Just read an interesting article in the United magazine on my flight back ... about Harvard specifically and Ivy League school's in general, where it's discussed their entry policies. How it makes more sense to let in people who will likely be successful as opposed to just folks with the best grades. Schools that only go with best grades get a lot of graduates who end up doing pretty well ... but no standouts. Using the Ivy League formulas they get a mix which ends up with a fairly large number of stand outs in the professional world. Those people end up being able to make larger donations. Also, the "legacy" folks reward the schools very well for allowing their sometimes mediocre children to attend, the best recent example being George Bush/Yale. Also, athletes who as a group tend to be fairly behind their academic school mates, end up doing well even after finishing their athletic careers because they tend to be very goal oriented and hard working. Jews tend to have restricted access to these schools because, if I recall from the article, they aren't as generous. They also tend not to be such "good fellows," besides "having large ears!"
I was very surprised to find out that these policies still exists. Now of course they have the
problem of the thrifty but academically excellent Asians!
Student applicants are put into different categories where they compete with each other within the categories but not between categories. Each category is allotted a certain percentage of places.
The fact that those Ivy League schools tend to have very large endowments, confirms in their minds, and in the article, that their system
works.