Looking at Naviance for my D’s HS it looks like legacy status did not help any of the several applicants get in to one of the "lesser ivies’, they were all rejected with great stats, and I got to thinking that legacy could hurt your chances if your parents did not contribute any significant monies to their alma mater and/or didn’t stay in touch with the college after graduation.
Said another way, if you are legacy and did not "give back’ to your college, is that a negative for college admissions? Do they track and consider this?
Some schools only consider legacies in the ED round. It could hurt a student to apply ED if they aren’t at the top of the heap.
I don’t think schools give a negative to a legacy whose relatives haven’t contributed billions, but it can have people applying ED when they really aren’t ED material.
I agree with the above that at many schools, legacy is only a boost in the ED round. And even then, students still need to be strong applicants. Legacy alone isn’t enough.
I also don’t think legacies are negatively targeted if their parents don’t donate or aren’t involved.
At super-selective colleges, the bar for “good enough” for a legacy applicant may not be as high as “good enough” for a non-legacy applicant, but the bar is high enough that many legacy applicants will not meet it.
Given that most outsiders have very incomplete information about how an applicant compares to the entire applicant pool and the college’s wants, it can be hard for outsiders to really know what was behind the decision.
My younger daughter applied RD to a very selective university for which she was a “nobody gave big donations” legacy. (Her dad and two of four grandparents, my parents, were graduates of the university.) She was accepted but chose to go elsewhere. One of her cousins, same grandparents, different parents (obviously), applied and was waitlisted. I think the results probably had little to do with the legacy status, one way or the other.
Quite a few schools don’t take it into account at all, so it certainly can “not help” your chances. But I doubt it would ever actively hurt an application.
Very few school don’t allow legacy to give you a little nudge, but there are a handful. There are also some schools that are quite open that it only helps if you apply ED. There may be others that act that way, but don’t say it explicitly.
Anecdotally in my family I’ve seen that only truly stellar candidates got into Harvard even as double legacies. (One out of three.) And of the rejectees one was number 2 in a large class and the other was in the top 5%. Parents donated regularly but less than $200 a year. At our high school the legacies who get into top schools, also get into other similarly ranked schools.
I’ve known quite a few students who ended up at the school where they are legacies and were denied entry to other similarly highly ranked schools-in most instances, the student didn’t apply ED because they didn’t actually have the legacy school as their first choice. But they were accepted in RD.
Most people who get rejected from these schools have “great stats”. That’s what a 6% or 8% or even 12% admissions rate means- that 94% or 92% or 88% of applicants are going to be rejected. In most people’s minds, that means that the rejected ones have modest scores, B averages, and watch TV in their spare time.
Not so. This is what parents need to wrap their minds around- the daunting odds. At my last college reunion, there was MUCH talk about whether legacy helps and if so how much. The bottom line was that absent one of the other significant accomplishments that Adcom’s are looking for, being a legacy was just one more line to fill out on the application. The legacy boost appears to be extremely modest; confined to the early round, and is NOT going to get your typical bright, high stats but nothing else kid admitted to a college where they were likely to be rejected anyway.
In one of my kids HS classes, a kid who was a multi-generational Harvard legacy (a named chair in the sciences no less- so generous AND legacy) refused to apply to Harvard to the chagrin of his family. He was accepted to Princeton early- again, the chagrin of his family but no surprise to any of the kids or teachers. By all accounts- a brilliant student, kind and modest, accomplished musician. One of these “any college would want this kid” type of student. No connection to Princeton at all.
I think kids need help from the adults in their lives to figure out “am I a viable candidate or am I counting on Legacy to tip me in”. If they are NOT a viable candidate- all things being equal- better to know that upfront. And yes- if you are counting on Legacy- apply early where at least Penn states upfront “if you are a legacy and do not apply early we do not consider it in the application process”.
I think the OP’s premisecis that it can somehow hurt you. That is overthinking… I don’t think that happens. Unless maybe the applicant writes an arrogant, entitled supplement or something related to legacy status. It can be mentioned without assuming it will give a boost/get you in.
Many colleges give a “courtesy waitlist” to legacies if they don’t let them in. One of my kids got one (kid had 3 grandparents, both parents, and 3 aunts/uncles who were alum).
If the legacy applicant were admitted needing a legacy boost, s/he would be in the lower part of the range of academic achievement among the admits. In addition, as a legacy, s/he may be assumed to already have a high level of interest, while s/he is less likely to have other admission offers at more attractive schools. So offering a merit scholarship, ordinarily used to attract admits in the upper part of the range to matriculate to this school instead of others that they are likely to be able to choose from, would not make sense for a legacy admit who needed a legacy boost.
I have also wondered whether legacy status at a particular university will hurt my daughter’s chances when applying to other schools…my daughter will be applying to schools this fall similarly competitive (top LACs) to the school both my wife and I went to (along with her grandfather). Will schools hold that against her, assuming it is more likely she would attend where my wife and I attended especially as they consider their yield stats? I have debated not reporting on the common application where my wife and I attended to avoid this situation. Maybe that is overthinking it.
@agb2002 - FYI, on the common app, there is a question about education level of the parent(s). If the parents attended a college/university, even if they did not complete, the name of the college/university is required. No getting around this.
My daughter attended a selective-entry IB program at a public high school. Legacies predominated among the ED admits to selective colleges in her year (and she was one of them). I doubt that any of the parents were big donors. Most of us didn’t have that kind of money.
“Legacy plus BIG donation” certainly helps, not just at Ivies, but also at other “top prestige” schools. That’s why there are kids who rank in bottom-quartile, aren’t recruited athletes or URMs, and yet still accepted, even for Early Decision.
One of these weekends, if I have a day free, I will analyze carefully the Hyperselective U. reunion book I recently received, which has a lot of information about where people’s kids went to college. Not a scientific sample, of course – only about 1/3 of the class provided any information, and lots of people didn’t provide any information about children (mostly if they didn’t have any), or didn’t provide college information about children (often because their kids were not yet college age when they answered the questionnaire).