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<p>I think the impact is significant at HYP, but especially at Harvard. Because of its huge name recognition, lots of kids with no realistic chance of admission are throwing an application at the wall to see if, by some miracle, it sticks.</p>
<p>But the phrase “no realistic chance of admission” has a very technical meaning here, and it’s circular. “No realistic chance of admission” doesn’t mean that they aren’t fantastic students, and potential world-beaters. It only means that they aren’t quite as perfect-looking at 17 or 18 as some other fantastic students and potential world-beaters.</p>
<p>At the schools my kids attended, I don’t know anyone who applied to Harvard who wasn’t a fantastic student and a potential world-beater. With one or two exceptions, everyone who applied to Harvard or Yale wound up at some Ivy-equivalent college, and one of the exceptions to that is absolutely tearing up the track at her large public. (She only applied to six colleges; when Yale rejected her, there was really no near-Yale on her list.) Among the students Harvard and Yale rejected was a kid who two years later was the principal author of a full article in Science. He probably had “no meaningful chance of acceptance” because he was only #10 in his high school class, and Harvard/Yale had never dipped below 6 or 7, and it was a strong class, too (there were three other kids who were accepted to one or both of them). If you could do the admissions in retrospect, he would be the first one taken.</p>
<p>I know a lot of so-called “no hope” legacies who applied to HYP seemingly just to throw a stone into the expanse. (Full disclosure: by the statistics-focused standards we often see on CC, I might be one of them.) That said, most of the legacies I know are relatively qualified. They are often privileged kids with accomplished parents who stress the importance of education and intellect, which in my opinion often helps motivate individuals or inculcate core educational values. </p>
<p>I also think that a lot of students only really come into their own in college. Chance threads on CC make it look like everyone is president of their student government, leader of Model UN and Math Olympiad, and a cancer researcher at age 18, but most people I know take until college to really unfurl. I would hazard that most people, with the greater experience and maturity displayed at age 20, would be much more attractive candidates two years after applying when compared to the 18 pool.</p>
<p>On another note, while we’re talking about “hooks” - I’m curious as to what the acceptance rate for faculty children is. From my very meager observations in my area (internationally known, rigorous high school), being legacy doesn’t help as much as being a well-qualified URM or athletic recruit does - I don’t remember the number of students who got into Yale this year, but I seem to recall that two-thirds were athletic recruits, one was a strong athlete though not a recruit, two were URM, one was an accomplished musician, and only two were “hookless” in that regard but were incredibly strong candidates; as far as I remember, none were legacy - but faculty children really do seem to get a boost. I know a couple faculty children who were accepted or wait-listed and very few who were rejected. Of course, my sample size is negligible and faculty children, again possibly due to privilege, often have very nice looking applications, but I think it’d be an interesting question.</p>
<p>JHS – I agree with you. But when I refer to kids with “no realistic chance of admission,” I’m not talking students who wind up at non-HYP Ivies or Ivy-equivalents like Duke or U of C. To my mind, those kids did have a realistic chance of admission. When I think of no realistic chance, I’m thinking about kids who wind up at far less selective schools; kids who are themselves misinformed about what highly selective colleges look for in their applicants, kids who have grievously misinformed and aggressive parents, or kids who just want to throw a HYP application at the wall for the hell of it.</p>
<p>JHS: Your kids probably went to a school with a good counseling office that explained exactly where students should target their applications. Not all schools provide that kind of counseling. Some students aim too high and others aim too low. There is also this notion that every student deserves one “reach for the stars” application, and since there are no stars brighter than HYP, that is where those applications tend to go.</p>
<p>This does NOT help, unless you are donating serious money ie building-named-after-you money. At the last fundraising effort, it cost $50,000 to get your name on a half-inch plaque in a four feet square study-cubicle in the basement of the library, so unless your name is Vanderbilt or Bass, your donations don’t go a long way at all
[YALE</a> » Tomorrow | Yale Office of Development](<a href=“http://www.givingcatalog.yale.edu/fundlevel/show/1]YALE”>http://www.givingcatalog.yale.edu/fundlevel/show/1)</p>
<p>vicarious: Actually, my kids attended two very different schools, one a top private that sends about 40% of its class to Ivies or the equivalent year-in and year-out, and the other a large public magnet. The private school has exquisite counselling, and Harvard and Yale each get 10-15 applications per class (many from legacies), with 2-3 kids generally accepted at one or both of them. For the most part, HY pick the “right” kids to accept, but the results are just random enough so that it’s impossible to say that there aren’t 20+ kids per class with a legitimate shot. (For example, in one class, the consensus most intellectual kid, a Yale legacy, was accepted at Harvard and Princeton but not Yale, the kid with the best grades was rejected at HYP and accepted at Stanford, and Yale and Princeton each took one completely unhooked, normal-smart kid who were indistinguishable to the naked eye from any of the other good students. Each of HYP had 4-6 legacies in the top quintile of the class, none of whom was accepted at his legacy college.) </p>
<p>At the public school, the four counselors’ main job is to make certain that all 500+ graduates get into a college somewhere they can afford to attend. The best students are told to apply to Penn and that they really should consider LACs, and otherwise left alone to counsel each other based on folklore. At that school, too, usually 2-3 kids/year are accepted at one or both of H/Y, always from the top 6-7 ranked students. Because results seem more predictable, they only get 8-10 applications per class, almost all from students who will be attending another Ivy (or equivalent) if they are not accepted there. </p>
<p>I don’t doubt that Harvard and Yale get a bunch of very unrealistic applications, but nothing in what I have observed on the ground suggests to me that their standard line that only about 20% of their applications fall into that category is way off.</p>
<p>bouda – According to the conventional wisdom, the admissions advantage for faculty children (“facbrats”) is far greater than the advantage for ordinary legacies (those without development potential).</p>
<p>JHS: You seem to have far more data points than I do, so I’ll defer to you on that point. I do think that Hunt’s original point in post#19 (about legacies) may still be valid.</p>
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To rephrase my own speculation, it may be that the bell curve of legacy applicants has a longer “tail” than the bell curve of non-legacy applicants, which could result in a higher admission rate for legacies even if those admitted are not appreciably more or less qualified than other admittees.</p>
<p>Rick Levin, the president – I believe – of Yale said in an interview it was. He tries to give this fact some context: [Yale</a> Alumni Magazine: Rick Levin Q&A](<a href=“http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html]Yale”>http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html)</p>
<p>The only quote from Levin that I really have trouble believing is the last phrase of the following:
Yeah, right. But note that he still doesn’t really give any clear answer to the question of how much being a legacy helps as compared to a similarly qualified student who is not a legacy…the implication is that it helps some.</p>
<p>I found this most interesting:</p>
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<p>what is the explanation?</p>
<p>^ yay!!!</p>
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Maybe the profs are Elis as well, and cut them a break.</p>
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<p>I had never focused on that rather interesting statement. Of course I want to read it (as it was probably intended to be read) as speaking to the high standard they have for legacies. But I can think of some other possible explanations.</p>
<p>– The legacies they admit have high school grades and scores on the level of recruited hockey players (except that their grades come from Dalton and Exeter, not Natick Vo-Tech), and they do a little better than the recruited hockey players in college. [By the way, nothing against recruited hockey players here, but rumor has always had it that hockey players are the toughest group to recruit within Ivy guidelines.]</p>
<p>– The legacies they admit are wealthier than their GPA/SAT peers, and wealth and college grades are correlated.</p>
<p>Maybe the legacies try harder to prove that they deserve to be there and to do better than Mom or Dad, while the non-legacies don’t feel such pressure?</p>
<p>We also don’t know how large the difference is, and whether it is statistically significant.</p>
<p>Or maybe their parents still have a good idea which courses are guts.</p>
<p>legacies are only parents & sometimes grandparents, right? so if my dad and his brother went to chicago and then all three of their other siblings went to yale, my relationship with my three aunts and uncles have no impact on my application?</p>
<p>bouda, do you mean “facbrats” where parents are professors at HYP? Or facbrats whose parents are professors at other institutions? We heard by word of mouth (a friend who has worked at H for a long time) that H would give some advantage in admissions to children of current H faculty, so that applicants whose parents are professors at other institutions might have to overcome being a “facbrat” since H (or Y or P) don’t want to fill their classes with facbrats. In other words, being the child of a faculty member at a non-HYPSM institution could be a disadvantage, because institutions don’t want too many kids of professors in one class. </p>
<p>I think it’s possible that a smart kid whose parents are professors might have a slight advantage, esp. if the parents are professors at an Ivy, but that slight advantage comes from value placed on education, opportunities for travel, more than the parents’ actual jobs. Similar to legacies.</p>
<p>That said, the vast majority of the children of my colleagues – I work at a large, well-regarded public university in the West – not only didn’t choose to go to an Ivy, they didn’t even apply to Ivies. They opted, instead, for the free or mostly-free ride that the children of faculty get at the large publics. I know that regional trends enter in here, too: it is unusual even for good students to go out of state for school, in a number of western states.</p>