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Comment by coffeemug | Hacker News Reader

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING DATA IS WRONG. (I foolishly misread a chart. Leaving this up for continuity, but the numbers are completely off.)

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Less than a third of Harvard students come from a household with income greater than $100,000/year. Almost half the students come from households with income between $30,000 and $75,000/year. One in six students comes from a poor family.

Harvard is firmly middle class. The data simply doesn’t support the argument that Harvard admissions is some old money New England conspiracy.

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I'm a little curious where your data comes from, because:

"The median family income for Harvard undergraduates is $168,800—more than three times the national median, according to a recent study."

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/1/25/harvard-income-...

Oh shit. You’re right. I googled “Harvard demographics” and got a nice chart from US department of education. I just looked at it again, and it looks like it’s data for _all_ students in the U.S. Sorry to the OP. I was wrong. I’ll edit my posts in a minute.

Also check out the portion of white students who are legacy admits.

There is the non-elite "meritocracy" and elite finishing school, side by side. Which are the suckers propping up the other? You tell me.

> the portion of white students who are legacy admits

I’m curious to learn more about this. Do you have a good source for this data?

https://qz.com/1713033/at-harvard-43-percent-of-white-studen...

Isn't that practically poverty level on HN? That's like one person making $100K and a spouse making $68K. Don't entry level SWEs make as much by themselves these days? Plus stock options. And ping pong tables.

In SF, maybe. In most places, hardly. And keep in mind that entry level SWEs usually don't have kids that are at the age of heading off to Harvard, so they'd earn that income for a decade or two. That would probably put them somewhere in the range of the average income with their dividends alone.

You seem to start with a tone of disagreement about something, but overall seem to be agreeing with what I said, that in context, around here, $168K is not very much, especially when it, on average, would be more than one earner.

Why do you tell me to "keep in mind" essentially the very point I was making?

And way more than 1/6th of America is part of a 'poor family'. Old money is vastly over-represented in Harvard, and even more vastly over-represented in the backbone of the institution.

EDIT: THE FOLLOWING DATA IS WRONG. (I foolishly misread a chart. Leaving this up for continuity, but the numbers are completely off.)

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No. Only 25% of households in the US have annual income between $35,000 and $75,000. About one in five families in the US is below the poverty line. So middle class students are over represented at Harvard. Students from poor families are only slightly underrepresented, and considering that household income and academic achievement are correlated, it’s actually a testament to their efforts to have socially conscious admissions. The facts do not support your argument. On this you are simply wrong.

Their purpose wouldn't be a monopoly but maintaining their disproportionate influence niche from family status. It is to get the legacies in. Regardless of the rightness of my assessment it wouldn't be a conspiracy as it isn't illegal.

It is legal to influence the instituions themselves with money as they have ownership of all resources involved. The admissions scandal demonstrated the difference quite well. Of course the admission has other unspoken reasons for wanting them - contacts for tbeir network and their own pride and flatrery about "cultural worth". Stupid human social trick stuff of skewed priorties.

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