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by tzs 2882 days ago
Usually when organizations have diversity programs and goals, it is racial or pseudo-racial diversity they are talking about, or gender diversity, or both of those.

To achieve such goals, for every 1000 students a school should have about 127 black students, 178 Hispanic students, 613 white non-Hispanic students, 48 Asians, and 34 others.

About 290 of every 1000 Harvard students are legacy admissions. Legacy admissions are overwhelmingly white.

My point was that Harvard can admit those 290 legacy students without affecting its racial diversity easily, because fully diverse Harvard would have 613 non-Hispanic white students per 1000 students. They could arrange that every legacy admission who would not have made it but for being legacy displaces another non-Hispanic white student, so had no affect on racial diversity.

I would not be at all surprised if among the white applicants Harvard has enough from each income level that they could even make it so each legacy admission that would not have made it if not legacy is displacing a non-legacy who is white and in the same income range.

1 comments

Additionally, if a school admits an increasingly diverse mix over time, this should should impact the legacy admissions to become more diverse over time.
The legacy admissions will create a dampening effect on diversity, averaging it out with whatever it was 30 years ago.