
Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard [pdf] - ibobev
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf
======
_edo
Table 5 and 6.

If you're a random (non-ALDC) African American in the 30-40% (4th decile)
range for academics you have the same chance of getting in as an Asian
American in the top 10%. They each have about a 12% chance.

> Our model of admissions shows that roughly three quarters of white ALDC
> admits would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs.

If we're looking at how group membership affects acceptance rates, why not ask
how many white ALDC admits would get in if treated as African American non-
ALDCs? Why not ask how many Asians would get in if treated like Hispanics? Why
not ask how many African Americans would get in if treated like Asians? The
whole paper looks like a reflection of the cultural value that it's a good
thing to go after rich white people, a bad thing to go after anybody else.

The interesting comparison is in Table 6 Panel B: White LDC vs African
American non-LDC. For the top 60% academically just being black carries about
as much advantage as being in the elite 4% (roughly) of white people who have
some form of deep connections to the school. If you're in the bottom 40%
you're better off being white with connections.

~~~
xenocyon
Socially we are conditioned to not question legacy admissions, while being
very critical of affirmative action. Your comment is an example of this.

Consider: Table 6, which you cited, shows that legacy dunces (3rd decile) have
a better chance of getting into Harvard than academic toppers (top decile) who
aren't legacies. Yet you chose to focus on the much smaller gap between admit
rates of African Americans and Asian Americans.

~~~
_edo
Table 6.

The numbers you pointed out:

White LDC 3rd Decile: 16.67% White non-ALDC 10th Decile: 15.27%

The "much smaller gap" that I chose to focus on:

African American non-ALDC 4th Decile: 12.76% Asian American non-ALDC 10th
Decile: 12.69%

3rd vs. 10th decile in one case is worth an academic paper with 3 authors
collaborating from 3 different universities. Plus their associations with NBER
and IZA.

4th vs 10th decile in the other case is something I was socially conditioned
to see and is not worth focusing on at all.

I think that if the study's authors had completely messed up a spreadsheet and
replaced the numbers for the White LDC/White non-ALDC columns with the numbers
from the African American non-ALDC/Asian American non-ALDC columns, you would
suddenly find those numbers to be troubling.

------
akhilcacharya
I did my undergrad at a school with very relaxed admissions requirements and
never got into any schools that use “holistic admission” like Harvard (or for
that matter Duke, where I got rejected) does.

It’s clear to me that any attempt to make these admissions criteria is doomed
to fail because *there is no good definition of “qualified”, and there can’t
be. I’d wager if you dropped any 75th percentile student from NC State at MIT
they’d probably perform well enough to graduate. Not 5.0, but with enough grit
they’d do it.

I think more people should accept that all selective admissions is at some
level social engineering. Making it more “equal” is a noble goal - but it’s
still social engineering. These efforts would be better spent improving
institutions that lead to actual class mobility rather than arguing whether
20% or 30% of Asian applicants to Harvard should get in for nebulous reasons.

~~~
mav3rick
I've worked with both MIT and NC State grads and in all 3 cases MIT was far
ahead. Now whether it was the CS program that was better or the raw smarts of
the grads or both, I don't know.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Can you expound on this? In what way were they "far ahead"? Under which
circumstances?

I went to NC State, for the record. Am I just "far behind"?

~~~
mav3rick
Sure, MIT grads knew many general CS and systems concepts more in depth than
their NCSU counterparts. They would also finish their artifacts way faster
than the NCSU grads. This is just anecdata and may or may not reflect the
average grad quality from both these schools.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Well, thanks for your candor in looking down on 99.7% of Americans. Usually
people don’t say the quiet part loud.

~~~
mav3rick
You asked my experience and I told you with a disclaimer. You clearly aren't
interested in it, rather than some platitudes like "everyone is the same".
Again, I have no personal grudge against you or NCSU or other state schools.
For that matter NCSU has a good systems program from what I hear.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Your original reply was not really a material response to my point about
social engineering at all - you just said folks at MIT are superior in a
direct comparison. It's hard not to take away from that a direct attack on
average folks like me, but I will say this - I'm not at all surprised.

~~~
mav3rick
I qualified my response saying it's anecdata. Your responses clearly try to
undermine the top engineering institutions, I provided a counter.

------
Retric
The critical factor when considering these numbers is schools chose metrics
that fit their desires not the other way around.

The direct weights given to each category is only part of the story, it’s also
where the breaks exist within each category. Allow more people to hit rank 1
in a category directly reduces the impact of that category. Basically, does an
academic 5 start at 27 and below ACT or 25 etc etc.

~~~
xiaolingxiao
THIS. schools have mandates on revenue, for T1 research place like Harvard 1/3
is from tuition and 1/3 from alum donation, so that’s wealthy kids, and
incentive for their parents to donate. Overtime schools realize there are
polite metric to measure for wealth and likelihood of parents donating, and
use these metrics to hit their revenue mandate. Also recruiters come to Ivies
looking for cultural fit, so you have to serve up a certain kind of product
(people) to appease your recruiters

~~~
extra88
I don’t know about the whole University but only ~25% of the operating budget
of the Harvard school that includes Harvard College comes from students
(tuition, room, & board) and that has been on a decline as more and more of
admitted students receive financial aid.

Donations used directly for operations is way, way less than 1/3rd. A little
over half the operating budget comes from interest on the endowment, I don’t
know how to figure how much of that can be attributed to donations rather than
investments, patents, etc.

~~~
xiaolingxiao
Ah my mistake, I meant to say proceeds on endowment. The development office is
always hounding people for more gifts though

------
abhisuri97
It's refreshing to see a statistical analysis that is free from the whole
"affirmation action" rhetoric that's posted in articles about this case.
Though I always had a general sense that ALDC's were admitted at a higher
rate, I never knew that it was this high.

~~~
mieseratte
Did you not read the paper? They make direct comparison to AA in the first
paragraph.

~~~
sappapp
No it does not. I just reread the opening paragraph three times and there is
no comparison being made to AA. Did you not read the paper?

~~~
maneesh
From the second paragraph of the introduction:

"The ongoing debate about the use of _affirmative action_ in college
admissions has also drawn attention to the impact that other admissions
preferences have on the racial composition of college students"

~~~
jessaustin
Observing that lots of people are concerned about affirmative action is not
the same as advocacy _for_ affirmative action. Observing and even criticizing
discrimination in favor of white applicants is _also_ not the same as advocacy
for affirmative action.

------
jimbob45
There was no reason to single out whiteness among ALDCs (athletes, legacies,
Dean's interest list, and children of staff). This seems like it's trying to
lie with statistics.

~~~
octonion
They're overwhelmingly white, and the lie is pretending otherwise.

~~~
bksenior
Yea, but the point is that its not necessarily causal. It would be like
looking at people who died of cancer and determining weight-loss as one the
best correlated culprits to ID it. It would probably catch a ton of people who
were really sick, but it seems to ignore some of the deeper casualties.

The white thing certainly is problematic culturally, but it's not REALLY the
problem its more of a symptom of previous power choosing future power.

~~~
kaitai
I agree with you, overall. So why dance around it? In this country (the US),
white people by law got to win more often than others. In India and China and
other places other rules were in place. Every place has its rules, and in
most, as you put it, previous power chooses future power. With our weird "one
drop" laws in the US affecting everything from voting to banking access to
property rights to mortgage rates to schooling, race and ancestry are
inextricably tied to that in the US. Ruby Bridges only had her 65th birthday
this Sept 8. She's younger than my parents.

I think it is utterly fascinating to watch the world change and watch morals
and mores change, but still see power reconfiguring, like mercury falling into
a groove, to maintain power and bend law to its service! And the
naive/idealistic among us say oh, we'd never do things like our ignorant and
unenlightened ancestors. We don't see race. We don't see color. We're a pure
meritocracy, with advancement ruled only by your access to the best schools ;)

~~~
onetimeposter1
Except in the US, in spite of the historically large majority white
demographic makeup of the country, we have done more to be welcoming to other
groups in recent history than virtually any other country on Earth. Look at a
chart listing salary in America by country of origin. That chart tells the
story of a country that gives people from all over the world opportunity to
succeed.

------
thesausageking
This is a great example of beating numbers to fit the author's narrative. Take
this statement:

> The advantages for athletes are especially large, with an average admit rate
> for recruited athletes of 86%

Athletes at Harvard are recruited by coaches who look for students who are
good athletes and also will be admitted. They know what the admissions
committee looks for and won't recruit any student who doesn't have a strong
chance of getting in.

I'm sure recruited athletes have an advantage, but saying it's "especially
large" because a pool of applicants hand picked by coaches have a high admit
rate doesn't make any sense.

For the record, I believe colleges like Harvard should stop giving a boost to
legacies and athletes. But we need to a have fact-based discussion about it.
Papers like this pretending to be research that are really op eds, don't help
anything.

~~~
WillPostForFood
_I 'm sure recruited athletes have an advantage, but saying it's "especially
large" because a pool of applicants hand picked by coaches have a high admit
rate doesn't make any sense._

They are doing more analysis than you suggest. They are looking at Athlete
admits, and comparing their scores in other categories like academics, and
noting they are much lower than other admits. I.e., the paper is not just
looking at admit rate.

 _Recruited athlete admits are universally weaker than non-ALDC admits on
these ratings. This is not surprising, given that we know athletes are
stronger on the athletic rating. But for some race and rating combinations,
the differences are striking. At most, 28% of white athlete admits receive a 2
or higher on the academic rating. In contrast, 89% of white non-ALDC admits
receive a 2 or higher on the academic rating. 78% of Asian American non-ALDC
admits receive a 2 or higher on the extracurricular rating, while at most 12%
of admitted Asian American athletes receive a similarly high extracurricular
rating._

