I meant actual.
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Um…do you need us to post CDSs for arbitrary schools to show you?
That’s obvious anyway. It’s reasonable to assume that students who apply TO are applying TO because their scores are lower than ‘average’.
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How much does potential hook stigma matter for potential legacy students not wanting to attend the same college where they got legacy preference in admission?
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Sorry. I was being a little sarcastic. I think it is easy for a computer to identify a parent and flag them as alumni if the school cares to know.
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Oh, okay.
This whole thing makes me very uncomfortable. I have a non-Ivy degree and my spouse has an Ivy degree. That’s part of why. I don’t know what to expect. I just told DS24 to fill out the forms honestly and let it go.
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If the standards are not being lessened for legacy applicants, then why does legacy matter in admission to some colleges at all?
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Succeeding academically at Harvard s becoming easier and easier.
It’s getting in that is getting harder.
https://www.gradeinflation.com/
I don’t think there are any academically elite schools in the US that aren’t at all holistic, but at least there are some that give no preferences to legacies and relatively little preferences to athletes.
As for the “abroad” argument, while, as an American by choice, I am clear-sighted about the strengths and weaknesses of American higher education, I resent the “love it or leave it” rhetoric.
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And that is what they should do. They should apply to the legacy school if they truly love it and see where the chips fall. Same with any school.
20 or 25% of the students may be athletes but not that many are admitted with an athletic hook. The numbers at Harvard and Yale are about 200 of the 2000 freshmen per year, so about 10%. Also, please provide the evidence that the athletes are ’ by and large, dragging down the academic level of the institution. ’
Do you think Harvard’s academics are down? If so, why do so many people want to go there? Shouldn’t they all want to go to Reed or CalTech with no or not-so-great sports so as not to have all those dumb athletes and legacies interfering with their academic pursuits?
Just because some selective schools may have 12 or 14% legacies doesn’t mean they gave a hook to that many or that the legacies don’t have the same qualifications as other admits. It may have been that the AO picked the white, male, val, 1600, 3.999 gpa, captain of the hockey team who happened to be a legacy over the white, male, val, 1590, 4.0, captain of the soccer team because of that legacy hook. Does that bring the academics down at Harvard? Did it take away a spot that ‘should’ have gone to a black woman with a 1550, 3.8, editor of the yearbook, president of the NHS?
I think the AOs this year at schools that did end legacy preferences will still be making the same decisions between these three types of students and there isn’t a wrong choice. Maybe the non-legacy will get the spot but maybe not.
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Some colleges seem to believe it fosters school spirit and strong Alumni ties (not for money). But more practically EVERY school cares about yield and legacy kids are much more likely to yield.
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The argument here is that the pool of people who could “be successful” at these few of the supposedly most academically elite institutions of higher learning in the world is so enormously large that they can be excused for disregarding academic chops in favor of considering applicant’s pedigree or athletic prowess.
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It seems many colleges use legacy as a tiebreaker for those applicants whose only hook is legacy*…and if true (which we will never know) stats would not be lower.
I’m not sure people understand that the vast majority of students who apply to these schools have A averages in relatively rigorous classes. The academic differences between a large proportion of applicants isn’t all that great.
If you take this same line of thinking to gender, perhaps schools should not give males relatively more consideration on their GPAs than they do to the females, M/F ratio be darned.
- (Legacy status plus other hooks like donor or athletic recruit or URM is different).
The answers to your questions were in the message you responded to. Here they are again:
"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”"
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Again, show me where this is happening because I have not seen any evidence.
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The difference between someone with “A average in relatively rigorous classes” and true academic elite that top schools profess to recruit is akin to difference between a high school chess tournament runner-up and an international Grand Master.
If you have too many applicants who can succeed in your program, then your program is not as hard as it could be. Simple as that.
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For the third (and hopefully final) time:
“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””"
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That is not evidence. I bet legacy make a large part of the remaining 25%.
Not EVERY.
Caltech has <50% yield (losing many cross-admits to MIT) - and no legacy preferences there either.
Harvard does not say this to my knowledge.
Here is their stated mission:
The mission of Harvard College is to educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society. We do this through our commitment to the transformative power of a liberal arts and sciences education.
Many leaders would not have been considered ‘academically elite’ when they were in school.
I don’t disagree with you if you are talking about MIT or CalTech…different missions, different schools, different goals.
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Low yield does not mean they do not care. But sure. The question was why a school might prefer legacy.