Amherst to stop offering legacy preference in admissions

Applying to College
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Suppose that the stats you listed are accurate – 7% of students attend private HSs, and 35% of selective private university undergrads attended private HSs. This does not prove that “the boost that a student gets from legacy admission pales in comparison to the boost they get for attending private high schools.”

One also needs to consider things like differences in portion of kids who apply to selective private colleges. Kids who attend selective, private HSs tend to apply to selective, private colleges. Kids who attend typical, non-selective, public HSs tend to apply to typical public colleges. For example, I attended a typical, non-selective public HS in upstate NY. The vast majority of kids from my HS either applied to SUNYs or one of the nearest community colleges. A significant portion of the highest achieving kids applied to and attended a SUNY. I expect that is still true today with the SUNY Excelsior scholarship covering tuition costs. I know some who started at community college as well, usually to save money. Only a very small portion of students applied to HYPSM…, and very few were accepted to HYPSM… However, a good portion did apply to the upstate NY college Cornell, and we had a good number of matriculating students to Cornell each year. This is a very different pattern of college applications than occurs at typical private HSs, so a very different pattern of college matriculations are expected than at typical private HSs.

Another important factor is the concentration of kids who would be well qualified applicants for highly selective private colleges. Private HSs usually have a much higher concentration of such students than public HSs, particularly selective private HSs. For example, if a particular HS is selective enough to only admit kids who have a great transcript, top test scores, top LORs, top essays, … then that HS is expected to have a higher rate of acceptances to selective colleges than average. Private HSs usually also much have a higher concentration of ALDC hooked kids than public HSs.

If you only look at the total number of matriculations, without considering number of applications or quality of students; then it can lead to mixing up correlation with causation. I am not saying that the boost is zero for attending a top private HS… more that you need to look at more information than just matriculation totals to draw conclusions. I also expect that the degree of boost or penalty is not constant and instead varies dramatically between different students, including on things like whether they strive in the often more competitive environment of a selective, private HS where a large portion of the class are focusing on attending a particular set of selective, private colleges.

Rather than a direct boost for attending the private HS, I think the bigger advantage is getting a great education, with excellent resources throughout the child’s lifetime. Many non-selective, public HSs offer far fewer opportunities, particularly ones in lower SES areas. And that lack of opportunities and lower quality education often negatively impacts college admission.

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I fully support legacy admissions for qualified applicants. My niece and nephew (Brown double legacies and Stanford double legacies) were definitely qualified applicants and both rejected by Brown and Stanford. So it’s not like ALL legacy applicants are accepted.

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/private-schools-competitive-college-advantage-problems.amp

Here’s the article I quoted (I think, it’s been a while since I read it) with some numbers for you to parse through.

It refutes your basic assumption but I have not verified the sources of data quoted (not will I)

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My basic points are listed below. How does the article refute them?

  • Kids attending selective, private HSs are far more likely to apply to selective, private colleges than kids attending non-selective, public HSs.

  • Kids attending selective, private HSs are fare more likely to be ALDC hooked and well qualified for admission to selective, private colleges than kids attending non-selective, public HSs.

  • Comparing matriculation totals in isolation without controlling for the difference in rate of applications or difference in rate of well-qualified applicants can lead to unreliable conclusions, without distinguishing between correlation and causation.

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I’ll make a similar type of argument on a different subject. According to Harvard’s press release, 25% of the class of 2025 is Asian. According to the US census, <6% of the US population is Asian. Does this prove that the boost that a student gets from legacy admission pales in comparison to the boost they get for being Asian? Or might the higher rate of matriculation for Asian kids more relate to Asian students being more likely to apply and more likely to be well-qualified for admission than the overall application pool?

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Just one of your arguments that was refuted.

Also the relative boost of private high school attendance relative to legacy status.

Like I said to another poster the numbers are the numbers and you can spin them any way you like.

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Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

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Saying a statement is refuted without any kind of explanation is not meaningful.

It doesn’t matter of you compare the boost for private high school to boost for legacy or not. The issue still remains that you are looking at matriculating student totals, without considering differences in rate of applying and differences in rate of well-qualified students.

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Defenders of private high schools’ overrepresentation at many highly ranked universities might claim the students have reaped the benefit of a more rigorous education in order to earn their spot. When you control for wealth, however, private school’s academic and social-emotional benefits are basically wiped out. Historically, students from the nation’s elite boarding schools “perform[ed] worse in the classroom [at Harvard] than other students over the entire 1924-1990 period” but went on to make more money than their peers by taking advantage of the connections they made in groups like final clubs, which largely exclude anyone who is not wealthy or white.

Look I’m on my phone in the lab babysitting an experiment that is taking its sweet old time to conclude. I thought you read the article I shared. And I’m not sure if the quotation worked above.

I found the author’s take on the data interesting.

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The referenced study compares various positive metrics at age 15 (nothing involving HS or later, no college admission) between students who attend public school for all of elementary and middle school years and students who attended a private school for at least one year. It found that while private school kids averaged better on various metrics than public school kids, the difference was no longer statistically significant after controlling for a metric called “family characteristics” that was a combination of income/SES, parents’ education, genetics, and “parenting quality” (includes videotape evaluations) . That is the driving force of the differences did not appear to be whether the student attended a public elementary/middle school or private elementary/middle school. It instead appeared to be rooted in other factors correlated with public vs private, such as income/SES.

This does not conflict with anything I have said. Note that “getting a great education, with excellent resources” is not synonymous with attending a private school and not a public school. Some public schools offer all of the above, particularly public HSs in higher SES areas, which fits with the SES correlation noted in the study. This is another difference between correlation and causation. Getting a high quality education at a school with excellent resources is no doubt correlated with attending a private elementary/middle school, but whether the school public vs private is not the root driving factor.

The referenced study does not discuss anything about high schools, college admission, or say anything to suggest attending a private HS instead of public HS offers a benefit for college admission. However, the study does hint that the conclusion can change when you control for variables that are correlated with public vs private rather than just look at matriculation totals in isolation. This includes things like considering the higher rate of private college applications among private school kids and higher rate of well qualified students. In any case, the full paragraph of my earlier post is listed below, in which like the study, I imply SES-correlated differences are relevant. I don’t see anything in this study that refutes the quoted statement.

Rather than a direct boost for attending the private HS, I think the bigger advantage is getting a great education, with excellent resources throughout the child’s lifetime. Many non-selective, public HSs offer far fewer opportunities, particularly ones in lower SES areas. And that lack of opportunities and lower quality education often negatively impacts college admission.

I’ll give a more personal example that expands on this. My mother is mixed ethnicity and grew up in the rural south. While long after the area schools were officially desegregated, she attended a HS that was still largely associated as the one for Black kids . Educational quality was quite poor. There were few resources or opportunities to take advanced classes, or even classes on par with the higher resourced HS that White kids mostly attended. Few kids from her HS applied to college. My mother was the first person in the history of the HS to even take the SAT. Given the education quality, I think it is safe to assume that had other students taken the SAT, the average scores for students attending the HS would be very low.

Obviously the poor quality of education contributed to selective, private college matriculation. This particular public high school had no students who applied to selective, private colleges and had a lower concentration of students who were well qualified for admission at selective, private colleges. As such, this non-selective public high school is expected to have a lower matriculation rate to selective, private colleges than would occur at a selective, private HS where a much larger portion of students apply and are well qualified. If area students had instead attended a highly resourced K-12 school that offers a great education, I expect it would influence both rate of selective college applications and rate of students being well qualified for the college, regardless of whether selective private colleges give a direct college admission boost because the HS is private and not public.

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That’s what I’ve seen from academically selective private high schools in the London (UK) area - at a few of them (probably considered “feeders”), the vast majority of US-bound students end up at Ivy League and other Top 10-20 institutions every year. It’s quite remarkable. (I’d imagine similar patterns can be observed in places like NYC.)

I think it is a bit of both. Data10 nails it on the latter below:

I would just add that “excellent resources” extend to staff dedicated to college admission, from individualized counselling to coordinating the submission of LORs from teachers and others.

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It’s both. Those prep schools are very selective, and they tend to select from a self-selected group who are quite capable. So yes, they admit students who are – even without a prep school education – likely to be good candidates for highly selective colleges.

AND both students and schools try to make a fit that ensures students will indeed get as much out of the experience as possible. Just like colleges, these schools have different ways of "doing high school ". They try to admit the students who will thrive in their environment. And students select schools that excite them. It’s a win-win most of the time as students can have an experience, in the classroom and out of it, that is far more tailored to ther individual needs and preferences. This, in turn, sets them up well for admission to highly selective colleges.

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There is the other side of the coin. These highly selective prep schools have a much greater proportion of hooked students (including legacies). They obviously do very well overall in elite college matriculation. However, for some unhooked top students at these prep schools, their chances to be admitted to a few super elite colleges that consider various preferences may be diminished because these colleges can only admit a limited number of students from each prep school.

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True. On the prep school thread, it is pretty common advice that you shouldn’t look at a school’s matriculation list and assume it will pertain to you.

With that said, strong students at a top prep schools generally you have great options available to them – even if they don’t include their first choice.

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Amherst seems to be moving in the direction of increasing SES diversity even before this announcement and it stated that it’s going to increase its financial aid budget at the same time as it eliminates legacy preferences. Whatever the motivation behind Amherst’s decision, the removal of legacy preference is likely to increase SES diversity on its campus, as JHU’s experience has shown:

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Prep schools have a similar admission process to selective colleges. They are selecting a mix of athletes at the top of their game, extremely smart kids (and will admit with lots of scholarship money at higher rates kids that have both URM status and low SES and solid academics AND athletic abilities), super rich well connected kids (from well connected families), legacy, and kids of employees.

Prep schools would never get rid of legacy factors, IMHO.

This admission process, in addition to amazing resources in terms of academics AND athletics (and art - like music and drama) creates a pool of excellent college admits.

This time of year, you can go on prep school sites and see the students that have already committed to really high end colleges based on their athletic recruiting. Compare that to the equivalent local public (say even in the same town as the prep school) and the numbers are exponentially higher.

URMs at these schools do extremely well in the college admission process because they have already been selected to get into these high schools based on all their qualities and then are further groomed for the process. Everyone thinks private school admit percentages to selective colleges only represent the ultra wealthy (and yes, they are a large percentage), but there is a large percentage of lower SES and all levels of wealth URMs factored into those high private school admit rates.

As a first generation immigrant, I’m glad to see legacy factors get kicked to the curb. My kids have had every opportunity to do well in college. Too bad if they get rejected at some schools because they didn’t have MORE help from me. Cry me a river, they can slum it at different school and work hard like I did.

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@suzyQ7 is exactly right about the reasons why prep schools do so well with college admissions. It is not because selective colleges want prep school kids because they come from a prep school. In fact, the opposite is the case. But prep school kids are a preselected group of high achievers in all the ways colleges are looking for.

I should also add that prep schools are very focused on college outcomes for their students. They are absolutely attuned to what colleges are looking for in applicants, and therefore they, too, look for many of the same attributes. Thus creating a very attractive pool of students to colleges.

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It’s not just private prep high schools that have a lot of matriculations to highly selective colleges. For example, the list at https://polarislist.com/ suggests 5 of the top 8 high schools with the most HPM matriculations were publics, including both of the top 2. The key is the publics are highly selective public magnets with a high concentration of top students. All of the high schools with the most matriculations are selective ones – either highly selective public HSs or highly selective private HSs. The kids who choose to apply to such selective HSs are also a self-selected group. Parents/kids who make a lot of effort to attend a highly selective magnet over their base high school tend to also apply to highly selective colleges. However, while both selective magnet and selective private prep kids often apply to selective privates, public magnet kids seem far more likely to apply to and attend area publics than private prep kids.

Using some real numbers, the high school with the most HPM matriculations on the list above was Thomas Jefferson School of Science and Technology, which is a public magnet. It is also usually the highest ranked HS on USNWR, and one of the HSs with the highest average test scores – a school where kids average 99th percentile SAT/ACT. With such a high concentration of exceptional students, many of the admit rates are not as high as I’d expect. Instead only a tiny portion of applicants were often accepted to particular highly selective private colleges… I expect the kids that had something especially unique compared to their exceptional, high achieving classmates. This could include having hooks, as well as having unique academic achievements. Some specific numbers are below.

Thomas Jefferson Admission Stats: 2017-19
U of Virginia: 79% applied, 56% admit rate, 32% yield, 14% attended
Cornell: 37% applied, 16% admit rate, 52% yield, 3% attended
CMU: 32% applied, 26% admit rate, 42% yield, 3% attended
Stanford: 28% applied, 6% admit rate, 83% yield, 1% attended
Penn: 28% applied, 13% admit rate, 40% yield, 1% attended
Princeton: 25% applied, 8% admit rate, 67% yield, 2% attended
Duke: 23% applied, 13% admit rate, 54% yield, 2% attended
MIT: 22% applied, 11% admit rate, 80% yield, 2% attended
Harvard: 21% applied, 7% admit rate, 67% yield, 1% attended
Yale: 17% applied, 11% admit rate, 50% yield, 1% attended

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Even though both highly selective public and private HSs share the commonality of their students being pre-selected, there is still a significant difference between the two, in terms of matriculation to highly selective colleges. The highly selective privates tend to use the same (or similar) admission criteria as the highly selective colleges while the highly selective publics (e.g. TJ and Stuy) tend to select their students based primarily or exclusively on stats. As a result, the privates have students who match better with the elite colleges than their public counterparts. The privates are also likely to have more legacy (and other hooked) applicants than the publics, which gives them another advantage in elite college matriculation.

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You mentioned TJ and Stuy specifically. TJ uses a “holistic” admission process. Prior to COVID the admission process considered LORs, essays, and personal qualities; in addition to stats. More recently they have a new process that doesn’t appear to use test scores and LORs and instead evaluates personal/character qualities via a Student Portrait Sheet and gives a boost to lower SES and underrepresented groups via the “Experience Factor” criteria.

This differs from Stuy, which is an exam school that admits almost entirely based SHSAT score (or at least it used to, I haven’t followed the recent political debates and COVID restrictions). Some public magnets are exam schools, like Stuy; and some use a holistic admission system, like TJ.