<p>I always hear that the "only way" to get in to the ivy league is by having a parent who went there, but that sounds like envy talking more than evidence. </p>
<p>That said, I don't know the evidence. So, does having a legacy really help you get into a school like Harvard? How much of an impact does it have?</p>
<p>negligible impact at best. it’s a very, very weak tip in your favor, but nothing more.</p>
<p>+80% of legacy admits get rejected. +80% percent of the admitted students have no legacy affiliation. Thus, there’s no grand “legacy only” preference that locks out non-legacies. Although legacies get admitted at higher rates, they have also been compared to legacies from Yale and Princeton who jointly apply at Harvard. The all roughly are being admitted at the same rate. Thus, the conclusion is the highest correlation to this increased rate is the educational environment of being raised in a home with an HYP parent (duh) – more than simply being a legacy of any particular school.</p>
<p>I’m not saying it has no influence whatsoever – consistently, top schools say it’s a tipping factor, all things being equal. But the above study minimizes effects the “good ol boy” admissions of several decades ago.</p>
<p>Yes, it makes adifference. If, T26E4’s statsa re truly correct. 20% of legacy applicants are accepted as compared to the single digits of the rest of us. Though, yes, the legacies do tend to have the profiles needed for acceptance, so do most Harvard applcants. If there truly were no reason to differentiate with the legacy pool being so red hot. , then why even bother to have one? Where it makes the impact, however, is with a double hit, which many legacies have. Legacy flag + another hook. . All on top of the file with the #s necessary to make the admit list. </p>
<p>I looked at 9 years worth of data of kids applying to schools from a rigorous “name” prep/independent school. The cluster points are like Naviance but also differentiated by special flags like URM, athlete, 1st gen college, special challenges, special connection (won’t say what, but likely celebrity, development), and multiple pools. The multiple pools won out by a lot, and there was often legacy in that mix. But then there were very few pure legacy kids applying–most all had some other hook.</p>
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Absolutely. Many of those legacy kids would have gotten in anyways.</p>
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<p>I think it is more accurate to say “could” have gotten in anyways instead of “would” have - meaning they had the credentials but so did many other kids who did not get in. Being a legacy was the factor that tipped the scales in their favor over someone else who was equally qualified but not a legacy.</p>
<p>The rate of legacy acceptance was 30% for this year’s freshman class at Princeton <a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate/”>http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate/</a> . That is quite a substantial boost that other equally qualified kids don’t enjoy. There is STILL a preference for legacies but as T26E4 points out, it’s not what it used to be.</p>
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<p>Maybe I am not searching well, is this study linked here? </p>
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<p>There is no published study. What there is, is several second- and third- hand reports of people hearing from Harvard admissions staff that Harvard periodically looks at its admission rate for Yale and Princeton legacies, and it is not meaningfully different from its admission rate for Harvard legacies. Harvard doesn’t trumpet that fact, but there are enough uncoordinated reports of high-level staff discussing it, internally and externally, that it is pretty credible.</p>
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<p>One of the reasons I find the report about Harvard credible is that it absolutely corresponds to what I see anecdotally in the world. The last Harvard legacy I knew who went to Harvard was also accepted at Stanford, Yale, MIT, and Princeton. The most recent Yale legacy I know at Yale was also accepted at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Swarthmore (and rejected nowhere). And I know several Yale, Stanford, and Princeton legacies rejected at their legacy school and accepted at Harvard. It’s not just theoretical that many legacy kids would be admitted without any preference.</p>
<p>By the way, it could easily be that the legacy “preference” at Harvard is actually a legacy detriment. Legacies are considered separately at least in part because Harvard, like its peers, wants to make certain it is not creating a class with more than an acceptable percentage of legacies (acceptable being about 15%). At some point in the admissions process, I suspect they hit their quota of legacies, and additional candidates who are legacies are excluded from consideration for whatever slots are left, even thought they might well have been in the mix otherwise.</p>
<p>To further what JHS says: there was an era at Yale where the President purposely drove admissions away from the legacy nods and towards a more inclusive and meritocratic admissions. An uproar/rebellion started among the alumni. Petitions, dried up donations, calls for resignation, etc. But after many years, the pendulum swung back towards the middle. Legacy can definitely sometimes be a negative for fears of appearing too nepotistic.</p>