Turns out, Harvard students aren’t that smart after all | Hacker News Reader

Turns out, Harvard students aren’t that smart after all

theguardian.com

> A whopping 43% of white students weren’t admitted on merit. One might call it affirmative action for the rich and privileged [..] benefits that white people are now supposedly [emphasis mine] left out of

Funny how the article is entirely lacking in plain demographics, focusing exclusively on the legacy sub-category. Lets fix that, shall we?

38% of Harvard's undergrads are white: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/s...

And 10% of those are Jewish: https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/harvard-uni...

So Harvard is 28% non-Jewish white, compared to 59% of the US overall (And even that is too much, according to the Guardian. White people must be really dumb! Of course the Guardian didn't bother to include direct proof of this, such as, say, average SAT score of undergraduates by race). And 10% Jewish, compared to 2-2.4% of the US.

But the Guardian is more likely to report that until 43 years ago Harvard limited the number of Jewish students, rather than to honestly report on what the status is today:

How elite US schools give preference to wealthy and white 'legacy' applicants [..] Many institutions, including Harvard, used a discriminatory quota system to limit the number of Jewish students. - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-school...

What does the number of Jewish students at Harvard have to do with anything? Furthermore, it is not safe to assume that all Jewish students at Harvard are white nor that the local Hillel chapter's estimate is accurate. I fail to see your argument.

If I was going to university, I'd rather go to one that had a mix of "smart" people, athletes, and connected people.

School is about making connections just as much as learning stuff. I know the article is supposed to be about some version of "fairness" but I'm not convinced the mix they have is a bad thing for the remaining "merit" based students. It's certainly better than admitting people for irrelevant personal characteristics.

This is a terribly unnuanced take and does not put into context any of the numbers.

Harvard is ~50% white, 43% of which has some status that grants them preference. Further, 25% of that group would have gotten in anyways, according to the article. That means this preference group applies to... ~16% of the overall student body. Whether legacy/athlete/donor preference should be given is a conversation that can be had, but this article is just pathetic.

Also, to come to the conclusion that "Turns out, Harvard students aren’t that smart after all" is disrespectful. I understand the issue is that they're taking spots away from more deserving candidates, but I'd posit the majority of that 75% that wouldn't get in are at least above average intelligence. Not getting into Harvard does not mean you aren't smart.

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