Harvard Legacy Admit Rate -- 30%

Parents Forum
21

<p>

</p>

<p>NO! A 30% admit rate among legacies merely means that 30% of those legacies who applied got admitted. It doesn’t mean that 30% of the STUDENTS walking around campus are legacies! That’s an entirely different thing altogether. That depends on how “thick” the applicant pool is with legacies. Please don’t make the mistake of conflating an acceptance rate with the % of students who are legacies. The two are independent of one another. Harvard could have a low legacy acceptance rate and yet a high % of actual students being legacies if the applicant pool was “thick” with legacies. Or Harvard could have a high legacy acceptance rate and yet a low % of actual students being legacies if the applicant pool is “thin” with legacies. </p>

<p>JHS is absolutely right above. If you took that statistic and looked at H acceptance rates from Y legacies, P legacies, and I even daresay legacies of any top school, you’d have a higher rate than the average. Because you’re simply talking about a group that tends to be more well-to-do, have more involved parents who make education a priority, and have had / taken advantage of more opportunities.</p>

22

<p>None of the percentages mean a thing without getting the test score numbers which really are the only way to do a statistical comparison. Even then you are not taking into consideration those alums who have other special features that would give them a hook even without alumni preference.</p>

<p>Harvard’s yield is the highest, so though the acceptance does not enrollment equal, it would be more so in Harvard’s case. My friend who is an MIT grad and is active in alumni affairs tells me that they lose a lot of legacy kids who are accepted to both H and MIT to H. His own daughter has H in her sights but will be applying to MIT despite no legacy preference.</p>

23

<p>cpt:</p>

<p>This is from a November 2004 interview with Richard Levin, Yale’s president. I have to assume he had a firm basis for making the unambiguous statements he made, at least as of then:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I had forgotten how strong his last data-based statement was. Legacies outperform non-legacies in college, holding high school grades and SAT scores constant. That’s pretty powerful, if it’s true.</p>

24

<p>Study by Winston several years ago found that, based on objective (SAT scores), there were four times as many low-income students qualified to be at Ivies than actually attending.</p>

<p>The schools are NOT need-blind. Absolute, total myth. They pretty much know the financial status of all the legacies, by definition they know the financial status of all the developmental admits, they know the financial status of the senators, congresspeople, ambassadors, etc., they know the financial status of the Pell Grantees, they know the financial status of every Questbridge applicant, they know the financial status of the sons and daughters of the power elite among the internationals. </p>

<p>And, again, they use that information in every case above. That’s at least 50% of the student body. (For the rest, a vanishingly smaller number, they know the zip codes, the private schools attended, the summer trips taken, etc.) The admissions people are generally speaking well-trained professional, and are trained not to be blind to anything. That’s why the percentage of those receiving aid barely budges year after year, and why, when Princeton for example, has its President announce they want more (but not too many more) low-income students, it’s so easy to find them, and change the mix.</p>

<p>At my need-blind alma mater, they had a reporter attend meetings of the admissions committee - and actually published it in the alumni magazine. The director of admissions counted every “socio-eq” admit - they wanted to make sure they had “enough”, and likely, “not too many”. When Amherst’s President announced he wanted more low-income students, they easily found 6% more Pell Grant students to attend, without changing admissions standards one iota.</p>

<p>JHS - good catch. thanks.</p>

25

<p>

</p>

<p>But what was that ratio for other students? I.e. if four times as many non-low-income students were qualified to be at Ivies than actually attending, then it would appear that low-income versus non-low-income is not making a difference. If the number were significantly greater or less than four times for non-low-income students, then there would at least be a hint of something that you are trying to claim.</p>

26

<p>Legacy and other hooks take lots of spots, and that’s fine. With the overall admit rate at 6% now, what are the odds of a qualified but unhooked applicant getting in, 1%, 0.5%, or?</p>

27

<p>Winston’s point was simply (and no more than - it shouldn’t be oversold) they could find plenty more low-income students to admit/attend if they chose, without sacrificing “academic quality”.</p>

28

<p>cptofthehouse - I agree that athletes, unlike legacies, do earn their spot. I would say, however, that their value to the school has nothing to do with academics, but with the culture of the school and its desire to maintain this Ivy tradition that originated from sports.
The case for URM and first generation is different, however. At my son’s school, a Senior was recently accepted at one of the most competitive Ivy schools merely because her parents are immigrants and never went to college, while others - much higher achievers than her - were rejected after spending years of hard work and getting so far just to have their spot given to an under achieving first generation student. I find this system quite strange, I must say…</p>

29

<p>According to the article cited above, Harvard has about 12% legacies. I think one fallacy in the discussion above (and in discussions of URM, athletes, and other hooked applicants) is the idea that none of these students would have gained admission without the hook.</p>

<p>My kid is a legacy at Yale. I think his qualifications were substantially better than mine were, and that’s probably not unusual.</p>

30

<p>Hunt - the question is not whether your child’s qualifications are much higher than yours were, but if they are similar to those who were accepted to Yale the same year without any hook (nothing personal, of course - just for the sake of argument).</p>

31

<p>I think they were, but it’s hard to know for sure. One reason it’s hard to compare is the degree to which these schools look at achievements outside the school. For my son, they were very good, and he had an excellent SAT score. If you looked only at his GPA (about a 3.8 unweighted), you might wonder. Because he got in SCEA, and withdrew his other apps, we can’t judge how well he might have done elsewhere. My point, though, is that a lot of these hooked kids are also very accomplished, and thus the apparent unfairness of the preference for hooks is probably quite a bit less than it appears to be at first glance.</p>

32

<p>I do agree that it tends to be less, since there must be legacies that would have been admitted anyway. That said, I cannot imagine that even close to 30% of those legacies who got into Harvard, and close to 20% of those who got into Yale this year as legacies would have been admitted without the legacy hook.</p>

33

<p>It’s important to remember that one of the great marketing tools of the Ivies is this “concept” of connectedness into powerful inner circles and employment opportunities. Without the legacies, the connections to the power circles and successful “peers” would be non-existent. </p>

<p>It is the admission of the legacies which keep these connections working. Frankly, kids from these families, with or without an Ivy education, still have better employment prospects upon graduating from college than the unconnected Ivy grads do. Once you are in the world, a lot of what matters is who you know.</p>

<p>If you deprive the regular joe admit of his new legacy friends, he’s just another well-educated guy without connections. Part of what these schools are offering, frankly, is a chance to get to know the sons and daughters of the people who run the world. fwiw.</p>

34

<p>

[quote]
At my son’s school, a Senior was recently accepted at one of the most competitive Ivy schools **merely because ** her parents are immigrants and never went to college, while others - much higher achievers than her - were rejected after spending years of hard work and getting so far just to have their spot given to an under achieving first generation student.<a href=“emphasis%20in%20the%20above%20added”>/quote</a></p>

<p>No. You don’t know that it’s “merely because” the parents are immigrants. Maybe she wrote a phenomenal essay that knocked people’s socks off. Maybe she has an achievement or talent that isn’t really the business, concern or knowledge of her classmates’ parents. You simply cannot say that. The other “high achievers” did not have “their” spots taken away and given to someone else, because there is no such thing as a person who has a lock on any spot in the first place.</p>

<p>Harvard (or whoever) gets to decide who they think is interesting enough and worthwhile enough to shape their class, and they get to do it based off what they value and see. Just because the parents of the 4.0, 2380 SAT kid think that their kid’s rightful spot was given away to the 3.8, 2250 SAT kid doesn’t make it so. </p>

<p>And anyway, if their practices are soooo awful and all the bright deserving kids who should go are being usurped by the not-so-bright legacies / athletes / first-gen students … well, then why would you want to go there? It’s like complaining about the membership of a club but then dying to get in.</p>

35

<p>

I’d like to unpack this a little bit. This could mean that Ivies are controlling the number of such students. But it could also mean that they aren’t applying. And don’t the low-income students the elites are accepting have scores and grades lower than those of other accepted students? If this is the case, where are these high-scoring low-income kids?</p>

<p>And these elite schools reject tons of kids with very high SAT scores, based (presumably) on more subjective factors. And let’s face it, a lot of those low-income kids are not going to have some of the other skills that are prized at elite schools, like high-level musical skills or skills in many sports.</p>

36

<p>

Why, exactly, would you think this? Why wouldn’t the children of Harvard and Yale graduates be some of the best students in the land? They have tremendous advantages.</p>

<p>To put it another way, what would you think is the “right” percentage of Harvard legacies to get into Harvard, versus (say) the children of people who went to the mid-level state university of your choice (also trying to get into Harvard). Would you expect it to be the same?</p>

37

<p>

</p>

<p>If legacy hooks were compelling enough to bring in unqualified kids, then you’d see a legacy admit rate of 70%, 80% - where the adcom just rubberstamps any legacy kid who is able to add 2+2 and tie his shoes correctly. Legacy admit rate of 30% or so tell me exactly what’s going on – it’s somewhat of an advantage, but it’s the tie-breaker of all-else-being-equal, not the Joey-can’t-read-but-who-cares.</p>

<p>Hunt - like you, I think my legacy son was more qualified than I was – particularly from an EC perspective.</p>

38

<p>

I want to clarify that I don’t think he’s any *smarter *than I was.</p>

39

<p>Given the problems HYP have had with their endowments I think it is clear that over the past 2 years the Development team has had much more influence in admissions. The big money does not come from full pay students, it comes from multi-million dollar donors and HYP needs these guys desperately now.</p>

<p>I think its time to admit that HYP are not the institutions that they once were that housed the very brightest and best kids. With other institutions aggressively going after high merit kids and HYP increasingly getting away from merit the best and brightest can be found in far more places.</p>

40

<p>

</p>

<p>While true, that is also true for non-low-income students. Which by itself does not mean that the admissions committee is or is not need-blind.</p>