<p>My child was deferred at Yale, and I'm puzzled. Her stats are higher than many who were accepted (judging from Yale forum) and she has very solid extracurriculars, passion, summer activities, recommendations, is from an underrepresented state, has twice met the adcom personally, etc. She's not a nationally ranked anything, but is way higher than the 75th percentile of admitted students. I thought that legacy plus these factors would make acceptance pretty likely. Is legacy (dad, granddad, etc.) not meaningful any more?</p>
<p>I don’t know, but when my son was applying to Harvard several years ago, I figured he had just over a 50% chance of getting accepted. H doesn’t have EA, so I can’t say if he would have been deferred. (He was deferred at both MIT and Caltech and ultimately rejected by both of them while he got into Harvard, so it looks like legacy did help him.) On the other hand, my niece, also a double legacy was just plain rejected a year later.</p>
<p>It is, and it isn’t. Legacy alone won’t get you in anywhere, think about how many kids in the US are children or grandchildren of Yale graduates, there must be thousands. If your husband or her grandfather has a history of strong giving to Yale, especially in this economy, that probably makes a big difference. If they’re a trustee or a booster or willing to build a building, sure that makes a difference. If not, well, it’s a nice thing to put on an application and it may have been the difference between getting deferred and getting rejected outright, so you could take that as a comfort. </p>
<p>Honestly, one of the worst things you can do is try to figure out WHY with these decisions. You’ll never know for sure why your child was turned down or deferred, while others were accepted. You can’t tell the whole story from an internet forum, and you won’t ever be able to see their admissions file to get the whole story. The best is just to accept that it happened, have your kid send in a statement (1 page) saying why Yale is still their first choice and why they think they would be a great fit for it, and hope for the best.</p>
<p>Legacy status is only a “considered”, not “important” or “very important” factor according to Yale. Legacy status these days adds very little “thumb on the scale” weight to an application unless there are lots of $$$ behind it. Colleges that use early acceptances also set aside many early round slots for recruited athletes, and there are always DA’$$$$$ that get the early nod, especially these days with plunging college endowments.</p>
<p>Do you think the schools play the numbers game here? They have a target of how many they will accept in this round, and they want their yield to be as high as possible in the RD round. They have might be gambling that if they accept her RD, she is very likely to come (since being a legacy means something to her, too.) So, in the EA round they capture somebody they might not get next round, and they get your daughter, the legacy, as a RD admit.</p>
<p>By the way, any idea what percentage of Yale students are legacy?</p>
<p>2bizee’s suggestion is plausible, but again, you’ll never know for sure (or even really be able to make an educated guess. Everything is just pure speculation).</p>
<p>I always thought legacy would maybe just get you an extra look.</p>
<p>Other than that, admissions is just as much a mystery as always.</p>
<p>How do you know her legacy status didn’t make a difference? Plenty of wonderfully qualified students get outright rejected from Yale.</p>
<p>When you’re in that top tier of schools, nothing makes your acceptance “pretty likely”. Well, barring extraordinary circumstances like your family being a huge donor to the school.</p>
<p>Stanford legacy didn’t help D2 last year - despite high stats that put her well in the running on stats alone, she was deferred EA and denied RD.</p>
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<p>In which case it’s really irrelevant whether the parents are legacies anyway! The family that gives the $10 million for the student center – their kids get special treatment regardless of whether the parents were alumni or just benefactors.</p>
<p>One of my kids had a friend whose grandfather supposedly funded a building at a top-20 LAC. Her stats were within the range and she was denied. Same kid applied to another LAC where every member of her immediate family was an alumni (both parents, all siblings). Her stats were in range and kid was again denied. All it got her was an extra line in the rejection letter. (Something to the effect of the college being particularly sorry it didn’t have room for her despite her strong family ties.) </p>
<p>It is soooo hard to know why a kid wasn’t accepted. My daughter was denied at her ED school 2 years ago and I was sure it was because one subscore of her SATs wasn’t high enough. This year, a kid from her school was accepted with significantly lower SATs. (Neither was legacy. Daughter is URM. Girl wasn’t. I don’t think the girl needed aid but the school is need-blind.)</p>
<p>I was told a few years ago that Yale legacies were put into their own special pool if and only if they applied single choice early action. The admissions rate for this pool was 30% but it was, naturally, an extremely competitive pool.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to an interview with Yale President Rick Levin on the impact of legacy status in admissions. It’s from 2004, but probably still relevant. An excerpt:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html[/url]”>http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2004_11/q_a.html</a></p>
<p>My sense is that the admissions preference for Yale legacies exists, but is pretty weak.</p>
<p>college_ruled–UPenn only gives a legacy preference if you apply there early, Yale does not have a comparable policy.</p>
<p>Things have changed since your husband and his father went there (unless your husband matriculated at the height of the anti-legacy period at Yale during the 70s) and legacy has been substantially devalued.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. I’ve seen legacy status be helpful for Princeton and Stanford, though of course not a guarantee. And legacy student must apply ED, SCEA, etc.</p>
<p>I know a doctor that had his son apply to Harvard (legacy) and he got in, but he still wasn’t 100% sure when he applied. He told me years ago legacy and contributions meant a lot, today, they do, but not quite as much. It’s not just the legacy with the Ivies, it’s the money. The lower tier schools love contributions also, but will give a bigger checkmark to it either way. (In his opinon) Some affluent parents give generously as alumni, but their child (gasp!) doesn’t want to go there…that has caused quite a few heated conversations. : )</p>
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<p>Actually, it sort of did. There’s a trend for non-legacy EA applicants to Stanford who are not accepted in the first round to be rejected outright, whereas legacies are deferred and get a second look. A few may be accepted on the second try.</p>
<p>My brother:
3.95 U
4.40 W
2390 SAT
800 800 790 SATII
Good recs
Bad essay
SIX-TIME LEGACY</p>
<p>Deferred SCEA / Rejected RD</p>
<p>The point is that legacy doesn’t count for that much. Yale sent a message out to all alumni saying that the acceptance rate for legacy is only 20-25% as opposed to two years ago’s 35%</p>
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<p>No… and why should it? It certainly doesn’t hurt and all things being equal between two candidates it could tip the scales, but other than that it won’t help too much. </p>
<p>There is no shortage of highly qualified candidates applying to these schools and the school isn’t doing itself any favors by accepting, what it considers, a less qualified candidate over a more qualified one simply because one’s parent or grandparent once attended the same school. </p>
<p>A possible exception there being if there is a strong track record of donations from those legacy which may be put in jeopardy… but even then it wouldn’t make “acceptance pretty likely.”</p>