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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.

Doesn't legacy admissions have a racial impact since the racial mix of students has been changing so rapidly? That is, white applicants benefit the most simply because the % of white Harvard alums (relative to all alums) is greater than the % of white applicants (relative to all applicants)...but in a steady state system where race was the same over a couple generations, that impact would cease. I'm not a fan of legacy admissions in general but if you wanted to keep it in place, the fairest way might be to silo its impact within each racial group, so that a white legacy has an advantage over non-legacy whites but no advantage over non-legacy applicants of other races.

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.

I guess I don't agree with your idea that this is a reflection of the idea that it's a good thing to go after rich white people. The problem with analyzing college admissions to this point is that there's no one else to go after. By percentage, who else can you rag on? There's just no other demographic that's been going to college as long. In 2016 at least 57% of college students described themselves as white, which has fallen since the 1976 level of 84% [1]. And college has always been for the well-off, not the poor.

If you want to you could figure out how many white ALDC admits would get in if treated as African American non-ALDCs; I'd encourage you to then normalize across high school quality and expense, too. And looking at the lot of Asian-Americans in US college admissions is certainly important right now. For a quick peek, just look at Caltech's admits, since they have historically ignored legacy and race unlike everyone else.

But again, who else are you going to rag on if you're going to investigate the effect of legacy admissions and prof's children admissions? Due to the historic legal structure of the US it's just going to be really white. Fortunately for us ladies, men have daughters at a relatively high rate and we're allowed to go to college now so we can now benefit from unfair advantages too. (Again, it's instructive to look at Caltech, which did not admit women until the early 1970s and famously did not hire Emmy Noether because she was female. The percentage of women students has risen steadily as access to math and science education has become more available to the girls of the college-going classes of the US.)

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98

> look at Caltech...[who] famously did not hire Emmy Noether because she was female

What? I'm having trouble finding a reference. I know the story that she faced discrimination and Hilbert vouched for her, but that was in Germany. I didn't know there was any from Caltech.

Why is it assumed that we have to rag on people? If we are ragging on people, what standards are we using? Obviously it's still ok to get artificial help to the top if you're in some groups, but not in others. That means it's ok to be discriminated against if you're in some groups, too.

Speaking of Caltech, female applicants have 3x the chance of getting into Caltech as male applicants[0]. It's almost certain that qualified males aren't getting in because they're males. That was the problem with Emmy Noether: she was qualified but couldn't get in because she was female. If the discrimination right now is against the males, why are we talking about Emmy Noether being forced to audit classes in 1903 on the other side of the world?

If we assume "equality" in the groups of male and female students applying to Caltech for 2016-2017, meaning they both should have the same acceptance rate, then 134 seats were taken from the guys because they're guys and given to the girls because they're girls. Maybe you can argue the girls only apply if they're really serious, but 3x?

[0] - https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-178-Caltech.html...

edit: here's a better data source: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=caltech&s=CA&l=93&id...

It shows 3x admissions advantage for females with over 2x enrollment advantage. Everybody's saying they don't do affirmative action but it's hard to believe at least for gender. But the racial demographics are extremely different from Harvard's so maybe the female applicant pool really is 2x as likely to be qualified. I need more data.

I was an undergraduate at Caltech and helped with some admissions work. There is no bias towards admitting females. The student body is extremely small (200-250/year) and the student pool extremely self-selective. The 4 year graduation rate is troublingly low enough (people will transfer or drop out) that admissions will not admit people if they can’t meet the academic bar (and the curriculum is structured so that the first 1.5 years regardless of major require the same classes). They do however emphasize top-of-funnel outreach for women to try to get more to apply.

> There is no bias towards admitting females./ They do however emphasize top-of-funnel outreach for women to try to get more to apply.
The 266/267 ratio of acceptance letters is probably too good to be true, it's hard to believe they could so perfectly calibrate this outreach program.
If the school is spending money recruiting females and not males it demonstrates they're more valued even before starting the application process. That's a bias, and I know at my school that bias which started before the application process extended all the way through the 4 year experience and even into the hiring process where companies have internal numbers to hit.
I have a lot of respect for Caltech and they deserve credit for not taking part in the widespread anti-Asian discrimination.

There’s too much focus on credentialism. Personally, I think it’s fine to have mediocre rich people at Harvard.
If anything, it’s better for society to get smart people in other colleges. Too much brainpower is wasted on the investment banking and consulting mills that the Ivy League is sending people into these days.

Top universities have top funding and research that if it meets top talent can be extremely useful for the world.

Usually the figures about admissions are undergrad focused. Are Ivy League schools doing legacy admissions for graduate research?