Well, this Princeton piece (not a scientific study, just a voluntary survey from what I can tell) considers only the SAT scores of the incoming students. It didn’t look at grades, it didn’t look at ECs. And yes, the voluntarily reported SAT scores of legacies were slightly higher than the averages for non-legacy students. However, the non-legacy group contains all of the students who grew up with parents who lacked college degrees, almost all of the students who were low income, more students who were URM, and probably more students who were recruited athletes of the type who were given slots (vs just tips.) Given that the non-legacy group contains all these other groups, I’m surprised the SAT gap is as small as it is.
But again, if the legacy boost is as inconsequential as some people believe, it won’t matter when it goes away.
Really? I don’t know the legacy numbers at Harvard. I think Athletes are about 20%. Is legacy representation that high? Are there other schools with similar representation?
Population growth explains a lot of it, then an increase in the proportion of students going to college has also increased.
I’m not sure what time frame you mean when you say yesteryear, but there has been roughly 33% population growth since 1990.
Also back in the day, admission to Harvard and other prestigious schools was definitely not only for those who were ‘smart’, or those with high academic stats. How could that be when many of these schools were primarily comprised of only white affluent males?
Not really. Broadly speaking, it is a myth that unqualified students are keeping qualified students out these school.
My personal view is that it’s the same as preferring a kid from ND, or a Tuba player or whatever. Classes are artificially built. It goes hand in hand with holistic admissions. If standards are being met, I think a school can choose from multiple top students however they like.
These schools that people complain (the ones they name) about giving legacy preference are the ones that are need blind. Much worse is a need aware school, legacy preference or not.
The legacy boost IMO is very college specific. For the school I am most familiar with, Yale, the legacy % has been around 12% in recent years, so out of 1,600 students, we are talking about 192. Of that number there are going to be athletes and URMs, stronger hooks than legacy. The admit rate I have from Yale back in 2017 for legacies was 20% vs 7% for all applicants. It was also stated that the legacy pool was as strong as, if not stronger than the general applicant pool.
My take is the legacy boost makes a big difference when legacies are considered vs non-hooked similar background applicants (affluent, well educated households). I doubt they are comparing and choosing between Winthorpe and Billy Ray, more likely Todd.
I have anecdotally heard that my alma mater will count Legacy against an applicant if they apply regular decision vs early. I don’t know if that’s actually true but the thinking I guess is Mom and Dad are making me apply to their school.
OP: I feel for you though from a slightly different POV, that of the parent of kids who ruled out my alma mater. I’d love them to go. They probably won’t even apply. One of them: “I’ve tried so hard to love it and just can’t.”
Welp. Thus dies the dream. The good news is that they have dreams of their own!
True, it can be hard, but it’s often good to remember that social media doesn’t tell the whole story. And that it’s good to be present and not always worry about having the Instagram or Facebook moments…
I had a student years ago (who could have her own kids now, who could be close to college age) who went to Dartmouth. It was where her parents went (and met), her older siblings all went there and her grandparents went there. She didn’t want to go there, but she had to because in their family everyone just went to Dartmouth. She had great grades and got into Dartmouth easily and she graduated and got a good job. I know, what a problem to have. This is a family that had a boat called “The Big Green.” This is an example where sometimes it’s not always a positive thing when parents insist their kids attend their alma maters. Some parents need to realize that their kids aren’t them and their kids might have different interests, abilities, and tastes.
Are you saying it would be a negative on said app, or just not a potential positive? That is a big difference. If you are talking about Penn, they do have relatively new admissions leadership, and this is one of the changes they have made:
Penn’s longstanding definition of a legacy applicant — the child or grandchild of an alum — has not changed. However, Penn no longer implies that legacies should apply through the Early Decision Program to have the best shot at getting in. In addition, Penn has phased out admissions information sessions specifically for legacy families.
What matters is that they are, by and large, dragging down the academic level of the institution.
"Study on Harvard finds 43 percent of white students are legacy, athletes, related to donors or staff
The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled ‘ALDCs’ in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs”"
“In his new book Poison Ivy, Evan Mandery reports that elite colleges typically reserve between 10-25% of their admits for legacy applicants.”
I really wish more schools did the right thing:
“So to be clear: if you got into MIT, it’s because you got into MIT. Simple as that.”
Every Common App and recruitment form (or at least, all the ones I’ve seen) have asked where the applicant’s parents graduated from college. Some ask for graduate school as well.
Would you recommend that applicants just leave it blank? Wouldn’t that be deceptive?
34 was the 25%ile according to the 2022-23 CDS…which tells us very little as only 28% of matriculants reported an ACT score.
So many threads come back to the same issues. This tired one seems to be that some are aghast that there are tens of thousands of students who could succeed academically at Harvard, and that Harvard looks at many factors beyond academic stats to fill their class.
There are plenty of excellent schools that aren’t holistic in their admissions process, both in the US and abroad that people can choose if they prefer that system.