It still pays to be able to show a vast preponderance of Harvard grads in your ancestry, and having an African baby-daddy appears to work ~ after all, there simply aren't a lot of them around.
I agree -
Just be careful -
I looked into the “legacy” numbers before - obviously was ready for my response. If you want to see the effect disappear, look at a great State school - like Michigan. Because they need more students - it waters down the effect quite a lot. Yet - almost the same demographic.
I’m not sure how much help Obama needed. For my grad school at USC - we had plenty of the Obama type (we had smart black people too). Harvard would have been “one rung higher” - so some connections, plus a few points for dad, and bingo.
Remember - you start with only about 1,000 Blacks with SAT >1350 combined. 20 per state. So - a few points for connections, a few points for dad, and bingo - 1250 pt Obama is in.
I mean - shoot - from those 1,000 - you need to get all your Drs, all the scientists, most of the military officer types, etc.
People don’t have a feel for just how thin those numbers are. It is as if - the entire USA top level of Blacks - was equal to the graduating class of Princeton. How many guys from Princeton have you met in your life? It is that thin.
You are assuming it helped Obama to get into Harvard because his father went there. Actually, it probably hurt him.
Harvard has a very long memory. There are people who have worked there for decades and Obama’s ‘father’ was most likely remembered and not fondly. He was an embarrassment to the school and had been asked to leave.
Harvard is very liberal. There is much pressure on them to admit minority applicants. The race card will trump an alum’s calling card every time.
I am sure rejected applicants would like to think they were rejected because of legacy issues, and that may happen at other schools, but it does not happen at Harvard - exception being if the library or the boat house is named after your g.g.g.grandfather - although in the latter case Bill Weld was valdictorian of his class and admitted on the bases of his academic record.