And just a reminder that college professors- even ones who teach at Princeton- have kids who score 610 on their SAT’s or want to major in nursing or want a Big 10 rah rah college.
In what world is every professor’s kid a genius?
Agree but it reads more to me as Ivy hunting.
I’ll shout my shot for Harvard with legacy. But if not Dartmouth is my best chance to go Ivy.
And if that’s the reason, it’s not IMHO the right reason to attend a school, day after day for four years.
It’s why I asked.
Some hooks affect such a small group of applicants that they are likely to continue in the future regardless of political developments. Given the exceedingly small population of faculty kids and developmental kids to begin with, those seem to remain excellent hooks.
Even Penn, under its new dean of admissions, has apparently walked back from that practice. And Harvard was never that stringent. Regardless, I stand by my post. The OP can weigh their options accordingly.
You are over interpreting what people are saying. Where has anyone used the word ‘every’ ?
Incidentally there are enough studies to show that educational achievement is heritable.
The guy at the counter of my local Fed-ex store is the brother of a pretty famous academic at a major research university. They inherited their gene pool from the same set of parents.
The studies ALL concede that there are many, many factors that go into educational achievement.
Let me reiterate. Nobody is saying “all” faculty kids are super academic.
Fantastic. Faculty kids go to all sorts of colleges- professors at Southern CT State have kids at Yale; professors at Dartmouth have kids at U New Hampshire. It is very hard to generalize outcomes based on limited data points!
To the OP- figure out which college you love more. There’s your answer.
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I am not sure I completely agree with this advice. I would say that the OP has a better hook at Harvard. The OP already knows what s/he is a better fit for. The question is not about fit.
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Apply to the college you most want to attend because, even with legacy, chances of admission are small. Anecdata: a friend’s kid was rejected in the last few cycles at one of the colleges listed. Friend is a legacy and also endowing a chair. The family was shocked.
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my response is purely tactical: because Harvard is REA, you will be putting all you first round eggs in one basket, as opposed to applying Dartmouth ED + 1-4 EA schools which would be 2-5 early schools vs 1.
One problem with this. Harvard doesn’t have early decision. They have SCEA as their early application option….not ED.
According to the lawsuit data, 33% of legacies were accepted at Harvard.
However, only slightly over 50% of legacy applicants were qualified i.e were given a score of 2 or above on their academic rating. For those applicants, the acceptance rate was 50%.
So it was effectively a coin toss if you were a legacy applicant with scores in range of Harvard’s median.
For people on the deans’ list, it was 44% for all deans’ list applicants (those who donated money) and 75% for those deans’ list applicants who were qualified (so donor kids whose parents had donated significant sums of money and were qualified were most likely accepted).
This data was taken a few years ago so it may be different now that test optional is in place.
But having said that, a 50% acceptance rate for a qualified legacy applicant is pretty good. So applying SCEA would put you in with a very, very good chance.
Pretty sure donating a chair or 2 isn’t nearly enough to get on dean’s list. But the legacy should help if that is a factor by next Fall.
I would definitely recommend that you apply ED to the school that you want to attend the most without consideration of which legacy might help you the most. Fit is more important and for the schools you are mentioning, it’s a numbers game to get in for even the most competitive applicants.
On a related note to legacy “strength”, does being a legacy ever hurt an applicant? It stands to reason that if the school in question views legacies negatively for whatever reason that being a legacy could be a liability to an applicant. Am I reading into the communication from colleges too much if I assume this?
At some schools legacy applicants have higher scores/gpa’s than most applicants. A less academically credentialed legacy applicant will be particularly hurt by the comparison
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It will be interesting to see how this all turns out for my DS24. I’ve heard a lot of stories from other parents. I’m just hoping the comparable schools that are expressing interest aren’t punk’d him. These are the days!
Apparently, $8.7 million was enough to get you on the dean’s list which is actually surprisingly low.
Another family’s kid endowed 2 chairs + $1 million and got on the list according to the lawsuit. That’s only $12-13 million I’d have thought.
Harvard SCEA allows EA and rolling apps to public schools…so OP could apply to Pitt, UVA, UNC, UMich, etc., in the early/rolling rounds. Harvard SCEA also allows applying early (non-binding) to private schools if that is required for scholarship consideration.
One thing to remember about legacies who accepted to Harvard. Harvard published the income distribution of legacies, back when there was no “don’t want to say”, the distribution was far wealthier than the distribution that Chetty had for “How wealthy alumni are at 34”.
Of the alumni, 21% ended up in the top 1% by income, of the legacies, 46% came from families who were in the top 1% by income. Of the alumni, 65% were in the top 20%, of the legacies, it was 88%.
So legacy seems to mostly helpful for wealthy families. I’m not sure why, but since the largest difference is for the top 1%, its possible that donations had a lot to do with it. However, we do not know what percent of those top 1% were actually top 0.1% or another such income and wealth for whom a donation of a few million would be possible.
In any case, at least for Harvard, legacy + wealth is stronger than legacy on its own.