When I meet someone who attended Harvard, I always think: “Are you the hardest working kid from your high school? Or, were you born with the right last name? Tell me now so I can save time.” Why do I ask this question? It’s an open secret that there are essentially two Harvards - a merit Harvard and a privilege Harvard and I have a strong preference for the folks in the first bucket.
Here is a question that emerges from this split. If it is true that Harvard admits a substantial fraction of its class based on traits like having an influential parent, alumni parent, or “well-roundedness,” why doesn’t Harvard’s statistical profile suffer? A recent New York Post articles offers part of the answer: Kids with low grades are deferred for a year, and then their data is not included in normal statistical summaries.
The article focuses on a relatively small number of students whose data is hidden, but it raises the bigger question. If Harvard has many categories of students who don’t have perfect scores and grades, then why don’t average scores drop? Many years ago, I reported on research claiming that about 15% of students don’t meet the minimum published standards for Ivy League schools. Maybe it is already factored in there, but it may also be the case that various practices are used to discount or exclude data from kids selected on non-academic grounds.
Bottom line: Meritocracy is a nice ideal that lots of schools pretend to value.
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