| Legacy means having a family member, usually a parent or grandparent, who graduated from that school. People benefiting from this are going to be disproportionately white. I believe students getting in based on donations is the Dean's interest list or some similar term. Unfortunately, racist policies in the past, such as redlining, made it harder for some groups to build up generational wealth so this group is disproportionately white as well. I do agree that this group is probably small enough to be ignored if it was on its own. If it isn't, they should raise their cutoff for the amount of donations it requires until it is small enough. As for athletics, those are very towards wealthier students. Lots of sports require expensive equipment or facilities to train in that poor students won't have access to. This impacts racial minorities for the same reasons as the above point. > I think it's the large difference in scores by race that cause problems. And if you think it's unfair bc of upbringing.. how is putting them in with way more gifted students the answer This assumes that differences in testing are the result of differences in ability. There are lots of reasons why someone might have lower scores on a standardized test or the SATs that aren't related to how smart they are. The children of wealthy parents are going to have access to better teachers, private tutoring in subjects they have trouble with, test prep, etc. > Blacks are a rare commodity, at least ones that can succeed at Harvard Why do you think this is the case? |