For the past three years I’ve seen quite a few Brown legacies accepted to Brown but rejected from all other Ivy league+ schools including some schools (academically stronger) siblings are currently enrolled in. Because Brown was being used as their safety (because of legacy status) these students had not applied ED and talked about Brown being low on their list yet got in anyway. While average scores at Brown align with the other mid-level Ivy’s, the spread is different. Between a quarter to a third of the scores are below either 700 for SATs or at 24-29 for ACTs. That is similar to scores of the legacy students I know-low for Ivy schools. Seems like legacy is emphasized far more at Brown now then in previous years-the opposite of other Ivy Schools. Weak legacies certainly don’t help the reputation of any school. Is Brown increasing the number of Legacy admits?
Yale: 12.2%
Cornell: 14.6% (not counting siblings)
http://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Profile2014-Freshmen.pdf
Harvard: 16% (parents went to Harvard)
http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/makeup/
Dartmouth: 14% (as of 2012)
http://www.dartblog.com/data/2012/12/010535.php
Penn 13%
Princeton 9.4%
http://theivycoach.com/2018-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/
(according to this source, the Dartmouth rate is 8.3%)
Columbia 6.5% (as of 2016 according to a wiki)
http://www.wikicu.com/Legacy_student
Brown: 10-12% according to Dean of Admission James Miller
By the way, this is what you just posted in the Penn forum:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18099619/#Comment_18099619
Where do you get your information? That is a sincere question.
If you said Brown has no distribution or core requirements, that would be true. Brown does have concentration requirements, a writing requirement, and minimum required course requirements, so your statement is false.
And where does the entitlement for the first generation of legacy come from? Would you put special restrictions on the children of first-generation students or URMs or athletes at Brown, for example? How do you know who currently at Brown is going to have a kid 20-40 years from now who will apply to Brown?
I don’t think legacy applicants should receive any special treatment at all. I don’t necessarily think admissions officers should expect more of legacies compared to other applicants even though, as a group, they have usually had resources to help them overcome any academic challenge they encounter. If with their privileged background they can’t get in on the merits of their own record they should be rejected.
I think I must know a large group of the legacy admits then if it is as low as 10-12% at Brown. I bet it is considerably higher than that.
Fine.
Maybe you should grace the Cornell forum…or the forums of other Ivies that have greater legacy percentages than Brown…with your views.
Now answer my questions if you wish, or we may be led to believe you do not have answers.
So the source of your information…or your sample…is people you know personally, if we understand you correctly. Leads me to the wild guess that you are a guidance counselor or an independent college counselor…just a guess, which you can easily deny here.
And to resolve your bet, we should rely on…on…what? Your unsubstantiated claim? Or a statement by the Brown Dean of Admission? Something else?
The fact that the other schools publish the numbers but Brown refuses suggests that the Brown figures are a lot higher than they suggest. They say they don’t track them. Really? They track everything else. They apparently label the applications “legacy”. Why don’t they publish them?
“According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a 2011 Harvard study showed that, “all other things being equal, legacy applications got a 23.3-percentage-point increase in their probability of admission” to 30 elite universities. And students with at least one parent who attended the competitive institutions as undergraduates – called “primary legacies” – had a staggering 45.1-percentage-point admissions advantage. In other words, a non-legacy applicant with, say, a 10 percent chance of admission would have a 33.3 percent chance of admission as a legacy student and a 55.1 percent chance of being admitted as a primary legacy…”
Harvard is willing to publish the stats. Why not Brown?
The stats you quoted are not for Harvard, they are for “30 elite universities”.
That detail aside, what is your point again? That Brown has a greater population of “weak legacies” (to quote you) than Cornell? Or Harvard or Yale?
You come to a school’s forum to criticize the school, then the burden of proof of your criticism is on you…not on the forum.
Come up with some data, we can have a discussion. Come here to diss, I think this thread will generate more heat than light. Up to you.
@lostaccount, brown has published its percentage of legacy (10-12%) in article in the brown daily herald. All you had to do is google “legacy percentage at brown.” But given you clearly didn’t think of doing that before posting, I did for you:
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2014/04
/14/students-question-use-legacy-admission/
By the way, the legacies I know who were either accepted or deferred all scored in the 99% on their SATs.
As an alum who does interviewing, I’ve received emails and reports from Brown admissions with very specific numbers about class profiles. I can’t link to anything, because these were internal communications between Brown and alumni. I can confirm that a typical class at Brown is 10% legacy. About 150 kids/year.
Many of my friends who went to Brown had kids who applied. Dozens. I’ve seen many legacy kids, who had high grades, high SATs, good ECs, get denied. I’ve also seen multiple legacy kids who got into Brown and other Ivies. In more than 10 years of watching this, I’ve seen only one acceptance of a legacy who got in ED with an academic record that is not superb, and that kid’s father is a huge donor worth multiple millions. My definition of “not superb” in this case is a kid with SATs well above 700 but not ranked at the tippy top of the class and not taking the most rigorous curriculum. Oh, I know of one other legacy admit with below-average academics, but he was a top ranked football recruit, and he went someplace else.
If Brown accepts a handful of legacies a year because mommy and daddy give million-dollar donations, I’m fine with that. 4-5 kids per year out of 3000 admits to add to the endowment is a good trade off. There are many more injustices in the world that I’d worry about. (BTW, I have no idea if Brown does this. I have no idea if there are 4-5 development legacies accepted/year. My educated guess is that there are not many more than that per year, but I have no data.)
ETA. I found some PDFs that show the class of 2013 had 180 legacies, or 12%. 14% were first-generation. And the class of 2015 had 188 legacies, also 12%, with 16% first-generation.
Some tend to think legacy is all about wealthy Mommy and Daddy ensuring some exclusivity for little Junior or Juniorette. I don’t think they understand what the top selective colleges really look for.
There is no knee-jerk reaction to legacies. There is no advantage to bringing them on if they can’t meet expectations. OP doesn’t understand how the tippy tops work. Nor that not all alums are wealthy.
Btw, the children of the wealthy mega donors, those who could be lined up as a developmental admit-- these families are working with their development reps over a number of years. If their kids can’t cut it at the school, they are gently nudged in other directions, well before applying. OP doesn’t understand that, either. This notion it’s oh-so-unfair is superficial. (Athletes are another matter.)
Thanks @fenwaypark for correcting my link to the BDH.
Does the OP have any further comments given this surfeit of counter arguments? Or has the legacy-laggard hypothesis been tested thoroughly to his or her satisfaction? Or is there additional data/information that should be brought to bear?
If nothing else, I suppose it deflects some of the applicant/parent ire normally directed at minorities and athletes in April.
Seems ill advised - was the HS GC on board? Homechcooled?
@lostaccount http://youtu.be/moSFlvxnbgk
Also, I googled lostaccount’s quote to find the news article he pulled it from. That lead me to the actual study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775710001676 which lead me to this paper http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775710000026 which actually lists the 30 schools:
In case those links are paywalled, here are the schools (grouped geographically since that’s how the figure has them):
Pomona
Stanford
Carleton
WUSTL
Northwestern
Oberlin
Chicago
Amherst
Brown
Dartmouth
Harvard
MIT
Mt. Holyoke
Smith
Trinity
Wellesley
Wesleyan
Williams
Yale
Barnard
Bryn Mawr
Columbia
Cornell
Princeton
Rochester
Swarthmore
Penn
Duke
Georgetown
Hopkins
Rice
So yeah, the numbers you quote lost account include Brown.
The quote begins with the phrase “all other things being equal.” Brown and other schools readily admit that the legacy boost occurs when considering two similar students – when “all other things are equal.” In other words, if SAT scores, GPA, curriculum rigor, ECs and recommendations are equally strong among students, the legacy will get in. Which means legacy admits are qualified.
There’s no mystery here. Let’s move on … let it go, let it go …
Lostaccount’s misconception and misinformation remind me of that old saying (not original by me)
The Ivy League legacy admissions boost is less than legacy families think it should be, and more than non-legacy families think is fair.