43% of Harvard's White Students are ALDC Admits

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by sanantone, Nov 20, 2021.

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  1. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    Maniac Craniac likes this.
  2. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    Wow…
     
  3. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Anyone else totally unsurprised?
     
  4. not4profit

    not4profit Active Member

    Hmmmm...

    "43% of Harvard’s white students are either recruited athletes, legacy students, on the dean’s interest list (meaning their parents have donated to the school) or children of faculty and staff (students admitted based on these criteria are referred to as ‘ALDCs’, which stands for ‘athletes’, ‘legacies’, ‘dean’s interest list’ and ‘children’ of Harvard employees)."

    Based on the link below, approximately 56% of people accepted are not white.

    https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

    Seems to me that, if only 44% of accepted students are white, and 43% of them are ALDC, that seems like a lot of super highly qualified white kids getting rejected unless they have some kind of hook up. Seems to me like this bodes pretty poorly for most white kids applying to Harvard who don't have some kind of "in."

    I also think its funny that they include athletes in this category since there are so many black kids who only get into schools because they are athletes.
     
  5. Come on. Your ignorance is showing. Especially with your last sentence. The logical conclusion of the article is that there's a lot super highly qualified white/brown/black kids that are getting rejected unless they have some kind of hook up. 16% of Harvard is African American. That means they have 371 African American students admitted. There's 1021 white students. That means there are 439 ALDC students. So even if we assumed that 100% of the African American students were ALDC...it would still be 10%+ less than the total amount of white ALDC students. Granted, all of this should surprise no one.
     
    chrisjm18 likes this.
  6. not4profit

    not4profit Active Member

    Your ignorance is showing if you think Harvard of all schools is not stacking the decks in favor of minority applicants. And if that was the only conclusion of the article we wouldn't see so much emphasis on the white kids in the article.
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2021
  7. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    Correct. But maybe if Harvard didn't admit so many unqualified (nearly 50%) white applicants, they would be able to accept way more "super highly qualified white kids."

    The focus here is not on black athletes. Even so, you have more white kids going to college because of legacy rather than merit. These types of ADLC admissions, which favors white students, are not limited to Harvard University.
     
    Maniac Craniac likes this.
  8. not4profit

    not4profit Active Member

    I completely agree on both counts. I just think it is a bit strange that a school that is so well known for disproportionately admitting minorities is the focus of an article implying that they are favoring whites. The link I pasted above shows that Harvard often admits disproportionately high numbers of minorities (especially Asians) when compared to the representation of races in the U.S. To be clear, I am not complaining about that. I just find this kind of article to not be representative of what is really going on at Harvard, admissions wise. I would also be interested to compare a breakdown of applicant races compared to races of acceptees, but I don't see any applicant data (only admitted).
     
  9. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    At Ivy League schools, the athletes are overwhelmingly White. These types of schools have sports that do not have a lot of Black athletes in high school because these sports are mostly played among rich kids in private schools i.e. polo, field hockey, lacrosse, and rowing.

    The focus is on Harvard because Harvard has been sued at least a couple of times for its Affirmative Action policies. Since White students lost their case, a couple of anti-AA advocates used Asian students for the last lawsuit. If Harvard only admitted students based on merit, there would be far more Asian admits and far fewer White admits.
     
  10. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    One of these things is not like the others. If you're an all-star athlete, you're still earning your own way, even if your way is extracurricular.

    The rest represent a somewhat creepy level of academic incestuousness IMO, but is expected from schools with a large endowment.
     
    sanantone likes this.
  11. not4profit

    not4profit Active Member

    Your first comment: Do you have any actual data to back up this claim you are making? You may be correct, but frankly you have a bit of a history of making broad generalizations on this forum, so please forgive me if I don't take your claims as gospel. Seriously, do you have any data on this or is it just something you made up?

    Your second comment: I have to disagree there. You would need to see what the ratios are of applicants. Just like our prior discussion on women in law enforcement, much of this depends on how many applicants there are in each category. All things being equal, 70% of the U.S. population is white, so most likely the majority of the admits would be white simply based on the numbers. I also noticed that you left out blacks and Hispanics. Wouldn't there also be far fewer black and Hispanic admits as well (based on your logic)?
     
  12. You say that but the math doesn't work out. If my math is wrong then correct it.
     
  13. not4profit

    not4profit Active Member

    My only point was that the article and this thread are focusing on white kids at Harvard being accepted on something other than academic merit (more so than other races), and I think it is ridiculous because Harvard seems to highly favor minorities in its admissions. Of course we can't fully know this without this years application numbers to compare. Unless you can find Harvard's acceptance rate broken down by race for this last year, the best we can do is compare to the bigger U.S. population. Harvard's latest admissions numbers are:

    African American

    15.9% compared to 13.4% of the U.S. population

    Asian American

    25.9% compared to being 6% of the U.S. population

    Hispanic or Latino

    12.5% compared to 18.5% of the U.S. population

    Native American

    1.1% compared to .2% of the U.S. population

    Native Hawaiian

    0.5% -- can't find data on the U.S. population

    Caucasian

    44% compared to 76.3% of the U.S. population

    Based on the article, half of that 44% only got in because they are athletes, or had some other hookup. So, even with a bunch of rich white kids getting in because of their daddies and mommies, white kids are still drastically underrepresented in Harvard admissions, when compared to the broader U.S. population, and compared to most other races. As I said the best way to do this is to compare to application numbers.

    Also, the below tidbit is pretty important as well.

    The below article shows that, from 1995 to 2003, whites at Harvard had an admissions rate was about 1/2 of a percent above Hispanics and 3% below blacks (with Asians below every other group). Hmmmmm... I wonder how low that acceptance rate would be for whites if it weren't for the ALDC applicants? So, yeah, the math does add up. It isn't the big conspiracy everyone wants it to be. Even with the guaranteed acceptance of HALF the accepted white kids, they are somewhere in the middle of the racial pack when it comes to acceptance rates.

    Asian-American Harvard Applicants Saw Lowest Admit Rate of Any Racial Group From 1995 to 2013 | News | The Harvard Crimson (thecrimson.com)
     
  14. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    The study itself. LOL. The study is linked to inside the article. You have a history of foolishly claiming that I am making stuff up even though I have sources. This time, the source was already here for you to read.

    Eliminating every single Black person, including the ones admitted solely on merit, wouldn't open as many seats for Asian students as eliminating every single White ALDC admit. The same applies for Hispanics. LDC preferences were specifically designed to protect seats for WASPs. It's hidden Affirmative Action for White people.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/legacy-admissions-originally-created-keep-jewish-students-out-elite-colleges-2013-10
     
  15. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    In addition to LDC policies originally being put in place because of anti-Semitism, they are still kept in place to keep the money flowing.

    https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/18/day-three-harvard-admissions-trial/
     
  16. not4profit

    not4profit Active Member

    Pfff. There you go again. Next you will be generalizing and telling me about my family history like you did another poster. Clearly you have a particular lens on life that is apparent in your posts and in the threads you create. Good luck with that. It must be difficult to constantly see yourself as the victim despite any evidence to the contrary.
     
  17. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    No personal attacks. I'm giving this thread an extremely short leash from here on in.

    Here's a quick guide to help you out.

    "You're wrong." = Acceptable.

    "You're stupid." = Unacceptable.

    Any questions?
     
    Vonnegut, SteveFoerster and chrisjm18 like this.
  18. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    ..
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2021
  19. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    My oldest son got his Bachelors and Law degree all covered by the college and the graduate school because at the time his mom was the college employee with one of the benefits is free tuition for her and children.
    My brother in law is an IT employee of an ivy league University, he has free tuition as part of the employer provided benefits.
     
  20. smartdegree

    smartdegree Active Member

    If Harvard Extension = Harvard (according to maybe half of the people in this board), then doesn't Harvard U open its doors to everyone without preference?

    If I were Harvard's administration, I could just point this fact out to everyone. Harvard admits everyone. Period. Case closed, no need to debate further ;)
     

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