I know it’s just your opinion and judgement, and my point is that I think you’re wrong (and I’m trying to demonstrate to others who don’t have their opinions and judgements already set why you’re wrong). The NYU acceptance would indicate that student had the academic merit to get into Brown (and frankly, the other schools too). I know a lot of people like to think there are huge gaps in the quality of the student bodies at HYPS vs NYU but the fact is that there isn’t but there is yield protection and geographical considerations at play as well. The SAT/GPA IQRs at many of these schools always overlap and what do they really mean anyway? The splitting of hairs that goes on among the top 50 schools (and I mean that both in terms of trying to rank the schools as well as in selecting applicants) in this nation is incredible. For these schools, once you whittle down the applicant pool a certain amount, the difference between the admits and the rejects is basically just the adcom members’ whims. Are those whims any fairer than the legacy bump? I don’t necessarily think so and you certainly can’t prove that they are. If the schools could truly identify the best students, then you’d never see a student rejected from an institution outperform the accepted students later on (which is again, something subjective and not easy to measure. Grad/professional success? Salary? Organizational leadership?)- something that happens routinely.
Furthermore, alumni comprise the second largest class of donors to higher education, about 27%, according to this source. http://cae.org/images/uploads/pdf/VSE-2013-Press-Release.pdf
I do not know what the percentage is at Brown. Neither do I know whether alumni with children at Brown give more than other alumni or other parents, or whether legacy admits give more over their lives than other admits.
I suspect, can’t prove it, that Brown and other elite schools (why did this discussion develop in the context of Brown?) think that legacy and donations…and therefore financial aid, professorships, facilities,instructional programs, and other priorities…have a positive correlation.
Anyway, the point is that without the thoughtfulness and generosity of donors, there would be little or no opportunity for financial aid and their concomitants, URM programs and first generation programs, at elite private universities. 31% of endowed income is distributed for scholarships and fellowships at Brown. Total financial aid at Brown is $104 million this year. Between 10-12% of each class is made up of legacies, whom, we are told, otherwise have credentials for admittance.
I have no problem with that picture.
I’m all for doing away with legacies. Getting in on mommy’s and daddy’s academic record or money, even if all promised to the university, is unfortunate for the school, students and students whose slot was taken by someone less qualified. There are some people whose donation is tied to expectations but I don’t think the majority are. Most who donate aren’t hoping to buy their offspring a slot. And if that is the intent, good riddance. Accepting non-legacies brings new families into the fold-with just as much potential for the new families to donate. In fact, eliminating legacy means there are more independent families with potential to donate. Schools that do away with legacy have seen no decline in donations. There is no slippery slop. It is quite secure.
I had an unfortunate experience recently with people who harbor exactly the type of thinking that posters are alluding to-That is, people who think their offspring should have an advantage based on characteristics of the parents. I was involved with an academic activity that these parents were involved with also-for each of their children. These parents were very generous and ingratiating to the involved teachers, very helpful to the involved group of kids and very social to other parents. But the next year, when their offspring was not appointed to a key role with an associated title that they apparently felt their child was entitled to, they went ballistic. Turns out that their generosity was not generosity at all. It was all orchestrated to curry favor so their child would be given the role even though he was not qualified for it and appointing him would have been disastrous. Everyone spent the next year patiently guarding against the parents’ passive aggressive attempts to destroy the activity. If that is the fear by those advocating for legacy, then perhaps it is important for all who attend the school to know on the front end that Legacy is no longer a way to bolster admissions. Among schools that did away with legacy, donations did not tank.
I’ll add that the entire idea of legacy is very new. It is not a tradition that goes back generations. When moving to wholistic review did not keep the number of Jews at bay, it was brought in as a way to do so since White Anglo Saxon’s constituted the majority of the previous generation at these schools. It holds slots for the most popular demographic of the previous generation. Now it is a way to continue to hold those slots-keeping out the next wave that looks or acts differently. Time to get rid of it.
Ironic, isn’t it, that without all those “White Anglo Saxon’s” you referred to (you do not need an apostrophe to pluralize the word Saxon, by the way) there wouldn’t be money to allow many of the “next wave that looks or acts differently” to attend elite private colleges.
PS. I am neither Anglo nor Saxon, but my family has created and contributed to scholarship funds that are helping the “next-wave” as you put it, at a couple of schools.
@lostaccount I think your very real and very awful sounding scenario may be clouding your judgment on legacy in general for Brown, et.al. Note Notre Dame and its rabid student rah-rah culture. There’s something to be said for this if no appreciable fall off in quality of admits occurs.
Should it be a final, small tip-in factor? Can it be a final, small tip-in factor? I feel it definitely can be so. And this is just my opinion. My DD didn’t apply to my Ivy alma mater – didn’t have the hard core engineering/CS that she wanted. Given her stats, it’d been a reach anyway – I’m cool with that.
But we’re talking about seats at Brown – not last drops of water on a life raft. In general, the legacy kid will push out a less qualified legacy kid. I’m not crying for that guy/gal who has to “settle” for some other full pay LAC or some sweet state school.
The legacy admits aren’t keeping out legions of other applicants.
You mean time to get rid of it right as we’re starting to finally see significant #s children of POC reach college age and thus benefit from the system that was used specifically as a way to oppress them?
Also this is not a correct assumption
Guarantee you can’t prove the students are less qualified (save for the ludicrous 100 million dollar donation type of admit where of course the argument becomes about how many students that donation benefits vs. the cost of the one student who may be a bit below the academic standards normally required for admission)
Oddly, given his/her POV, lost account gives positive advice to this legacy: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/17819336/#Comment_17819336.
T26E4 is right, in our experience. My younger son applied to brown ED last year with legacy (father & brother) and was deferred. He had 2260 SATs, 2330 SAT2s, national & regional academic awards, decent ECs, but a 91/100 UW GPA. Brown accepted two students from his school ED (& none regular…as is typically the case according to naviance), at least one of whom was a legacy. My son’s grades were lopsided, as were his SAT scores (800cr, 690m, 770w), bc of his relative weakness in math. The legacy they accepted had better grades and deserved her admission. She was a viable, excellent candidate without her legacy.
My son did fine, as T26E4 noted kids with this profile probably will do…he was accepted ED2 at tufts and was also accepted early to WUSTL as a writing merit finalist and to USC as a trustee, full-tuition finalist, among other fine schools, none of which were legacy for him (I don’t think umichigan counts grad school as legacy…both my H and I were grad students there). And neither he nor we are bitter about his deferral because while brown was his first choice, it was a long shot with his grades. He understood that. My husband will continue to donate to brown and will continue to interview prospective students because he deeply loves and appreciates his alma mater. He went to brown on loans and a pell grant and wants to help other students afford to attend the school.
We’re only one data point, but I think the legacies accepted at highly selective schools are otherwise excellent applicants. Remember, the vast majority of legacies–I think at Brown well over 70%–are denied.
T26e4. We could not disagree more.
Wrong. So very very wrong. For the vast majority of their history, the Ivies accepted primarily legacies, development cases, prep school kids, etc. Do you think the classes of the 1800s were filled with students based on academic merit? The number of kids who accepted partly because of a boost by parental attributes is going down, not going up.
As an alum, I know many legacies who both got into and were denied admission to Brown. I know almost every variation – well-qualified kids who got in, well-qualified kids who were rejected, unqualified kids who were denied. I know several cases where well-qualified legacies got into Brown and decided instead to go to Yale, Middlebury and other top schools. The only variation I don’t know of are unqualified legacies who got in.
“T26e4. We could not disagree more.”
Even when I said where it could be a factor as a final tipping point? Basically two applicants who are 98% the same? And you’d still say a private university such as Brown shouldn’t choose the legacy over the non-legacy? I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree then.
Right we disagree.
In a piece published in the NY Times im 2010 Kahlenberg states “But studies have shown that being the child of an alumnus adds the equivalent of 160 SAT points to one’s application (using the traditional 400-to-1600-point scale, and not factoring in the new writing section of the test) and increases one’s chances of admission by almost 20 percentage points.”
Fireandrain, legacy as a factor in admissions is relatively new. As noted by Kahlenberg “Legacy preferences began after World War I, part of an effort to curtail the enrollment of immigrant students, particularly Jews, at Ivy League colleges.” I’ve read extensively about the history of the Ivy League schools by reading the actual documents dating from the very early days of the schools. Very early in Harvard’s history, little was done to screen students at all. That was a bone of contention among scholars-since the students were often not scholars and had little potential to become a scholar. It was where wealthy people sent their adolescents to be finished.That began to change when there was a call for at least some minimal standards. But legacy as a consideration for admissions is a relatively new concept.
Re: the concept that it just provides a little edge, Kahlenberg states “Some argue that if a Yale applicant gets bumped aside for a legacy, he or she is still likely to attend a great college. But discrimination based on parentage and ancestry is an aristocratic and deeply un-American practice. Would anyone seriously argue that it’s acceptable for Yale to discriminate against applicants who are black or Muslim because, after all, they can attend another good university?”
It is important to consider that a considerable amount of support for the Ivy League schools comes from tax dollars. That is a relevant fact.
No, instead we seek them out to add diversity and counteract institutional racism much like we admit legacies to create a greater sense of community and increase alumni donations.
…which in turn allows us to give more and more of these students larger and larger scholarships.
“of these students” Says a lot!
What schools did Kahlenberg “study”?
Stanford, for example, directly addresses this issue by stating that legacy applicants only get a second read on their essay. It’s hard to believe this results in as much benefit as the article apparently claimed.
JustOneDad, If giving preferential treatment to legacy made little difference schools would easily give it up. Right? They get a lot of grief for it because is is inconsistent with many values they espouse. They would also provide the data quite clearly…but few do. And that is because it is not insignificant.
I don’t know if this was already mentioned in the thread but Brandon Marshall (wide receiver for the Chicago Bears) was accepted into Harvard Business School a little while ago.
^^
It’s not for the MBA program. It’s a short 4-day program.
I’m all for doing away with legacies. Getting in on mommy’s and daddy’s academic record or money, even if all promised to the university, is unfortunate for the school, students and students whose slot was taken by someone less qualified. There are some people whose donation is tied to expectations but I don’t think the majority are. Most who donate aren’t hoping to buy their offspring a slot. And if that is the intent, good riddance. Accepting non-legacies brings new families into the fold-with just as much potential for the new families to donate. In fact, eliminating legacy means there are more independent families with potential to donate. Schools that do away with legacy have seen no decline in donations. There is no slippery slop. It is quite secure.
I think one of the major questions in this debate is how reasonable it is for a school to give preferential treatment to legacies in exchange for the alumni donations. I think it’s fair to say that this fact would be severely undermined if you could prove that a well known university/college publicly switched to a system that didn’t give preferential treatment to a legacies. After a quick google search, I couldn’t find any such school. What school are you talking about?