# Legacy colleges represent a discriminatory admissions practice
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 4, 2023, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533 "2023-07-04T03:29:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2023, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/41 "2023-07-06T16:57:13Z")
Inevitably, any “objective” ranking requires distilling a student down to a single number. I personally don’t think student potential can be reduced to single value.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2023, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/42 "2023-07-06T17:01:20Z")
If you can’t distill student potential down to a single value, then you can’t make admissions decisions.
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### Author:  [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2023, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/43 "2023-07-06T17:15:13Z")
What they generally want is variety. If you admitted to a music program only by accomplishment, you might end up with nothing but flutes, or whatever.
They want all the kids to be academically qualified. Beyond that, they want a lot of variety in personality and outlook.
If you have a rigid, transparent set of objective metrics, what you will get is literally all kids who are good at gaming metrics. Shift the metrics, within a few years, its the same kids as before.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2023, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/44 "2023-07-06T17:15:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> If you can’t distill student potential down to a single value, then you can’t make admissions decisions.
Sure you can. It’s more like casting a play, selecting research applications for one of the non-rack-and-stack funding agencies, or hiring for any job I’ve hired for. None of which reduce anyone to a single value.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/45 "2023-07-06T17:30:04Z")
OK, so we’ve got room for one more student in the freshman class. One of them is stronger academically, while the other is a better fit for the culture of the school. Which one do you pick? When you made that decision, you implicitly created a criterion to reduce it to one number.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2023, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/46 "2023-07-06T18:07:07Z")
And that criterion will vary based who is already in the cast/portfolio/team, and sometimes resort to coin flips.
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### Author:  [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/47 "2023-07-07T01:37:20Z")
> [@MandaJo](#):
>
> What they generally want is variety. If you admitted to a music program only by accomplishment, you might end up with nothing but flutes, or whatever.
Elite admissions offices have shown themselves to be incapable of acting in a non-discriminatory manner. Next time the court rules in this, they need to require a transparent formula that does come down to a single point cutoff.
However, it doesn’t have to be limited to just grades and test scores. Subtracting points for applicants who propose to take oversubscribed academic programs is reasonable.
Also, the drama department, and maybe performance art in general, probably needs a different admissions system from almost everything else. This case was about UNC and Harvard, not Juilliard and Curtis.
> [@MandaJo](#):
>
> Beyond that, they want a lot of variety in personality and outlook.
They want a lot, but mostly the freedom to discriminate. Just like a lot of police want the freedom to get false confessions. Knowing this, Earl Warren gave the police clear and detailed requirements for mirandizing. Just telling the police to obey the fifth amendment was not enough. This crowd also needs detailed rules.
> [@MandaJo](#):
>
> If you have a rigid, transparent set of objective metrics, what you will get is literally all kids who are good at gaming metrics.
Totally disagree. Gaming your GPA is orders of magnitude harder than gaming your application by hiring an admissions consultant. It’s the current system, made worse by Roberts’s loophole of writing an essay on the discrimination you’ve faced, that gives you rich admits good at gamification. The New York Times has had several wonderful op-Ed’s on this complex situation, unfortunately behind paywalls:
> **[Opinion | I Teach at an Elite College. Here’s a Look Inside the Racial Gaming...](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/opinion/college-admissions-affirmative-action.html)**
>
> The end of affirmative action will only cause students and parents to get even more creative about gaming college admissions.
> **[Opinion | On Race and Academia](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/04/opinion/race-academia-preferences.html)**
>
> After the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, I have some experiences to share.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/48 "2023-07-07T04:26:42Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> Student admissions should be based on their scholastic achievement and not on past attendance of their parents.
Altho you have a point here, your title-
**Legacy colleges represent a discriminatory admissions practice** I can not agree with, based upon the current connotation of the word discriminatory" / I mean, everything is discriminatory.
Having a better SAT discriminates against those that dont.
Having a great GPA discriminates against those that dont.
Being able to pay (or get a scholarship etc) discriminates against those too poor to pay.
Being able to understand college level work discriminates against those that are to mentally incapable of doing so.
Being a person very talented in college sports discriminates against hose who are poor at sports or handicapped.
But those are more or less fair methods of discrimination.
Is legacy fair? probable not. But is it an _unfair method of discrimination_? No. Anyone and everyone can have a parent who is an alumni. Eben Harvard, True 70% of the legacy were white, but that means 30% were not.
> [@CairoCarol](#):
>
> they must have told my son five or six times that the fact his dad was an MIT grad meant NOTHING, admissions-wise.
>
> The whole family respected MIT for this, including my son who was ultimately rejected.
I wouldnt. Five or six times? Once was enuf. Five or six is rubbing it in.
I also will point out that you can get a fine college education without Harvard, Yale, et al. A srare college degree is fine for just about everything but law school.
> [@PhillyGuy](#):
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> Until I do, I will continue to think straight A+ high school transcripts to be extremely rare.
Not so much, since Honors courses give you a GPA boots, e.e a A in a honors class usually counts as a 5, not a 4. And then once s student is on the straight A track there is great pressure to not give a B. All this crap about straight A is bogus and lies anyway- when I graduated HS (at a school considered elite) there wa sone- count em One A student, and I know her Pottery teacher was pressured into boosting her B (in his mind doing good craftsman work) to A (true artist). She was brilliant and a hard worker, but that does not mean artistic talent. Years later, the A students fill half a line on a page- well over a hundred- and the students were no smarter.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/49 "2023-07-07T07:13:36Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> Is legacy fair? probable not. But is it an _unfair method of discrimination_? No.
Harvard didn’t accept its first African American student until 1847. I don’t know if any current applicants can trace their legacy back that far, but it’s arguably unfair discrimination if they do.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/50 "2023-07-07T11:39:12Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#):
>
> Next time the court rules in this, they need to require a transparent formula that does come down to a single point cutoff.
Why? It’s not like someone with higher grades deserves a spot at Harvard over someone with lower grades.
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### Author:  [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/51 "2023-07-07T13:32:53Z")
> [@Ruken](#):
>
> Why? It’s not like someone with higher grades deserves a spot at Harvard over someone with lower grades.
There is no possibility for Harvard getting the overall most deserving – or Yale, or Chicago, or UNC or Penn State. Some will get students who are wonderful human beings. And psychopaths who are academically strong will go to university somewhere or other, and be cruel to fellow humans there. I don’t believe in most deserving as a concept, but if you could define it, Harvard has no more right to the most deserving than UMass Boston.
What I am against is racial and wealth discrimination in admission to universities that receive substantial funding out of my tax dollars. [Harvard’s response](https://www.harvard.edu/admissionscase/2023/06/29/supreme-court-decision/) to the Supreme Court decision shows no shame in their history of discrimination on the basis of race and parental wealth. They cannot be trusted to even attempt to reverse their past practices without much clearer rules than the Roberts court has imposed.
As for the idea that students whose parents can’t afford to send them to the best high schools should be compensated by giving them a better universities, this helps a few but is on average harmful due to the mismatch issue I documented in past links.
There may be a country, other than the United States, where the strongest universities can be trusted to apply holistic admissions in a racially and economically neutral manner. The U.S. is not that country.
If Harvard and/or UNC want to continue with equal protection violations, and the U.S. Supreme Court continues to rule against reverse discrimination, there is a way. Don’t take federal funds! A few right-wing schools manage to do it, even without billions of dollars in their endowment:
[Statement on Federal Funding - Grove City College](https://www.gcc.edu/Home/Admissions-Financial-Aid/Financial-Aid-Scholarships/Statement-on-Federal-Funding)
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/52 "2023-07-07T13:59:05Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#):
>
> [Harvard’s response](https://www.harvard.edu/admissionscase/2023/06/29/supreme-court-decision/) to the Supreme Court decision shows no shame in their history of discrimination on the basis of race and parental wealth.
Reading that letter, it’s not the kind of thing where I would _expect_ to see any “shame in their history of discrimination on the basis of race and parental wealth.”
> [@PhillyGuy](#):
>
> There may be a country, other than the United States, where the strongest universities can be trusted to apply holistic admissions in a racially and economically neutral manner. The U.S. is not that country.
As I understand it, the US is rather unique in the variety of sorts of higher education institutions that students can choose from. How do you decide which are the “strongest universities”? There are many different criteria that could be used; and the “strongest” may not necessarily be synonymous with the most prestigious or most selective. As @DrDeth pointed out, “you can get a fine college education without Harvard, Yale, et al.”
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/53 "2023-07-07T14:00:02Z")
Gaming the system isn’t a result of having clear admissions criteria. It’s the result of having unclear admissions criteria. If you actually know what sorts of students you want, and set up your criteria to favor the students who actually meet what you actually want, then when you get those students, it’s not “gaming the system”, it’s the system working as designed. The problem comes when you don’t know exactly what you actually want, and so come up with some vague admissions process that doesn’t match what you want because you can’t even see what that is, and then some clever students (or clever consultants) figure out what it is you’re actually rewarding (which isn’t what you want to be rewarding), and just do that.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/54 "2023-07-07T14:43:46Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#):
>
> As for the idea that students whose parents can’t afford to send them to the best high schools should be compensated by giving them a better universities, this helps a few but is on average harmful due to the mismatch issue I documented in past links.
Harvard’s Black 6-year graduation rate is only about a point off from their overall rate. That doesn’t look like harm.
And they aren’t being “compensated”, just like my job candidates aren’t when we pass over yet another Wharton MBA vs someone with experiences that we hadn’t even imagined asking for that complement the current, changing team.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/55 "2023-07-07T14:46:39Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> The problem comes when you don’t know exactly what you actually want, and so come up with some vague admissions process that doesn’t match what you want because you can’t even see what that is
I.e. how nearly every other process works for humans in non-cog-like roles. Other than some government processes that I wouldn’t wish on anyone else.
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### Author:  [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/56 "2023-07-07T15:39:03Z")
> [@Ruken](#):
>
> Harvard’s Black 6-year graduation rate is only about a point off from their overall rate.
That’s only one of many possible measure of mismatch.
In one of his articles touching on this, Brown University Professor of Economics Glenn Loury uses the word heartbreaking to describe how he feels, as a Black man, to see certain undergraduates struggling to succeed in math-intensive parts of the curriculum. Doesn’t mean those Ivy League admits failed to graduate in six years.
And [this isn’t just](https://dashboard.myfuturenc.org/postsecondary-completion/postsecondary-completion-rate-4yr-public/#:~:text=By%20race%2Fethnicity,and%20Black%20(63%25)%20students) about the Ivy League:
> [@](#):
>
> Asian students who began postsecondary education at a UNC System school had the highest postsecondary completion rate: 88% completed a degree or credential within six years. White students (83%) had the next highest rate followed by Hispanic (73%) and Black (63%) students.
Consistent with the above, preferences are generally greater for Latino than Black high school students. I can’t find good overall statistics for it, but Sotomayor gives an example of this, from the University of Texas, in [her dissent on page 33](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf):
> [@](#):
>
> the use of race helped increase Hispanic representation from 11% to 16.9% (a 54% increase) and African-American representation from 3.5% to 6.8% (a 94% increase).
Some of those students struggling, and changing to lower-paid majors, before graduating at Ivy League Brown, would be thriving at the University of Texas or UNC. I’m almost sympathetic to the racially discriminatory UNC admissions people, because they might not feel a need to discriminate if the Ivy League didn’t steal away students who would better match the UNC academic programs. And then, many of those failing to be admitted to UNC Chapel Hill, would do well at North Carolina State.
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### Author:  [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/57 "2023-07-07T15:48:46Z")
Very funny how the personal opinions of the same handful of black conservative academics always get elevated to such importance when it comes to affirmative action. Popular opinion in general doesn’t matter, this is a matter of jurisprudence. But oh these same 5 dudes keep saying it’s heartbreaking and that matters.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/58 "2023-07-07T15:55:19Z")
> [@PhillyGuy](#):
>
> Some of those students struggling, and changing to lower-paid majors, before graduating at Ivy League Brown, would be thriving at the University of Texas or UNC. I’m almost sympathetic to the racially discriminatory UNC admissions people, because they might not feel a need to discriminate if the Ivy League didn’t steal away students who would better match the UNC academic programs. And then, many of those failing to be admitted to UNC Chapel Hill, would do well at North Carolina State.
I went to a school that was almost entirely comprised of science and engineering majors with very few programs outside that. Some students would enroll there thinking that a science or engineering major was for them, but discover a year or two in that it’s absolutely not. Usually part of this discovery involved having gotten poor grades in the core classes. That kind of academic record can make it difficult to transfer to another school of comparable reputation. So we used to call students in this situation as having failed in, rather than failed out. (A few ended up at the local community college, though that’s not the place they intended to go.)
The few times I was asked if someone should attend my alma mater, I advised them to find another school with a variety of programs both in and out of the technical fields, so they could at least transfer within the university.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/59 "2023-07-07T22:11:45Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#):
>
> I don’t know if any current applicants can trace their legacy back that far, but it’s arguably unfair discrimination if they do.
It is generally your parents, so 1847 is not a good argument.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2023, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legacy-colleges-represent-a-discriminatory-admissions-practice/986533/60 "2023-07-07T22:16:44Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> It is generally your parents, so 1847 is not a good argument.
Okay, but if your parents were admitted because their parents (your grandparents) were graduates, etc., it could still trace back to an era of overt discrimination.
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