Amherst to stop offering legacy preference in admissions

Regarding Harvard specifically, the lawsuit regression analysis has separate controls for legacy, double legacy, and Dean/Director’s special interest list. I expect the child of building donor is going the be in the latter group. So you can analyze the legacy benefit among kids that are not flagged as huge donors on the Dean/Director’s special interest list. The analysis also controls for the reader ratings of the applicant as well as dozens of other factors, including other hooks.

A summary of the results is below for the model with full controls. The first number represents the magnitude of the expected boost, expressed as an odds ratio. The 2nd number represents the standard error of the regression coefficient. If the sample size is large, and degree of boost is consistent, the standard error is expected to be small. Considering the sample size, the legacy boost appears to be applied reasonably consistently across legacies, although elsewhere there are comments implying some legacies are giving a greater boost then others for a variety of reasons, including degree of activity in an alumni organization.

The 2400x boost for a recruited athlete is not a misprint. It can be difficult to comprehend a boost this large. As an example, the admit rate for applicants with a 4 or worse academic rating (bad stats compared to applicant pool) was 0.01% for non-ALDC hooked (includes URMs) vs 78% for athletes – roughly 7000x higher. This is consistent with an average boost of 2400x for athletes – an applicant who has a >99.9% of rejection if applying unhooked may have a good chance of admission if an athlete. Obviously legacy boosts are nothing resembling the boost for athletes, but still very significant.

Regression Coefficients: Harvard Lawsuit Analysis
Recruited Athlete: +2400x (0.15)
Special Interest List: +25x (0.42)
Double Legacy; +22x (?)
Faculty/Staff Kid: +13x (0.35)
Legacy: +10x (0.16)
Applies REA: +5x (0.10)
SES Disadvantaged: +4x (0.14)

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I cannot speak for Harvard but in my anecdotal experience the boost at my alma mater for ordinary legacies is far lower, and has declined each year. The schools all handle it differently. Legacies should do careful research before using their early option on a parent’s school.

Back when I ran CAAAN for my state almost 20 years ago, the ED/legacy acceptance rate was almost 40%.

According to the UC admissions website:

UC forbids legacy admissions and does not grant preferential admission to the children of alumni or donors

@otisp and @MWolf, cccording to Pomona’s admissions website:

As has been the practice for many years, Pomona does not consider legacy or donor-affiliated status in the admissions process.

Likewise, I don’t think that either Harvey Mudd or Scripps give legacies preference.

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According to College Transitions, both Harvey Mudd and Scripps consider legacy status in admissions:

They claim their database has been updated as of this month.

I’m not so sure parents absolutely know what is expected. Things have changed a lot since the 90s since I started at Cornell. I’m not sure my kids would get in today if they just did what I did. Reading CC and refit has been an eye opener in terms of how much more competitive it seems.

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wow!!

I definitely would not get in today with my statistics though my ECs were decent for the time! My daughter was way more qualified than me and it still felt like a struggle!

Of course, things have changed a lot and no one knows absolutely. But a Harvard parent would know more whether her/his kid is close to being “Harvard material” than a parent of a random applicant. The same with Cornell.

Yeah, that was my reaction. My memory is a little foggy and that 40% number may have just been for my state, but I can’t imagine it would be drastically different nationally. Back then information wasn’t shared like it is today.

I remember thinking, “Damn, need to make sure my kids can take advantage of this.” But the advantage has continued to diminish over time.

I have a somewhat unique perspective on legacy preferences, which I unabashedly support.

I was a FGLI and URM. My mom never made more than 13k per year. My dad was in prison. I should have written an essay about it all but didn’t since I was so ashamed. I thought the Ivy League wouldn’t want the son of a criminal. Anyway, I went to Cornell and later got an MBA from Wharton. I’m doing very well financially, too 1%.

Over the last 2 decades the Ivy League and other elite schools are far more diverse. So there is a growing pool of diverse Ivy League grads with all the expected benefits that come from that.

And now, when we want to avail ourselves of the same privileges affluent white people have enjoyed for generations, solidifying our families position across generations in the process, the legacy preference is under assault in the name of fairness. Who benefits from eliminating legacy preferences? The cynic in me is that it will be wealthy white/Asians.

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I don’t think that information is accurate.

After the Varsity Blues scandal the Ca passed ab-697 requiring that colleges and universities report such policies. The Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities reported on behalf of 75 of thes institutions, and Harvey Mudd and Scripps were among the schools that “do not provide any manner of preferential treatment in admissions on the basis of applicant relationships to donors or alumni of the institution.”

Six AICCU schools reported some form of legacy and/or donor preferences:
Stanford
USC
CMC
Pitzer
San Clara
Vanguard.

(While USC and Stanford are AICCU member schools, each submitted their own report.)

I haven’t checked all the college transitions listings for California schools, but note that the website also appears to have Occidental wrong. According to the ab-697 report, Occidental does “not provide any manner of preferential treatment in admissions on the basis of applicant relationships to donors or alumni of the institution.”

You’re incorrect. The majority of beneficiaries of legacy admissions to elite privates are white, because the majority of graduates of these schools are white.

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That has changed. Your data is old.

Hasn’t been that in quite a while! A friend’s D would have been 3rd gen at Cornell and was rejected. She went to Yale so had the academic chops.

20% acceptance rate is still a lot higher than the overall acceptance rate which was only 8.7% last cycle.

I do think that more schools are going to move away from legacy. There are already rumblings about that at Cornell.

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My perspective is different. As a FGLI URM, with degrees from two top 10 institutions and doing very well financially, I realized that my DD does not need legacy admissions to become successful. She’s benefitted from my success. Other students like I was deserve the opportunity over my privileged kid. I’m all for getting rid of legacy preferences.

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The common data sets of both HMC and Scripps from 2020/21 (so completed around Q1 2021) state that alumni/ae relation is considered in admissions (C7). If that’s not true, somebody better tell the respective institutional reporting departments.

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Occidental also states in its latest CDS that it considers legacy status in admission:

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Any particular reason why? Matriculating legacies at highly selective private colleges tend to be disproportionately wealthy and White, far more so then the rest of the matriculating class. So reducing legacy preference with no other changes tends to disproportionately hurt wealthy + White more than than other groups.

It’s possible that a college could try to make up the tuition lost by legacy admits by favoring wealthy students and penalizing lower income students,. However, I doubt this would occur with Amherst since at the same time they made the legacy announcement, Amherst also mentioned increasing FA for lower income students in an apparent effort to increase lower income enrollment; Amherst is one of the few colleges that is need blind for all students (including internationals); and Amherst has a high enough endowment to not be dependent on having a high rate of full pay kids.

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These spots are unlikely going to go to a FGLI URMs. Schools are already going to treat that as a hook.

Since I’m now old, I think a lot more about the overall disparity in wealth in URM communities and how hard it is to set up the next generation in the way white people have done for generations. So anything that makes it harder to sustain some level of wealth for URMs who against the odds clawed their way up is a negative for me personally.

Now given where I started I’ll always have a soft spot for kids like me (my kids are super privileged in comparison) but high achieving FGLI URMs are going to have a huge hook. It’s the upper middle class URMs who this impacts.

I’ve actually been told by a former adcom that schools will look up the zip code / schools of Latino candidates to figure out if they are poor. Because if they are wealthy then they may be just trying to claim to be a Latino but aren’t really. It’s like some white people are incapable of believing there are successful Latinos; says a lot about their perceptions.

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