I wonder if Amherst is still giving a boost to recruited athletes. Just saying…
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Legacy preference certainly isn’t as strong as it used to be and is getting weaker year after year, primarily because of the criticisms that it received, deservedly. That’s why I think it’s just a matter of time that schools like Harvard will do away with it.
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Perhaps. Selfishly I’m hoping Cornell/UPenn hold out for 9 more years. My youngest in 9.
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Interestingly, my D22 doesn’t want to apply to a top US university in part because she would be a legacy there and doesn’t want to feel she was admitted on that basis. It also doesn’t exist in the UK, which she feels is fairer.
Same for my wife. Growing up, her father had a relatively prominent job and she went out of her way to ensure that that didn’t help her with her job search (of course, she could never be sure). She also doesn’t want our daughter to enjoy any leg up from legacy.
Of course, both enjoy/enjoyed important privileges, not least of which their education.
I was thinking the same. I wonder whether the alumni relations office was inundated with calls today!
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There is a lot of variation from college to college about how legacy preferences are used. Historically legacy preferences haven’t universally declined over time. For example, the paper at http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/divergent.pdf suggests that the supply of applying legacies remains fairly constant over time, and Harvard maintains a similar percentage of the class being legacies over time. This results in the admit rate for legacies remaining largely unchanged over the analyzed period, while the admit rate for unhooked has rapidly decreased. This makes the relative advantage of legacy compared to unhooked increase over time.
I think one factor that changed more recently is the general public has a more negative opinion towards wealthy, privileged kids getting special admissions preference through less obvious means following the Varsity Blues scandal, Harvard lawsuit publications, and various polictical issues. For example, there was a 2019 article in the Amherst paper at Legacy Admissions Scrutinized in Wake of Varsity Blues titled " Legacy Admissions Scrutinized in Wake of Varsity Blues" Last month there were several news stories about a group of young alumni vowing to not make donations to the highly selective colleges they attended, unless legacy preferences were terminated. One of the targeted colleges was Amherst.
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That is a very honorable approach and perspective! She could always apply and not disclose her legacy status I would suppose. Shame to write off a good fit school.
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I think this a nuanced issue-- the word “primarily” jumps out at me.
I think colleges are balancing a number of priorities when forming the class, so the issue is not “Oh, she’s a legacy, she’s got high scores, she’s in”-- it’s how to weigh the legacy factor among everything else.
I can only speak to Brown as an active alumna, some-years interviewer, frequent visitor to campus, events, “meet the President” talks. Legacy is real-- but so is First Gen, so is implementing the various financial aid policies that make the college affordable to outstanding kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, so is the college’s commitment to racial, ethnic, economic diversity despite a huge price tag and the recognition that squash and equestrian teams are not likely loaded with talented kids from the South Bronx.
I think colleges (like Amherst) have been tip-toeing their way to eliminating legacy for a while now. I can speak to my own classmates experiences- we’ve talked about it a lot- if your kid is a Brown legacy with no other tip factors- then yawn- it doesn’t matter. Your kid is a legacy and Mom is a Tony award winning actor, Dad is a Senator, kid has published a blockbuster novel? Then it matters. But Mom’s a social worker and Dad is a dentist? I’ve seen these legacy kids rejected (and accepted to Penn, JHU, Princeton, so it’s not like they’re unqualified).
Just so many seats- and colleges are grappling with their missions right now, and figuring how best to allocate those seat.
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The relative constancy of legacy admit rate in a declining overall admit rate environment isn’t necessarily an indication of stronger legacy preferences. It could very well be the result of the increasing quality difference between the two applicant pools over time. It’s likely that the number of grossly unqualified applicants in the legacy pool remain relatively constant over time while such applicants have become much more numerous in the general applicant pool.
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How many “grossly under qualified” applicants are there, really? And what does that mean, anyway? At our HS, at least, most kids who apply to Ivies and the like have a gpa of 4.5+ and SAT scores of 1500+ (other than athletes who apply and are accepted with much, much lower #s).
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Whatever the reality of legcay preferences is, which may vary somewhat from school to school, there is certainly an issue of perception. Schools like Harvard doesn’t really need to offer legacy preferences in order to remain successful, finanancially or otherwise. I recently came accross a news article about Caltech’s just-concluded fund-raising campaign:
To me, what’s interesting isn’t the record amount that was raised for that school, but who actually contributed:
- 45% of living alumni contributed $770m to a school that offers no legacy preference.
- Nearly $30m came from faculty and staff (Caltech doesn’t give preferences to children of faculty and staff).
- Of the six largest donations, ranging from $100m to 750m each, only one came from an alum (Intel cofounder Gordon Moore). Donors may get something named after them, but they and their offsprings also don’t receive preferences in admissions at Caltech.
It seems to me that a lot of people are willing to contribute to these types of colleges without requiring preferential admission treatment in return.
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At my DS’a HS, the running joke was there are to different types of students. The smart ones and the legacies. This isn’t just at the top universities. Looking at search results, my first glance suggests that the vast majority of private schools consider legacy.
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Brown gets a lot, based on my own limited experience interviewing in two different regions of the country. Brown is the hippie Ivy, so it attracts wannabee hippies. Brown is the boho Ivy, so it attracts the bohos. Brown is for social justice warriors, artists who want to take classes at RISD, Brown has an open curriculum (which is poorly understood to mean “take whatever you want”, despite the fact that you have to major in SOMETHING and that means there are requirements in order to graduate from that department),Brown has no distribution requirements which is also poorly understood to mean that you can be a pre-med and never take organic chemistry (anyone can call themselves pre-med; but you aren’t getting in to a US Med school without orgo).
Lots and lots of “Hail Mary” applications. For a while, the U was publishing on their website the % of the admitted students who were Val or Sal. Don’t know if they still do but it was illuminating. Grades may not matter as much once you’re admitted, but it’s a tough slog if you’re in the second quartile, no matter how Boho, hippy or artistic you are. I was asked last year to write a recommendation for a kid in my neighborhood (I decline during the years I’m interviewing, but took a year off due to Covid) and I gently suggested to the kid a list of 10 solid “these colleges would love to have you”. Kid was appreciative- parents were livid. Lovely teenager. Many interests, and an asset to many colleges. But a “no way no how” application (and the kid knew it).
Cannot speak to Harvard- but I’m sure given the mystique, their numbers of “Hail Mary” applications are proportionately similar or higher.
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Yeah, I think there are Hail Mary applications at all the ivies now. The common app has made it easier to apply to more schools, so kids do. With the decreasing acceptance rates, kids then apply to even more schools.
I think the legacy preference also signals to alumni that they are still connected to the school in some special way. I certainly feel this way even if my kids never apply to Cornell/Penn.
Anecdotally, the one classmate I know whose kid applied to Cornell was rejected despite having very high stats, grades, ECs, etc. I was shocked he didn’t get in with the profile he has.
So the idea is that the rapid decrease in admit rate among unhooked kids over the years relates to an increase in “grossly unqualified” applicants, so for the non-grossly unqualified applicant like we typically see on this web site, it is not significantly more difficult to be admitted to Harvard than in earlier years when Harvard had a much higher admit rate?
While theoretically possible, this goes against conventional wisdom. It’s also not consistent with the SAT scores of the applicant pool. The ORM applicant SAT scores have had a gradual increase over time. Black applicant SAT scores had a significant decrease between the class of 2008 and 2012, but had little change between first year of sample and last year of sample. So the overall average SAT among all races of applicants had a slight increase over the sample period. It’s certainly not suggestive that Harvard’s decrease in admit rate over time is primarily due to a large increase in grossly unqualified applicants.
Admissions to schools like Harvard are more difficult not just for unhooked applicants but also for legacy applicants. There’re a number of reasons why that is the case, as we have discussed many times on CC. My point is that there are likely fewer grossly unqualified applicants in the legacy pool, as their parents are likely to have a better idea what these colleges look for. I’m not sure if you dispute that.
Pomona quietly dropped legacy at least a year ago.
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The point is the change in relative admit rate over time. For example, suppose a theoretical college has the following change in admit rate over time.
Year 1 – Legacy Admit Rate = 15%, Unhooked Admit Rate = 10%
Year 10 – Legacy Admit Rate = 15%, Unhooked Admit Rate = 5%
Year 20 – Legacy Admit Rate = 15%, Unhooked Admit Rate = 2%
Year 30 – Legacy Admit Rate = 15%, Unhooked Admit Rate = 1%
There may be more “grossly unqualified” applicants in the unhooked pool than the legacy pool, but that does not explain why the unhooked admit rate is decreasing rapidly and the legacy admit rate is not. It would be explained if the percentage of “grossly unqualified” applicants in the unhooked pool was rapidly increasing over time. However, other metrics including applicant SAT scores do not suggest this is the case.
A more likely explanation is the one suggested by the author of the paper, with the relative legacy benefit becoming stronger over time due to the number of unhooked applicants increasing, without a corresponding increase in number of legacy applicants (supply of legacies remains largely unchanged over time); and the administration keeping the portion class that are legacies similar over time. As noted in my earlier post, different colleges have different legacy policies. The study only reviewed Harvard during a particular group of sample years. Other colleges may be very different.
What many discussions about legacies fail to note is that the colleges differentiate amongst legacies depending on the contributions of their parents. And the relative advantage differs widely amongst selective schools. The child of a building donor is going to get in, while at some tippy tops the child of a parent who donates $50 may have no more or a shot than any other applicant. Sorry to have seen many wonderful, extremely strong legacies at my alma mater rejected because they didn’t understand that their chances were far, far lower than the stats suggested. Good news is they got into to other wonderful schools RD.
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Totally agree with @toandfro. There are major donors, who are not run of the mill legacies. Speaking purely on the basis of the major donor legacies I have known who were admitted, they may not have been the strongest of applicants but they managed to avoid anything that would make them bad candidates. As in “we can’t take this kid” bad.
Folks who donate steadily and significantly and/or have been meaningfully engaged can expect that if their kids submit applications that are as good as non-legacy kids, that legacy status may be the decider. Those kids don’t necessarily have to be wow, but they’ll get in over other excellent non-wow kids. And honestly, these are the kids that make people think " if she can get into x, I have a chance. "
People who write checks every year and nothing more are likely to get a nice note from the development office thanking them for their support and confidence in the school as evidenced by junior’s application. But if junior is merely a good candidate, no edge at all.
Of course, each school has its own way of doing this, but as few alums are really in the first category and even a ton aren’t in the second, it’s not clear how big of an impact legacy actually has.
But overall, I don’t know that legacy has had as much impact as many would like to think.
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The last statistic I heard for legacy admits to Cornell is that of all the legacy applicants only about 20% get in. Just went through it with my daughter this year. Wild ride!
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