> will it still be worth the price of admission?

Definitely. Will it still be the same value you're getting? Perhaps not.

Notably, some schools like MIT already don't consider legacy, and are still worth the price.

Because MIT is more of a technically school, not a networking school. Networking schools are more likely to be business schools.

I doubt that the mixture of rich and smart kids actually happens that much. I didn’t go to an ivy, so I can only speculate. But I imagine the rich kids hang out with each other and the poor smart kids hang out with each other.

Not an Ivy, but at Stanford, they seem to mix.

I think the argument is worth considering. At the same time, it seems easier in the age of internet for kids of merit to attract sources of funding, and I expect funding will still find their way towards massive untapped concentrations of merit.

I agree with that assessment and have always considered the criticism of donor/legacy admissions as simple jealousy. Nothing wrong with taking some donors who are going to open up opportunity for regular students, even though I personally wouldn't want to be one of those kids with rich donor parents.

The bigger flaws with Ivies and Stanford (but imo not MIT or CMU) are in how they don't necessarily pick the regular students based on merit either. I went to a top high school and saw many classmates go to those; most of them were about average but managed to pad their resumes or play some diversity card, while most of the real gems went elsewhere. I really thrived going to UC Berkeley and think it was my best option. Still, it was obvious how the neighboring Stanford uni had way more money and connections floating around for the number of students, meaning less need to fight over resources (on the flip side, Cal taught me how to fight when needed).

I don't have problem with private institutions like Harvard giving preferential treatments to its legacy. However, I think they should give up some portion of their tax advantaged status as the result.

There is at least one interesting study that tried to test this. They took students who were admitted to prestigious universities. They tracked those who attended as well as those who attended "lesser" schools instead. They found no real difference in success later in life, so it may be confusing cause and effect. People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school.

The one caveat that did get a benefit were low socio-economic students, who did see a measurable difference in success. That's a class you didn't mention in your post. The thought is that it's precisely due to the network effects.

Can you link to the study?

I'd be curious about how success is defined here. Career is a pretty narrow lens to define it by so I'd hope for something more expansive.

Many of the benefits of having friends in high places are outside of traditional career ladder. The expedited (insert annoying process here), the vacation you're invited on, the unintentional influence you have on some big thing because you happen to be an ear to the decider, etc etc.

There's been a few studies. [1] is one framed in economics, so it measures earnings. You're right, though, that earnings is probably an overly blunt measure of success at best. I think the difficulty in measuring quality of life statistics is that much of it is difficult to quantify, so studies fall back to easily quantifiable metrics.

Edit: [2] expands the measures to include educational attainment and family outcomes. Reference [3] relates to socio-economic class, while [1] relates to race/ethnicity. [2] was the one I had in mind during my original comment.

[1] Krueger, A., 2012. Estimating the Effects of College Characteristics over the Career Using Administrative Earnings Data Stacy Dale Mathematica Policy Research.

[2] Ge, S., Isaac, E. and Miller, A., 2022. Elite schools and opting in: Effects of college selectivity on career and family outcomes. Journal of Labor Economics, 40(S1), pp.S383-S427.

[3] Dale, S.B. and Krueger, A.B., 2002. Estimating the payoff to attending a more selective college: An application of selection on observables and unobservables. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), pp.1491-1527.

Earnings is probably a reasonable proxy for something like a business school. I'm not sure it's great for a liberal arts college. Way back when, I looked at some of this stuff and you're right that figuring out what outcome(s) to fit too is challenging. Undergrad GPA is pretty clearly not what you want either but generalized career or life success is pretty hard to quantify.

>People get into prestigious universities because they know how to be "successful" and are not necessarily successful because they went to the prestigious school.

It also depends on what the "lesser" schools are. I expect that if someone missed out on the significantly random admissions lottery to get into Harvard but were admitted to Dartmouth, Cornell, or Williams (or even UMass Amherst) instead, I expect that if they'd have done well at Harvard they'll do just fine.

I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would.

>I expect for the lower socio-economic students, the delta is probably related to being among fellow students who maybe set a bit higher bar than other schools would.

That's one explanation, but not the guess that the study author's had:

>"One possible explanation for this pattern of results is that highly selective colleges provide access to networks for minority students and for students from disadvantaged family backgrounds that are otherwise not available to them."[1]

[1] Dale, S.B. and Krueger, A.B., 2014. Estimating the effects of college characteristics over the career using administrative earnings data. Journal of human resources, 49(2), pp.323-358.

I could see that from the list of the colleges. Certainly it would be a lot easier to fall through the cracks at Penn State than at more elite schools. It's probably also true that your experience at large state schools in general is probably more a function of what you make of it than smaller, more selective schools.

>It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. This is the one thing they can't get anywhere else. And the legacy students get the prestige and credibility of having gone to a top school, as well as access to hungry students who are eager to take advantage of the opportunities that come their way.

I'm not 100% convinced by this argument, insofar as that kids with wealth and power will probably end up at Ivies anyways (and they tend to make up a large percentage of the students, legacy or not). They've had access to private tutors, went to private schools like Exeter or Andover (or usually at the very least a magnet), and grew up surrounded by other ambitious young people in major power centers like NYC, Boston, or DC.

The number of public school students you meet is just shocking low, even among non-legacies.

Just look at who runs the government at the highest levels—elected, and appointees, both. Heavy representation of Ivies and other elite schools... sure, OK, not surprising, but you look farther back and more often than not, yep, expensive prep school, rich-parish catholic private schools, or (less commonly) a well-into-the-top-1% public high school (usually with selective admission—basically by definition, since you can't realistically do that well, as a school, without it). Notably, the latter option is simply absent if you don't live in the right places, which tend to be rich, expensive ones, near or in a handful of major cities.

If you're in a normal-ass public school—even a good, but not exceptionally good selective-admission one—when you're 16 because your parents couldn't afford the straight-up costs, or relocation & other maneuvers (e.g. résumé padding), to get you into a top secondary school, let alone university—many doors of possibility in your life have already begun to swing shut, whether you realize it or not. It's not impossible you'll get into those kinds of positions despite that, but... your odds are even worse than one might suppose, had one not noticed this tendency.

(of course, it's worse still for certain other pursuits—for some sports and musical instruments, if you're not already damn serious about it and receiving excellent [$$$] coaching/instruction by age 8 or so, then that's already effectively cut off for you as a possible future career. Decide at 14 that's your passion and give it your all? Too bad, you're already too far behind, learn to enjoy participating as a hobby on weekends.)

> The number of public school students you meet is just shocking low, even among non-legacies.

at least at Harvard, a substantial majority are from public schools - generally bougie suburban ones, yes, but still public

This is definitely true, but we can go a step deeper. You have to think about what Harvard's goals are. Maximizing academic success is not very high on the list. The real goals are maximizing career success, donations, and cultural cachet/prestige. When legacies are considered with these goals in mind they make a lot of sense. Legacies are likely to have successful careers due to their parents resources and power, they're likely to donate too because of all the resources they have.

So yes, legacies are the main value add at Harvard type institutions for the non legacy students, but even if they weren't, admitting them aligns with the universities goals. If we're considering the "fairness" of admissions we have to look through the perspective of what admissions is trying to accomplish. We can get into equity vs equality, but at the end of the day accepting legacies does probably maximize Harvards chances of achieving its goals, and many would say that makes the process fair.

Ok, then why have classes at all? Why have any tests? If college is just a country club for young adults, just auction off seats to the highest bidder and be done with it. You’ll get an elite mix of those with the most “potential”. It also has the benefit of full transparency. A seat at Harvard costs $4 million cash. Don’t have it? Too bad you wanted an education but Harvard has to look out for their own interests.

Well, Harvard is going to look out for Harvard but Americans have to look out for our own country. And what is best for the country is not to have a snobby elite club, but to develop the minds of kids to solve the most pressing issues of the 21st century.

Because you need to maintain some pretense that Harvard grads aren’t incompetent. That’s also why they admit at least a few academically inclined students.

Yeah it is almost like the opposite situation described in this thread.

It is the super rich that are hoping their child will become friends with the next Bill Gates. Not the next Bill Gates hoping he can meet a spoiled rich kid

Bill gates was one of the spoiled rich kids. But ignoring that the relationship goes both ways. The legacies want to be surrounded by people who are legitimately smart, high achievers. The smart high achievers want to be able to network with the legacies as they are what gives the institution prestige and make the alumni network valuable. Having only legacies or only meritocratic acceptances would be worse for both groups.

> This is definitely true, but we can go a step deeper. You have to think about what Harvard's goals are. Maximizing academic success is not very high on the list. The real goals are maximizing career success, donations, and cultural cachet/prestige.

Exactly. Harvard is about being the source of the next generation of elites. IIRC, they're far more likely to admit the captain of the high school football team over an otherwise similar nerd with better grades/test scores, because the captain is demonstrating leadership potential and is more likely to be some next-gen big shot.

Is MIT still worth the price of admission? I would certainly say so and they don't do legacy, and I would trust the Princeton/Harvard line on a resume a lot more if it was guaranteed they didn't get in because of non-academic reasons (like parents, sports, etc.)

MIT and Harvard are almost completely different. The promise of MIT, as I understand it, is sort of a ruthless no-compromise academic excellence. The promise of Harvard or Yale is that you are going to be inducted into the American ruling class. These are different goals.

For students, sure, but when being hired (or funded) they all have similar “elite” tier intelligence/potential, nothing about ruling class

In tech, sure, but that’s because it’s tech. How many MIT alums are on the Supreme Court?

Lawyers are certainly an old profession stuck in old ways. I agree

MIT doesn't have a law school.

To be fair, Supreme Court justices didn’t always used to previously be judges. So, you know, there’s a chance…

That goes to my original point, I think.

Might not be crazy to prefer someone with that ruling-class cred/connections (even if not, themselves, of that background) in certain very-lucrative sales positions. Or investing. Or law (especially the varieties that tend to pay very well). Or lobbying. Or just about any halfway-important position in a non-profit. Or the C-suite of a corporation, and more-so the bigger it is.

And so on.

Lots of cases where "oh, I sailed with her nephew one Summer when we were both at Harvard" or just being able to credibly wear any of several "in-group" school colors ties and talk the talk is worth more than 10 extra IQ points or whatever.

>> MIT and Harvard are almost completely different. The promise of MIT, as I understand it, is sort of a ruthless no-compromise academic excellence. The promise of Harvard or Yale is that you are going to be inducted into the American ruling class. These are different goals.

> For students, sure, but when being hired (or funded) they all have similar “elite” tier intelligence/potential, nothing about ruling class

Being suited to "ruthless no-compromise academic excellence" may actually tend to make one unsuited to a whole host of "ruling class" jobs, so maybe they're not so similar after all.

IMHO, people who are personally focused on intelligence (especially when they're "intelligent" themselves) tend to overestimate its value in a lot of endeavors. Even in academic sphere, I understand a lot of extremely successful scientists are intelligent but not that intelligent. Their success comes from their attitude, personality, and other factors.

MIT still has standards and you need to be able to play at a very high level there. Most everyone is too dumb to go there. The others not so much.

Won't more of them just go to state schools and mix with the smart kids there?

The benefit of legacy admissions isn’t just that you can get into Harvard if your dad went to Harvard; it’s the promise that if you get into Harvard, your children will also have a better chance of getting into Harvard. If you’re not a legacy admit yourself, the practice of legacy admissions means that once your family has climbed high enough up the American class ladder to get you in, you’re going to be able to pass that down to your children. Which of course means that ending legacy admission sort of welches on the deal and takes us marginally closer to a low-trust society in which these sorts of implicit promises are worthless.

> will it still be worth the price of admission? I'm not so sure. As an alum of the harvard-for-working-people extension school at the Ivy, I can say it already sure isn't. The education is mediocre, and the administration is more interested in growing admin budgets than any real education whatsoever.

Ve Ri Tas indeed.

What you're paying for is essentially to signal to employer that you've been able to make it into a very select club which is in turn acting as a proxy for intelligence/conscientiousness. As long as the seats are be limited, it will be worth the cost.

True - but if some other place existed which said "We only let in 50% children of harvard students and 50% really smart people", would that place turn out to be more desirable to hire from?

I suspect so... Those connections are perhaps more valuable than great exam grades.

I read the same argument, but that sounds like a much better argument for donation-led places (which is also a thing), rather than hoping for the knock-on effect of legacies.

Legacy is a weak proxy for rich, though. There's a separate entrance for rich-rich kids: donors are evaluated based on the size of their gifts and their ability to continue giving, and their kids are given preferential admission.

This is an easy thing to quantify. MIT does not have legacy admissions, so you can do a comparison between Harvard and MIT to see the effects of legacy admissions on career growth.

There are a lot more Fortune 100 CEOs and Supreme Court justices from Harvard than MIT, so it's an interesting opportunity to look at a correlation / causation question ;)

(Am personally an MIT alum...)

People who are born at a level tend to stay at that level throughout their entire lives. This is just as true for the rich as it is for the poor. It doesn't mean that the rich are good and the poor are bad, it's that people tend to go through the lives they've had prepared before them.

Given that this is the case, legacy admissions should be relics of the past. People who are born with extraordinary access to capital don't need more help.

I think this may have been true in like, the 1920s, when it was very difficult to connect merit and capital but today it’s fairly easy and the justification doesn’t really make sense.

This is correct. I have three friends that went to HBS and got very high paying careers. Being friends with the CEO's son was not why they got the jobs.

They administrators at these schools really tipped their hands when the Full House admission bribery scandal broke.

They were not upset that someone paid to get into a school. They were upset that someone didn't pay them to get into a school.

I think that even without legacy admissions, you'll still get many/mostly wealthy kids there. You can see that in elite institutions which are purely meritocratic.

I'm sorry, but I don't think the argument holds water. Why is the US special here? The easiest counterexamples are Oxford and Cambridge in the UK. Neither have 'legacy' admissions.

*(ceteris paribas; and assuming that the argument is valid...)

the problem is that ALL the powerful kids are concentrated in select few universities, mostly in the Ivy League, NorthEast US.

If Legacy admissions are eliminated, then the powerful kids will be spread about, IMHO, and the network effects will be spread about.

right now the NorthEast US unduly benefits heavily with the concentration of powerful kids, and the network thereof.

____

BTW, right across Harvard is MIT, and I believe they do not factor legacy admissions. Harvard's loss is MIT's gain, so I doubt there is anything to be unduly concerned about. (not to mention the 7 or so other world class research universities a stone's throw from Harvard Yard.)

Harvard will have to just pull itself together by its bootstraps.