Richard,

Your analysis of Golden's book seems spot on, but your analysis of Summer's decision to waive tuition for students whose family income is below $60,000 and of Bok's decision to eliminate early admission has not been.

First, Harvard should spend its time and money trying to identify and recruit able disadvantaged students. The $60,000 mark is high enough that it is starting to subsidize middle income families. It was chosen to make headlines, not because it is sound policy.

Second, early admission does not hurt disadvantaged students. It is not binding, and the bar is much higher, not lower, than it is for regular admits. Early DECISION is pernicious because it rewards middle and upper income students who do not have weigh competing aid offers. The two programs are completely different in intent and effect. The growth of early decision programs was promoted by U.S. News and World Report's reward to schools that have high yield rates.
 

You're right about the sloppiness of Golden's evidence and argument. But his failure to make the case does not mean that there is not a serious problem here, as you seem to suggest. Preferences for legacies within limits may be justifiable but not the further preference for wealth (especially in the form of recent or potential gifts).
You suggest that it may be ok to trade "one admission slot in exchange for $25 million for buildings, professorships, and scholarships." If you are serious, you should support this proposal (made in only half jest by a former Harvard dean). Reserve 10 per cent of the places in the class, and auction them off to the highest bidder. This has the advantage of transparency, but even more important the advantage of an efficient market. How do we know that Stanford might not have done better than the $25 million for that slot for the Bass kid?
 

The one area of preferential treatment in admission to Harvard that no one seems to focus on is the abilty of the children of professors to get in. Many children of professors should not be at the College and would not even be seriously considered if it weren't for the parent. What good does it do Harvard to have such a policy?
At least if it is a wealthy legacy, the College benefits.
It would be interesting to hear from some of the professors who regularly post here i.e. Skocpol, Ryan, Thomas
 

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If we are to question the relevance of course grades and SAT scores, then I'd like to hear some suggestions for a new filtration system. You would prefer maybe a Survivor-esque nature challenge to thin the pool?
 

No one is questioning their relevance; it's Golden's complete and unquestioning faith in them that concerns me. Again and again, they are his sole arbiter of whether someone should or shouldn't get into a specific college.
 

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Censorship! Censorship!

"Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"
--Monty Python
 

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Please forgive all the deletions! I'm afraid that a hacker has started to run amuk here in ouw own little garden of Eden. He had to be purged.
 

It's important to know that Harvard professors have to pay for their children's education, whether or not they are admitted to Harvard.
 

Professor Ryan,
The question wasn't whether Harvard professors had to pay for the tuition of their children who went to Harvard. The question was what you thought about the fact that children of professors were given prefernetial treatment in the admissions process. How do professors reconcile that with any thoughts they might have about preferential treatment of legacies?
 

What preferential treatment to children of professors are you talking about? This is not true for Professors at the Medical school and I don't believe it to be true for Professors at any other Professional School. Are you referring only to Professors in the College? Is it true there?
 

Sorry I seem to have started a different topic. I personally don't like the idea that children of faculty members can receive preferential treatement. It doesn't seem right. I'm also not keen on giving preferential treatment to children of alumni or potential donors.
This said, we do have to understand what preferential treatment means. As I understand it (having served on the Admissions committee once, many years ago), the student has to meet the standards for admission to Harvard before any preferences are put into place. The Admissions Office justifies this by saying that faculty children may be more likely to accept an offer of admissions from Harvard, but I'm not convinced of that.
 

I have to say that I didn't know this. How can this be defended exactly? In spirit, this is exactly the same as the legacy problem.
 

I read the posts that were deleted. The first referenced another review of Golden's book and expressed a preference for their point of view. Annoying to say that on your blog? Sure. But to delete it and say it was a hacker is down right strange. Does that mean this post will be deleted too? You know what they say about cover-ups...
 

The preferences given to children of faculty in admissions, if they actually exist, are in fact much worse than the preferences to children of alumni or donors. If I understand Professor Ryan correctly she is saying that the Office of Admissions will, facing two candidates who have equal merits, chose to extend an offer to a child of a faculty member over someone not so blessed. Why?

It is important to understand the rationale for this to know whether, for example, the same rationale extends to the way in which Professors grade students on a curve. Do the children of their colleagues get prefernce at the top of the distribution of grades too? and if not, why?
 

Now I'm intrigued...wish I had seen the deleted posts....At the time that I served on the medical school admission committee, it was commonplace to give preference to HMS faculty children--not that we admitted anyone that wasn't up to the "standard of admission" (to quote Professor Ryan's phrase--but at the all-important point where we had three or four times as many great candidates remaining in the pool of applicants as we had slots to fill, we were lobbied hard to give those slots to children with HMS-affiliated parents.
 

Trust me, folks—the deleted posts weren't particularly interesting. If they were, I would have left them....just a, uh, postergeist.
 

OK, so the weird thing is -- knowing what we do about the College, why exactly do we want our kids to go here rather than Princeton? If this admissions preference is at work and matters, it is a truly troubling indication of nepotism. If not nepotism, an unwitting belief that kids of Harvard profs will somehow raise the quality of students here. How silly, and lazy.
 

What about the idea that it's just a perk for faculty members, part of building a community rather than just an admissions machine?
 

I am a faculty member who had one child who applied to Harvard, one who did not. The Harvard applicant was admitted and came, graduated magna with highest honors in field and is now in a very good PhD program. Neither she nor I were given any indication explicit or otherwise that she would get in, and I am aware of faculty children who were not admitted. So I would question the premise, beyond Prof. Ryan's assessment of it ("reaching the standards of admission"), that qualified faculty children are admitted at a significantly higher ratio. I assume many exceed those standards.

Unlike many institutions which give a higher level of tuition assistance if the faculty child attends the home university, Harvard's assistance is the same wherever the child goes, a system that allows it to avoid having admissions decisions result in financial inequities.

We had a lot of social contact with my Harvard child's classmates (freshman apple-picking excursions, Thanksgivings, informal advising, basement summer storage center etc.), and my guess is that the greater interaction between faculty and students that is an indirect result of such admissions is part of the appeal to Harvard. I also agree that there should be no particular preferential treatment.
 

As the author of the "deleted" posts, let me say that I'm afraid Richard is throwing fairy dust around. There was no hacker, there was no poltergeist. (Nor was there anything inappropriate in my comments.) What I did was quote from Michael Wolff's review of Golden's book in the Book Review, which apparently contradicts the marketing purposes of this blog. Hence deletion. Go read that review. The point he made is that Golden's framing of the issue assumes a single definition of "merit", epitomized by the high-achieving kid who listens to their parents, gets great grades, high SATs, etc etc. Golden doesn't consider the possibility that that kid is "gaming the system" too -- or that the current bubble economy created around elite schools may have less to do with education and training for a successful life than with social status.
 

I just finished reading the review of Golden's book by Michael Wolf in the Book Review...as you directed. It is absolutely venomous against the system, let alone the book...what parts did you quote no less than three times that we really needed to know about before you finally got to post your watered down version when Richard isn't around to defend himself. Yes, by all means, readers, read Michael Wolf's embittered review. I've never known Richard to be unfair.
 

To Anon 12:12 - Several questions. Why would Richard need to "defend himself" against a debate that doesn't concern him? Indeed, his post of today comments on the debate here, encouraging participation. Personally, I think it's "unfair" for Richard to delete comments merely because they quote another writer's take on the subject matter. And by the way, I believe Wolff's review is more appreciative of Golden's work than was Richard's. If anyone is being unfair, it's you in calling Wolff's review "venomous". And since when does the "System" need protecting via censorship?
 

DELETIONGATE goes all the way to the top, folks. Hookers, hush money, use of corporate jets...it's all here. And when this thing breaks...Katy, bar the door, because the whole blogosphere is gonna go up in one big shit storm. Follow me! Follow me to freedom!
 

Fair questions all, 12:26...and I stand corrected (except for Richard's not being here to defend himself against his accuser)but I like 12:40's approach to the whole matter better...we need to lighten up here...let us leave behind a corrupt system and follow him to freedom! Onward!

Where were we now...a much calmer debate...with no necessity for deletions.
 

I like that approach too, especially if I get some hookers.

El Hombre Deleto
 

Storm the Admissions Office! Who's with me?
 

Forget the Admissions Office, storm the White House!

Oops, just kidding, Dick.