A Raw Look at Harvard’s Affirmative Action For White Kids

A few days ago a team of researchers published a paper about Harvard’s admission policies. In particular, they looked at affirmative action for four different categories of freshman admits: athletes, legacies, “dean’s interest,” and children of faculty. These are referred to as ALDC admits.
The question at hand is how many applicants who were otherwise unqualified were admitted because of their ALDC status. This is usually shown as a percentage or a distribution, but I think it’s useful to show it as a raw number too. For those who want to follow along, here’s an example for white applicants taken from Table 10 of the paper:

Total ALDC admits: 2,179
Percent who were otherwise qualified: 26%
Number of unqualified applicants who were admitted as ALDC: 1,612

Here are the numbers for all applicants:
It turns out that more than 40 percent of Harvard’s incoming white students from the classes of 2014-19 benefited from their ALDC status compared to about 15 percent for other ethnic groups. As a result, 1,612 otherwise unqualified whites were admitted, triple the number of every other group combined.
Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone complain about affirmative action for black or Hispanic students crowding out better qualified white students. Whatever sort of affirmative action Harvard may have for marginalized groups, the raw numbers come nowhere even close to the preferences they already give to white applicants. And needless to say, there’s no reason to think that Harvard is unique in this regard. This is standard stuff at elite universities across the country. If there’s anyone being screwed by affirmative action, it sure isn’t white kids.