admissions process as a whole and the personal ratings in particular was consistent, unambiguous, and convincing. Not one of them had seen or heard anything disparaging about an Asian American applicant despite the fact that decisions were made collectively and after open discussion about each applicant in the docket and full committee meetings. Similarly, there is no credible evidence that corroborates the improper discrimination suggested by Professor Arcidiacono’s statistical model."

There are pages and pages on the court's conclusion in that link that confirm that they didn't find these assertions to be true.

**Cheeto's federal circuit court appointments are all white or Asian (with the exception of one Latina):

Donald Trump is on track to be the first president since Richard Nixon to go a full first term without selecting a Black nominee for a federal appeals court.

Just one of Trump’s 53 confirmed appeals court judges is Hispanic and none are Black. That compares to about 27% of President Barack Obama’s and roughly 15% under President George W. Bush, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of Federal Judicial Center data.

Trump, however, has exceeded both of his immediate predecessors in the percentage of Asian American appointees to federal appeals courts, which explains why about 15% of his appellate appointments have been people of color, compared to roughly 35% under Obama and 15% under Bush.

...

Some Increases

While Trump’s picks generally tend to be male and White, he has increased diversity in one area: adding more Asian American judges at the appellate level.

Of the 11 active Asian American appeals court judges, Trump has appointed seven. Obama appointed four and Bush didn’t appoint any. (Republicans filibustered another Obama Asian American appellate nominee, Goodwin Liu, who now serves on California’s state supreme court).

Trump’s appointees include Amul Thapar, Neomi Rao, Patrick Bumatay, Kenneth Lee, James Ho, John Nalbandian and Michael Park.

Trump’s appointments, however, have decreased net racial diversity on four of the 13 federal courts of appeals, according to analysis by Rorie Solberg, a political science professor at Oregon State University who tracks judicial diversity with an eye toward how nominations impact each court.

The UC system after AA. Keep in mind, however, that the state's demographics changed dramatically in that period.

Graphic is from the San Francisco Chronical (California effort to restore affirmative action divides Asian Americans, by Alexei Koseff June 24, 2020 Updated: June 24, 2020 4 a.m.)

[quote]If it weren’t for this and affirmative action top schools would be 90% Asian

If you have an issue with this only when your group doesn't benefit, then you're supposed to work harder.

That's what's so funny about many who whine about affirm. action. They scream about fairness and poor white people getting the shaft until they realize they themselves should go have a seat because they are not the cream of the crop and since the founding of the nation, have benefited from an unfair system.

Black men who fought for this country and came back from war weren't given the same opportunities as white men which allowed them to buy homes and start families. The GI Bill was denied to them.

Shameful history and you expect a do-over

⚡ Well, there's a bolt outta the blue !

The absolute bottom line regarding scores and grades is that Asian applicants do indeed face higher minimum standards for those two factors. That said, there are many other factors that go into deciding on admissions.

I think the question will be whether that former part is permitted under Title VI, or even possibly under the 14th Amendment.

But who would man the crews? Who would defend the Squash legacy?

R37 - those graphs show a single-digit increase in Asians after 1997 at Berkeley and hardly any change systemwide at UC.

Do you have any other graphs or data? Because that doesn't seem very compelling at all - particularly with the 71% increase in Asian population in California from 1990 to 2010.

R42, I’m actually not presenting the data to make an argument, but rather for the sake of discussion.

A friend of my is on the science faculty at Columbia. He says that many Asian students who did well in high school have little interest in science and therefore are not really his best students. They worked hard in high school because of family/peer pressure. Filling the school with people with the highest test scores and high school grades is not a means of finding the ideal student body.

(That is, R42, someone said something about the UC system before and after AA, so I pulled the data so others can draw their own conclusions about it and share those thoughts, as you’ve done.)

Now - if you really want to go down a rabbit hole, then start dissecting by religion.

Harvard's student population is 25% Jewish, Columbia's is 30% Jewish. That's total. If 42% of Harvard's student population is white, then 60% of the white students are Jewish but make up only 2% of the US population.

R44 - that's anecdotal, but that is not uncommon.

R44, you draw that conclusion from the commentary of one friend at one university in a hard science department? What about Asian kids who go into the humanities? Are they similar?

Ultimately none of the arguments matter: AA in education where Title IX is applicable is going to be struck down in about three years.

Why I just don’t believe it!🙄

I work with high school students and always tell my Asian American students NOT to check off any race on the applications.

Over the years, I've found that checking off Asian-American leads to fewer interview offers (even if your name is obviously Asian).

I can't explain it but this is what I have noticed

[quote] Not one of them had seen or heard anything disparaging about an Asian American applicant despite the fact that decisions were made collectively and after open discussion about each applicant in the docket and full committee meetings.

This is a silly piece of evidence. Does anyone ever say anything outwardly disparaging about any minority in these circumstances? Never, yet they are often rated lower.

R50 what are interview offers?

[quote] Filling the school with people with the highest test scores and high school grades is not a means of finding the ideal student body.

Yet, when it's white students with the highest test scores and grades, universities come running after them.

In fact, the whole "We want well rounded students with great grades, activities, and personalities" came about because Asians were constantly outscoring whites.

[quote] what are interview offers?

They are offers to interview the college applicant.

[quote] what are interview offers?

The way the college application process works is students apply and, those that meet certain standards, are scheduled an interview (usually by alumni who live in the area). That interview is one part of the score and it's how the applicant gets a "personality" rating.

[quote] Not one of them had seen or heard anything disparaging about an Asian American applicant despite the fact that decisions were made collectively and after open discussion about each applicant in the docket and full committee meetings.

This is typical white people evidence. "There's no way they were racists because they didn't specifically use racist terms about them!"

R51 - read the rest of it. That's one sentence. They didn't rely solely on testimony of admissions officers.

Asians apply at a much higher rate to Harvard. They had 28% of applications and make up over 20% of the student body.

The applications to top schools have increased a lot in the past 20 years - more than double the amount of applicants than 20 years ago. However, African American acceptance rates dropped 12.4%, Hispanic dropped 8.9%, Whites dropped 5.4% and Asians dropped 3.6%.

No one is saying that there aren't a ton of qualified Asian applicants for top schools based on grades and test scores. I don't think anyone is disputing that. But they still represent a disproportionately high rate of students at elite institutions and some of the disqualifiers are not just race-based, but based on other factors.

There are always stories every year of very qualified white students with near perfect grades and excellent scores who don't get into top 25 schools because of their high school, economic background, or other.

Asians are doing FINE - if they don't get into one school, they will get into some other. Harvard's not the only option.

Is citizenship considered?

R58 - international students are 12% at Harvard. As far as US goes, obviously you need to have a legal status as a resident of the US.

Immigrant stories can help - but they have to be particularly unique. A Cuban-American from Miami whose parents immigrated to Florida - that's not exactly unique stuff, although the Latino box will get checked in your favor.

A retired officer who taught there told me RMC Duntroon (Australia's West Point) quietly gave male applicants bonus points. If they did not, the entire Australian Army officer corps would be female in a few years because women score consistently higher on the suitability exams. Not, I assume, that an all-female military would be a bad thing, but perhaps Australia does.

Every educational institution finds a way to get the mix they want.

I went to Vassar and it’s the same thing there - male applicants get extra points because otherwise the student body would be 80% female.

SC is eliminating AA, and the DOJ will enforce it should there be any GOP administration.

Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton both HATE affirmative action.

Unless of course of course AA applies to genuinely stupid white men and women who get to fail upwards - ie Bush, Trump, Kushner, Gaetz, Palin, that QAnon cunt etc etc etc etc.

-of course

Just out today. US DOJ is suing Yale.

[quote]Poor and non connected white kids have it harder than everybody else

This is so true. Jone Rivers said that she felt bad for the upper middle class kids (parents that made 500K or so) a year vs. ultra 1% they had to go to school with because the middle class kids only had house keepers who came once a week while the others had live. It's a joke, but it's so true at the same time.

[quote] The suit filed Thursday alleges the university favors some applicants, including those who identify as Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander and some Asian subgroups such as Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian and Vietnamese. Other Asian students, and White students, are penalized, according to the complaint.

Basically, they’re saying it’s White and East Asian (cf., in common usage, Southeast Asian and South Asian) applicants who are harmed.

Does that mean that the other 57% is Asian?

43% of white students, R69. That’s not the same as 43% of students being white.

Surprising it's probably going to be rejected in CA.

Private colleges have to promote institutional continuity or else the rich and connected will take their children elsewhere. Fine for now, but down the road? Harvard is still the richest due to gambling with derivatives, but it has not had the most donations in twenty or thirty years owing to its greater reputation for meritocracy, which leads to a lot of professor types going there - people unlikely to lead donations down the road. Yale, Princeton, and Stanford get more alumni donations these days. Meritocracy should be the business of public universities.

r72, If Princeton gets more alumni donations than Harvard these days (and I doubt that's true, since Harvard is a much larger school with a greater number of alums than Princeton does), then it's because everyone who went to Princeton really loves the place, which can't be said for Harvard.

Princeton also has the lowest percentage of legacy admissions within the Ivy League, and a whopping 52% of its incoming class in 2019 identified as some type of minority (meaning non-hispanic whites were a minority among freshmen). Plus, IIR 28% of incoming freshmen were in that "first in their family to go to college" category (there's a name for it, but I can't remember what).

So they're actually out-affirming everyplace.

R72 says "Yale, Princeton, and Stanford get more alumni donations these days."

Princeton does indeed have the largest percentage of alumni who donate to the school. They just don't give that much, relatively speaking. The alumni money of the future isn't coming from Humanities grads but from graduates of science, engineering, and technology programs. That's why Harvard is building a new campus largely devoted to science and technology across the river in Boston. Harvard is trying to be more like MIT (despite the fact that MIT is already down the street) in order to assure themselves of a steady stream of alumni giving years down the road.

In terms of donations to endowment, Princeton isn't even on the top ten list

1. Harvard University $1.28 billion

2. Stanford University $1.13 billion

3. Cornell University $743.5 million

4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology $672.94 million

5. University of Southern California $668.33 million

6. Johns Hopkins University $636.91 million

7. University of Pennsylvania $626.49 million

8. Columbia University $603.08 million

9. Yale University $595.89 million

10. Duke University $581.05 million

I was accepted to Harvard out of high school. I was at the top of my graduating class academically, but I was also a resident of Massachusetts (a plus) and the son of an alum (another plus). Harvard sets aside a number of slots for Bay State residents and for the children of alumni. But I was told by an admissions officer that I would have been accepted for my academic achievements alone.

Harvard's class of 2024 has 57% claiming minority racial status, including 24.4% Asian.

Given that whites are a large majority of the applicant pool, all this seems like a tempest in a teapot.

So if whites are 43% of admissions, and 43% of them are legacies, athletes, children of donors, or of faculty and staff, that amounts to 18%, which means 13.5% of them would have lost their place had they had not had these factors. And 16% minorities had these same factors. Which means 9% of the total were minorities who were legacies, children of faculty and staff, children of donors, or athletes (please note that athletes are likely to be WHITE as Harvard is powerful in hockey and swimming, and does not pretend to have any power in sports traditionally dominated by minorities).

So that gives 27% of admissions to legacies, athletes, children of faculty and staff, and children of big donors. I would actually guess that is low for elite colleges.

R75 - being from Mass may be a small plus factor for Harvard, but it can be actually more difficult for the sheer numbers of locals who are more apt to apply to nearby elite schools.

You would have had a much bigger advantage if you applied from Oklahoma or Alabama or 30 or more other states.

Congrats to you - but I don't think the state-residency worked much in your favor. Being a legacy probably helped a lot more - but only if your father donated consistently.

I would think, especially for POC, that if you were top of the class and had all the hard earned credentials to get into Harvard, especially if you overcame some sort of adversity that it might actually give you an advantaged tipping point if there was 1 spot to be between a POC and white student. This is putting the legacy or super donor status aside like Kushner. OR, like Elle Woods did, you could make a admissions video directed by a Copola of yourself in a a bikini with your hot friends and hope for the best.

Only 43 %, I would have guessed more.