Do legacy preferences in admissions actually bring significantly more donations from alumni?
Seems that colleges apparently believe that they do, but https://tcf.org/assets/downloads/2010-09-15-chapter_5.pdf argues that they do not.
Very selective interpretation. Only true when you control for wealth. Well DUH. Not to mention much higher chance such students will enroll at your school. (Yield higher). About 50% higher at one top public.
I think the answer is plainly obvious. The colleges must have already done this analysis already. If the legacy factor didn’t impact the bottom line, then I doubt highly that any colleges would be continuing the practice.
I don’t know of any quantitative analysis done to prove this however.
Adjusted for family income, legacy admits are probably more about yield, than they are about donations.
Often, it may not be about sheer dollars per se – it can also be measured in alumni engagement. If a tradition exists where legacy has been part of the schools recruitment, maintaining it or some semblance of it keeps alumni engaged and involved – which is many times, more important than actual donations. At schools with declining admit rates, they’ve already had to tell their alumni not to expect too much from their kids’ legacy status.
I have been told that one of biggest ways legacy admissions affect the bottom line of highly selective schools is that the legacy admits are more likely to be full pay.
As a statistical matter, that’s doubtless true. In actuality, I don’t think it plays out that way. Pretty much my whole college cohort has run the gantlet of legacy admissions now, and the results certainly didn’t relate to wealth. I have two friends who had all of their children accepted at our alma mater. One of them is certainly full pay, but the other is a high school teacher married to a part-time high school teacher with very modest assets. And I know several other non-full-pay legacy kids. Meanwhile, a senior partner at one of New York’s snootiest law firms had all three children rejected, who would have been fourth-generation legacies. A partner at one of the big three management consulting firms had one child accepted and three rejected. (It’s not as if these kids were losers, either. They all wound up at elite colleges where they weren’t legacies.) I have plenty of examples to support the proposition that a million dollars and more of cumulative lifetime contributions does not mean that your perfectly well-qualified child will be accepted.
Or otherwise less needy of financial aid, even if not full pay, since legacy applicants have college graduate parents who have a higher income distribution than the overall applicant pool that includes those with non-college-graduate parents.
But that is not the same as the supposed donation effect.
Some of this may depend on how one defines legacy.
Is it merely someone whose parents/grandparents attended regardless of wealth/alum donation levels and/or parental professional/social fame/achievements/connections which could bring further credit to the college’s name?
Or is it highly dependent on how active/much the alum parents/grandparents donated to the alum over the years or whether they made a multimillion dollar donation or two at a drop of a hat within some years of junior intending to apply and/or whether they have outstanding achievements* and/or connections which could be leveraged to the private college’s advantage/further burnish the college’s good name**?
From what I’ve heard from my HS guidance counselor and a few relatives/friends who worked in admissions officers of elite private colleges, one often only get a legacy tip if one’s parents are/perceived by admissions as the latter type.
- I.e.: Well-known academic, Hollywood celebrity, politician, business titan, etc.
** Probably not as willing to accept children of alum parents on a legacy basis whose fame/actions may tarnish the private college’s image. You can probably think of a few famous examples…
My brother will not give another penny to the school that rejected his oldest daughter who was a double legacy there. But they never gave much.
I think legacy effects a school in a different way. Traditions mean more when you are following in the footsteps of your parents and grandparents. I’m kind of sad that I don’t think anyone from my side of the family is going to end up at Harvard. Schools with big legacy contingents feel different from ones where everyone is new.
If you are a legacy family that gives a generous amount (“generous” varies per family obviously) and that school does not let in your student, that giving ends right there. Simple as that. So yes, to answer the OP, legacy admissions bring in significantly more donations from alumni. Then there are the legacy/parent fund representatives that visit/meet with you, invite you to special events to keep it rolling. We give to our kid’s high schools and colleges (who had the grades/scores to get in anyway), but if they had rejected one of them, checkbook would close and money would go elsewhere.
Big money donors (i.e. developmental cases) don’t need to be alumni. For example, the billionaire Bass family has made big contributions to Stanford and Duke since their kids got admitted to those schools. The parents were alumni of Yale and Smith.
For your mere mortal regular alumni, legacy admissions is more about higher yield and fuller pay. Most alumni parents will send way more money to the school in the form tuition than they ever will in the form of donations. While not every legacy kids comes from a full pay family, many/most do since only the fancier/selective schools do legacy admissions. So the legacy pool is pre-sorted towards higher SES.
At very selective schools, most legacies get rejected. So you’d think legacy admissions would more likely have an adverse effect on donations, at least among typical alumni modest donor types.
As @blueskies2day says, in our case our legacy college not admitting either of our children ended our financial support for that college for about a decade, although it has (modestly) resumed in the last couple of years.
But I think the possibility of legacy admissions fuels a lot of giving in the 25-30 years between college graduation and college applications, especially the last dozen or so of those years. As I said, I know a number of people who donated high-6- to low-7-figure amounts to their alma maters cumulatively, at least in part with the expectation that would weigh in their children’s favor at admission time. Sometimes the giving ended when the first child was turned down, but sometimes it continued even then because there was a second or third child coming down the pike.
And, for families with the capacity to give in excess of college tuition, nothing cements support for a university like a multi-generational family tradition. I would love to know how much my extended family donated to Harvard in 2016 dollars between 1920 and (roughly) 2005, when it seems to have stopped accepting any of my relatives. Heck, the families of the last couple of kids to go there, both third-generation legacies, are probably still giving generously.
I have no doubt that legacy admissions increases alumni donations. Or at least that it has in the past. Maybe some tipping point has been reached where they can’t admit enough alumni children to maintain enthusiasm for giving among alumni whose children have yet to apply, but it that’s the case it will probably take another decade or so to figure it out.
Hmmm, would one such difference be an increased feeling of inherited aristocracy?
Having sent annual contributions in the range of $100-250/year for the past 20 or so years, we now expect to contribute $280,000 over the next 4 years. After that, I think we will consider ourselves done. Maybe the kid will take up the $100/year habit.
It might be, though I was also thinking of places like Notre Dame.
Harvard accepted one of our kids, and not the other. But since we all would have considered it a minor miracle if S2 got in, we had no hard feelings. We give the same extremely modest amount we always have.
Well i stopped contributing to one of my alma maters when they didn’t admit my daughter.
While a child of an alum who sends $50 to a few hundred a year to an institution the child has been admitted to would be considered a legacy in the general sense, his/her admission isn’t likely to have been influenced by the legacy tip according to what I understand from my HS GC and relatives/friends who worked in elite college admissions. In short, such a child would have been admitted much more on his/her own academic/EC merits in a manner nearly exactly like a non-legacy admit.
Especially if the institution concerned boasts numerous alums who have the wherewithal and inclination to donate several hundred thousands per year sustained and/or make one or more multi-million/billion dollar donations at a drop of the hat.