<p>So the question came up over in a college admissions thread, that being a legacy at a peer school may hinder one's chances of admission. I find this a little hard to believe if there are no clear signs that an applicant would turn down an offer of admission--i.e. it's more a question of interest shown than being a rival's legacy that may be a factor. After all, many children of the alumni of selective schools, including mine, were admitted to peer schools (similar rankings, selectivity, etc.). If this were not the case, many fine students would have few options. I've also seen anecdotal evidence of CC posters attending the rivals of their parent's alma mater at the very top. </p>
<p>Does anyone have any hard evidence or statistics to confirm or deny this "rumor" which surfaced on an NYT blog? Was anybody concerned about this during the admissions process?</p>
<p>I was following the original thread too, with interest, as my son is a legacy at his first choice school but would certainly not want to risk being shut out! Advice we are getting from our school is to stress to the legacy school that they are first choice (it is not a school that I would have thought would care - almost everyone’s first choice) to the point of discouraging my son from applying EA anywhere in case the first choice legacy school learns about it and thinks they are not his first choice. This seems overkill to me, but…</p>
<p>I have never heard that being a legacy at one school would hurt one’s chances at a rival school. If it is a concern, don’t report the legacy status at the rival school.</p>
<p>^The common app asks you where your parents’ received any degrees. A parent concerned about this initiated the original thread. I absolutely don’t think you can hide this information honestly on an application. It never crossed my mind that revealing it could be a problem.</p>
<p>I can’t believe it’s a problem. Wouldn’t it be something you could needle the rival about? “We’ve had X number of applications from legacies to YOUR school, an increase from last year. I guess the families are starting to see the light…”</p>
<p>Oh good lord, schools can’t have time to second-guess this kind of nonsense. They care about the parents’ college education to provide context (first-gen college student vs two parents with doctorates) not because they’re trying to second-guess whether kid will apply or be more in love with parents’ schools. This is made-up nonsense.</p>
<p>As a point of reference: Bush 41 attended Yale, his kids attended Yale, University of Texas, Tulane, University of Virginia, and Boston College.</p>
<p>I agree with Erin’s Dad, I would think at the very least the rival school would chuckle at having the other school’s legacy, but I really think it is a complete non-factor.</p>
<p>Well, this is one of those things that could be true, but you’ll never know if it is true, and there’s little you can do about it if it is true. There is a motive though–yield protection. This is similar to the so-called “Tufts Syndrome.” The idea is that schools that care about yield might reject or waitlist students if they think the students isn’t likely to matriculate. (The “Tufts Syndrome” is the idea that schools that think they are being used as safeties might do this–the Tufts adcom who posts on CC says, credibly, that Tufts doesn’t do this.) So, if somebody is a stellar candidate with top scores, grades, and outside achievements, and he’s a quadruple legacy at Harvard, there would be a motive for other schools to reject or waitlist him, if they care about yield.</p>
<p>But, schools will say they don’t do this, and it would be very difficult to show from data that they do.</p>
<p>Hmmm… I actually know a case where the applicant thought it was true. This applicant was from a famous family that is closely associated with school A and that city. He wanted to go to school B. He had great class rank, a difficult course load and was a NM finalist so I suppose he had top scores. Still, A and B are the kind of schools that are reaches for everyone. So he applied to B early decision-- was accepted and is still there. I don’t know if it would have actually been a factor; I only know the applicant wanted to stress to B that he would go no matter what. But this really wasn’t just a regular ‘legacy’ applicant. Frankly, I would have thought the family name with those stats would have gotten him in just about anywhere but what do I know?</p>
<p>There is a former adcom who sometimes weighs in here who I have talked to about this at length and I believe may have addressed this in one of her books. Are you there?</p>
<p>I understand why so many don’t believe schools do this, but they do a lot of things that seem unfair to protect their yield.</p>
<p>I did see a bit of data on this, though it was 10 years ago. Harvard wanted to distinguish the legacy advantage from the advantage that comes with being born to and raised by Harvard graduates. So it compared its legacy admit rate (which was around three times the overall admit rate) to its admit rate for the children of Yale and Princeton graduates (who get no legacy advantage at Harvard, but presumably have similar genes and upbringing as Harvard legacies). The result was that Y/P legacies were admitted to Harvard at a very elevated rate, only a couple of percentage points shy of the admit rate for H legacies. </p>
<p>I can’t believe that that would be the case if Harvard were holding a Y/P legacy against those applicants.</p>
<p>H does not have to worry about yield. But all know it’s a pretty good bet that they will get the legacy advantage in a cross admit battle. I’m sure Y and P would still win in many cases.</p>
<p>But let’s talk about Brown, Dartmouth, Amherst, Williams and Penn looking at HYPS legacies. How many can they yield?</p>
<p>My son is an H legacy and his counselor is strongly advising him not even to apply anywhere ea, so H is sure it is his first choice. I find it very hard to believe it makes any difference!!</p>