[cs137]

> Over 40% of white students at Harvard are side-door admissions (legacy, donors, children of faculty, etc.).

I'm sure it's over 40%. It wouldn't surprise me if it's 70. There are a lot of side doors.

My information is dated, but as of circa-2008, the Ivies were including ZIP code and paternal (but not maternal) profession in their predictive modeling. The interviews (which are evaluative, even when people say they're not) are also driven more by class markers than academic factors.

> This is especially true for minority admissions. For the most part, Harvard won't admit lower-class African Americans; they'll select from a much smaller pool who have already moved into the power networks. That's important for maintaining power networks now that the DEI movement means minorities will likely e.g. serve on corporate boards.

This. Which is why I get so angry about right-wing populism. Yes, DEI initiatives mostly come from a place of insincerity. Corporates care about more about making the elite look more palatable than changing how it actually governs, and the minorities being accepted into the outer fringes of the (still inbred at heart) corporate elite will be discarded the minute they are no longer needed. But, nevertheless, the causes (racial, social, and gender justice) from which "wokeness" sprung are still quite laudable and necessary. The fact that we've allowed insincere corporate assholes to carry a banner on these issues is a travesty... because, while they don't know it, a lot of the right-ish populists are motivated by justified anger at the corporate system... and for us on the left to say that they're actually motivated by "anti-woke" racism does no good for anyone.

[recyclelater]

Thank you for this. I’ve tried explaining this to many of my peers and family but even now, this viewpoint is considered bigoted by many, at least in major metro areas on the west coast. I think part of the problem is people are responding to the messenger (the right) rather than the message.

[frognumber]

It's 43%. You can do a web search. It came up in legal discovery for a perfectly reasonable discrimination law suit.

It distorts things a lot.

* Coveted non-ALDC slots are that much more limited and exclusive. Harvard looks harder to get into.

* Since close to half of the white slots are pre-stuffed, that makes the remaining ones that much harder to get into. That, in turn, leads to extreme affirmative action and no slots for Asians.

... and so on.