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43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

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21–30 of 144 posts

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#21
post #4

Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?

Well, they pretend to care a great deal for certain groups of people, but numbers like this show who they actually care for. It’s the duplicity that bothers me personally. If they’d just be honest I’d have more respect for them.

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#23
post #4

Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?

They were using racial quotas on general admission to try to correct for the fact their legacy admits were overwhelmingly not representative and not based on merit. Their stated goals of diversity and inclusion are a fiction meant to preserve a classist institution.

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#24
post #4

Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?

If they want to be a tax-free hedge fund they're going to play by society's rules.

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#26
post #18
post #10

> The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled 'ALDCs' in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said.

What’s ALDC? The article didn’t specify.

[A]thlete, [L]egacy, [D]ean's interest list (i.e children of big donors), [C]hildren of faculty and staff

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#27
post #18
post #10

> The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled 'ALDCs' in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said.

What’s ALDC? The article didn’t specify.

[deleted]

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#28
post #4

Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?

Universities like Harvard typically like to market themselves as being the height of meritocracy, going so far as to proudly declare their miniscule acceptance rates. It's hard to square that with a very obvious preference for students from a specific background regardless of merit.

> market themselves as being the height of meritocracy

This is how they market themselves to the general public, but everyone knows that Harvard and its admission policies were designed by and for the ruling class to educate their children and build connections. A Harvard degree would have no value if it selected based on merit alone.

A meritocracy would turn a school like Harvard into a factory for upper middle class people like doctors and lawyers and defeat its purpose. Harvard wants to educate presidents and CEOs.

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#29
post #6

[flagged]

> staff self-declares 98% liberal

Citation? That'll be interesting, asking 10 Americans to define "liberal" will probably result in 12 definitions...

If you want to have a meaningful discussion, what do academic staff say about this selection criteria specifically, and/or affirmative action?

Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)

#30
post #18
post #10

> The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled 'ALDCs' in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said.

What’s ALDC? The article didn’t specify.

Athletes (recruited by the sports teams), legacies (children of alums), Dean's interest list (relatives of donors) and children of faculty and staff.
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