<p>Are Harvard legacies automatic???</p>
<p>When 2 students have the same credentials? but one has some character flaws and a sense of entitlement d/t his parents BOTH being Harvard alumn's...</p>
<p>I would love your input!!! Thanks...</p>
<p>No Harvard legacies aren’t automatic. My older son - double legacy and ranked 8th in a class of over 600, great scores, impressive ECs got in. His cousin, also a double legacy, 3rd in her class, not quite such high scores, hard to compare but strong ECs did not. My younger son also applied, but at only top 6% in the class didn’t think he had a chance, and he didn’t. Which was fine.</p>
<p>That said if the character flaws don’t come through in the application, there will be no way for the admissions committee to know about them. But lukewarm recommendations will not make up for being a legacy unless the parents have millions of dollars to donate. Legacies have a better acceptance rate, but most of them still get rejected.</p>
<p>I should also add that the older sibling(brother) was accepted and they(both high school students) are URM.</p>
<p>So what? Legacies at most elite schools are about twice as likely as non legacies to get in. But twice 10% is still not a great chance. Being URM, probably made both more likely to get in, but evidently not enough more likely.</p>
<p>You can make yourself crazy wondering why one kid got in and another didn’t. Unless you’ve seen the entire application package there is no way for you to know. My older son’s main EC was something that he didn’t talk about and was done entirely outside school. He was basically employed doing computer programming and being paid at the same rates as college grad students. He enabled the company to meet some deadlines by working around the clock during his school breaks and a few weekends.</p>
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<p>Not unless your child is the offspring of a country president OR you have donated several million dollars to the building fund:)</p>
<p>Alas, character flaws and a sense of entitlement will not necessarily keep a kid out of Harvard.</p>
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Is there anyone out there without character flaws? I know, I know, we all want to think our kid is perfect (or not), but is anyone, really? </p>
<p>Mary and Jesus aside, wouldn’t believing that you have no character flaws be a character flaw in itself ;)?</p>
<p>OP, do you have a dog in this race, or is this idle curiosity on your part?</p>
<p>@mathmom, wow… LOL do we need counseling? </p>
<p>I just wanted to add another layer to the story to get an accurate answer… I am not making myself crazy… I asked for a friend whose child goes to school with a young women who has become quite the avid drinker/pot smoker. These young women have been at this same school since pre-k. My friend feels that her admission d/t legacy is a shoe in. And I told her that this isn’t necassarily the case! </p>
<p>She is in a school where most of the parents are highly educated(Dr’s, lawyers, Phd’s, scientists, college professors, stock brokers etc) and my friend, does not… so she feels very intimidated when her daughter, who works her a** off(inside and outside of school) but has big money and legacy status working against her! I wanted to post knowing that you guys know so much more than I ever will… to allay her fears…</p>
<p>And yes, we all have character flaws…I was just trying to be nice in my OP…</p>
<p>Being an avid drinker and pot smoker won’t keep you out of Harvard, either, unless it affects your grades or your disciplinary record.</p>
<p>@SYLVAN—I should also add that yes, my dd14 will be applying to Harvard, or she says she is… but that may change in the next 15 months… and I don’t think there are any legacies at her school… the nice thing about her school is that there is very little competition! Most kids apply to our local community college. I always tell her to never focus on competition but to remember that they are there!!.. it will drive her crazy if she focuses on them!</p>
<p>As parents we are often fraught with anxiety about whether our kid will get their fair shot at whatever it is we/they aspire to. At this point, all you can do is have faith that the D will find a place that welcomes her for who she is. Will it be Harvard or Yale? Maybe, maybe not. But there isn’t much to be gained from worrying about the things we have no control over.</p>
<p>Harvard has been full of avid drinkers and pot smokers since time immemorial.</p>
<p>Not to mention opium eaters and laudinum drinkers! ;)</p>
<p>You can look up what % of Harvard legacies are accepted. That alone shows that they are not uniformly accepted and that there is no auto admit process there.</p>
<p>Schools have different ways of looking at legacies and giving them advantages in admissions. My alma mater along with some other schools will only give a boost (don’t know how much and they won’t say) if the student applies ED. UPenn does the same. Some schools have all of the alumni kids put in a pool and they are assessed and picked as a group. Some do have a nearly auto admit policy. </p>
<p>But kids who are legacies usually have some advantage, but even among legacies, not all advantages are equal. Someone who is a development alum is going to have a whole lot more clout for his/her kids getting accepted than someone who writes his $100 check to the school once in a while. In fact if the development numbers and contacts are strong enough, they’ll trump legacy most all of the time. </p>
<p>One thing I have noticed is that those kids accepted to Harvard and like select schools and who have the legacy hook, are also highly qualified applicants. Yes, they were picked over many other highly qualified applicants, but it is not the case that they were not kids that “Harvard material”. The same with those with URM status. The only real quarter I have seen given up on admissions standards by these schools has been for mainstream athletics and for truly disadvantaged kids who have worked there way up despite some terrible odds. That’s not to say that a bunch of development admits are not slipped in or that others don’t have a story about this kid or another, but this is just what I have seen in the last 15 years of college admissions in an area and at schools where highly selective colleges are so often sought.</p>
<p>NewHavenCTmom - just google your question, and ta-da, look what pops up - it’s a year old, but says that the legacy admissions rate at Harvard was 30%.<br>
[Legacy</a> Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/]Legacy”>Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>You can pass that link to your friend if you are so inclined.</p>
<p>Thank you all… I am not a college graduate and have found my time here on CC to be more than priceless. As it is going to make her(dd14) high school years and college planning/admissions process that much easier!~ I am forever indebted… even to those who were a little cranky 
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<p>@ pizzagirl… Thanks for the link! I will pass it on to my friend… she will be able to put this issue to bed(for now). Her daughter graduates 2015 so she has some time to get over this “legacy” issue!!! Her school is uber competitive so she knows what she up against. Lots of kids get into HYPS from that school every year… and the selective LAC’s!</p>
<p>Just as an aside… there was a young women here on CC, back in December maybe? I think she had applied early to Stanford… and was rejected…she was LIVID/devastated to say the least and I think her parents even called the admissions office… Both her parents were alumni of Stanford and if memory serves me, so was her grandfather… but I can’t say for sure… </p>
<p>They basically told the parents that they admit who they want… and legacy is NOT an attestation for admission.</p>