Double Legacy

<p>My son attends a private college prep school and maintains a straight A average with all honors and AP classes. He got 770 in math, 720 in writing and 690 in critical reading. He has been captain of his cross country team for 2 years and has been the league champ for 2 years. His father and grandfather graduated from Princeton. Will the double legacy help him get into Princeton?</p>

<p>It will definitely help, not hinder, his application - but legacy, scores and GPA alone will not get him in. Good luck to your son!</p>

<p>It will indeed. Of course it does not guarantee anything, but it will help a great deal assuming that that every other aspect of the app goes well.</p>

<p>He should also get in contact with PTon’s CC coach and see if his times will merit any consideration from the Athletic Dept. Another boost can’t be bad, eh?</p>

<p>Problem is he is Division 3 (based on size of his high school) for cross country and Princeton is in a higher division. We expect him to make it to the State Finals Thanksgiving weekend.</p>

<p>How many divisions are there?</p>

<p>Your son’s high school division is irrelevant when it comes to his eligibility to become a recruited Ivy athlete. His personal records and cross-country accomplishments winning state or regional races determine his desireability. There are plenty of Ivy athletes who came from smaller division h.s. teams. They just excelled beyond the usual levels.</p>

<p>Your son’s not double legacy… He’s single legacy (only his dad went to Princeton) which will help tremendously, but having a grandfather who went to Princeton is a slight bonus too. All else constant, being legacy almost triples one’s chance of getting into Princeton (at least according to the multiple regression analysis conducted by the ORF department here).</p>

<p>Princeton requires the Common Application and the Princeton Supplement. I found it interesting that the Supplement does not ask if any family members attended Princeton. On the Common App, however, it does ask where the parents attended college.</p>

<p>Princeton uses the information about parents from the Common App to determine legacy. </p>

<p>Also, I have read that legacy boost helps most at the highest levels of GPA and SAT scores and is almost non existent at the lower end. Not sure where your son would lie along this spectrum though. Probably somewhere in the middle.</p>

<p>My neighbor’s son is a double legacy.</p>

<p>He got rejected but got accepted to Dartmouth (where he now attends)</p>

<p>I think ppl put too much weight on the legacy</p>

<p>I know a legacy student who was accepted. Naviance tells me her stats were around 99/100 weighted GPA and 2260 SAT, so very similar to your son’s. However, her father and her brother both attended Princeton, which would make her more of a double legacy than your son (this is simply because you can list where your siblings go to college on the Common App).</p>

<p>Wouldn’t your neighbor’s son be… your neighbor?</p>

<p>@lullinatalk</p>

<p>Technically, you should only call someone a double legacy if both their parents went to Princeton. A sibling going to Princeton matters much less than a parent going to Princeton, especially since the sibling might’ve had a better shot at admission due to the parent’s legacy boost.</p>

<p>ray121988–that is true, but it’s probably slightly more advantage than having a grandfather who is a Princeton alum just because her brother was listed on the Common App, as opposed to a grandfather who would not have shown up on the application itself. Also, the father might have gotten a boost from being a legacy as well. But I think the OP’s son and the Princeton student I know are basically in the same situation, and since they have similar stats and she got in, the OP’s son has a good shot.</p>

<p>Well I guess the issue is that legacy preference is for scion. You are your father’s scion, not your brother’s. If you had an uncle who was younger than your father, it is unlikely he would’ve benefited from your father’s attending Princeton.</p>

<p>The purpose of asking if your siblings have gone to college to determine whether or not you are the first in your family to have gone to college.</p>

<p>Also, the students I know who had grandparents who went to Princeton did indicate this fact under an “Additional Information” section.</p>