<p>Obviously this condemns legacy students for daring to apply to their parents schools, regardless of the quality of these students. It also assume that legacies and hard working brilliant students are mutually exclusive categories. There is no viewable data that any, let alone, all modern legacy students are not hard-working and brilliant. It is speculation. If you dont have all the comparative files, you have insufficient data. Youre free to speculate that it could be or must be true, but there is no verifiable evidence of that, aside of the admissions committee members for that round at that school.</p>
<p>Quote by bclintonk:
</p>
<p>Never once did I argue that. I defend
</p>
<p>Because it is the institutions prerogative to reward alumni contributions that are financial and possibly much more than financial, and because legacies are often donors who fund </p>
<p>Quoted by bclintonk:
</p>
<p>Who could not attend without generous funding. (Which speaks to …</p>
<p>Quoted by bclintonk
</p>
<p>Regardless, this entire conversation is frivolously theoretical in nature, since there are easily 4 times more qualified non-legacy students to any elite university than there are spaces for all the students of all categories combined, and since there are so many equally fine universities outside of the those with the most visible names.</p>
<p>Oh wait, that’s right: it’s really “unfair” that there are hundreds of terrific universities in this country, for which foreign students pine, scrape, and claw to attend.</p>
In HS, the best clarinetist-- first chair, was as dumb as a stump. He thought veal cutlet was a fish :rolleyes: Sweet guy, just not too endowed in the brains department. Granted this is an N of 1, but , just sayin’, he wasnt too swift. The second chair clarinetist was average in intelligence. Also a great guy, and still is a good friend, but went to a 2nd tier university and wasn’t in the honors or AP classes in HS. Generalizations are often not supported in fact.</p>
<p>bclintonk: But it’s just darn hard to act as though legacy admission rates are all that high, when they really aren’t. I don’t see the 30% legacy rate at Harvard as being super-high. It’s still 70% rejected. I think we’re all so collectively swayed by the sub-10% admissions rates that certain schools enjoy (not the least because there is some weird mythology in certain circles that they are indeed the Second Coming) that 30% seems high, when it really isn’t. Look, is any school anywhere with a 30% admissions rate a safety school for anybody? (unless we’re talking a state school that admits on a formula basis) Of course not. So it’s not a safety for legacies either.</p>
<p>Once legacy admit rates are 70%, 80% or so, then I think we get to entertain discussions of “unfair.”</p>
I think everybody should take note of this and think about it. These top schools get tons of applications from qualified students. When they are deciding who to take, there’s no telling what small (or seemingly small) detail will make the difference. What this should mean is that students shouldn’t think of these decisions as some kind of ultimate judgment on whether they are “good enough.” They are good enough. It’s just that the other, similar student plays the harp.</p>
<p>Love this:) My kid happens to go to a school many local Ivy faculty send their kids to. You would think they would all be in the top x. Ivy faculty kids gotta be smater than mere Ivy grads. Wrong, They are actually all over.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think if a musician is as dumb as that, s/he got no chance for admission. Different story for an athelet.</p>
<p>Iglooo, I think what some people aren’t getting here is that at a place like Harvard, the difference in qualifications between a tipped legacy and a non-legacy, both of whom are admitted, is pretty small. Even the dumbest athlete at Harvard is far above stump-level. And if you take a look at the URMs who are admitted (i.e. in a results thread here), you will generally see that they have very good grades and scores, and typically have very impressive achievements as well.</p>
<p>I’ve been thinking about this and I’d guess that athletes are actually URMs on highly-selective school campuses as compared to their presence in high schools … and that students who are very-very high performing at both is a very difficult find indeed. Most of the complaint postings seem to come from upper middle class white unhooked applicants … and again I’d guess that they actually might already be ORMs on the campuses of highly-selective schools. My kids go an excellent public high school over the last 4-5 years it seems to me there are very few top 10 level students who woluld be described as unhooked (or untipped) … and those that are unhooked or outapped tend to be Asian so they also so not fit the screwd over upper middle class white unhooked cohort. 3ToGo … whose son SecondToGo was denied as a legacy at my alma mater after 30+ years of donations and volunteering (and should not have been accepted; didn’t have the academic achievement needed)</p>
<p>Hunt, I wasn’t saying legacy, urm, or athelets are stumps. IF they were, they MAY still have a chance at admission while musicians or other unhooked applicants do not. In a highly competitive admission, that makes a difference. I am not saying it is wrong of them to do so. Just stating as fact. </p>
<p>As bclintonk points out, in case of urms, it provides social mobility. That is a social service. In case of legacy, it doesn’t do much good for the general society. I don’t think there’s anything wrong to question a practice that serves a previleged minority. Private institutions are not as private as some think. They have an obligation to pay back the trust public has shown in granting tax break and esteem. Since Harvard is one of a few institutions if not the only that exclude graduates from graduate schools, their legacy preference is actually bigger than it seems and speaks to “pure-bred”. If one includes kids of Harvard graduate alums, the legacy population on campus will be greater than 12%.</p>
<p>But the fact is, the legacies, URMs and athletes aren’t stumps. That’s why 70% of legacies are rejected, why the percentage of URMs is still a lot lower than their distribution in the population, and why the Ivies agreed to use the Academic Index approach–to make sure that they’re not taking stumps.</p>
<p>It’s possible, I suppose, that developmental admits may be stumps, and perhaps the children of really famous people (who are really just a different kind of developmental admit) might be significantly less qualified–but nobody can deny that they bring something valuable to the campus.</p>
<p>Recruitiing URM / first-gens can be seen as part of a charter to provide / promote social mobility (though the cynic in me also says it’s a great marketing ploy – what better way to attract upper middle class suburban white kids than to tell them that it’s going to be so cool for them to hang with a diverse crowd, and either delight their liberal parents or frighten the conservative parents into thinking they might actually date or marry the girl from the 'hood or the barrio).</p>
<p>I agree that legacy isn’t part of a charter to provide / promote social mobility, though I suppose that changes a bit when the current pool becomes more diverse … I mean, I think it’s <em>great</em> that the kid from the barrio gets to go to Harvard and then his son goes there too. That’s the American dream, no? One could argue that legacy is indirectly a part of the charter to provide / promote social mobility insofar as keeping alums happy = more money to let the kid from the barrio attend, but that’s a bit circuitous.</p>
<p>But if legacy is to be dissed in that fashion, then I don’t see how you can possibly not also diss athletic preference. That’s not providing social mobility, either. My nephew’s athletic team at P? I think there’s not even 2 public school kids on the team – it’s a roster of Exeter, Pingry, etc. And let’s not kid ourselves that the kind of athletic ability that is necessary to be recruited at high levels is cultivated among lower / working class families. It takes a certain amount of wealth to be able to afford the equipment, coaches, training, parent to chauffeur hither and yon for practice and games (including traveling). And indeed it takes a certain amount of wealth to be able to <em>have</em> your kid do that kind of EC as opposed to babysitting younger children or working in the family business to help support the family. Make no mistake about it, I think that athletic admissions are “rewards” for upper middle class kids too in many instances. Which - if that’s what the school wants to do, that’s what they want to do and it’s not my place to tell them otherwise (or I can vote with my feet by not applying / attending). </p>
<p>But to me, having seen 3 D1 recruited athletes in my extended family (2 with full rides), it’s a big shell game for upper middle class kids that, in the case of those receiving scholarships, takes money out of the hands of kids who could really use money to go to college. And that I think is far more of a travesty than qualified Thurston Howell IV getting in.</p>
<p>Hunt, I am not disputing that. Look at jym’s table above. Legacy applicants who are in the bubble with SAT low 700’s get the greatest advantage as legacy. Sure no stump will score 700s. Legacy with low 700s has much greater chance for admit. Is that an advantage or not?</p>
<p>Thinking about it without easy access to a computer all weekend and attending the graduation of an institution with VERY different demographics (Carnegie Mellon and specifically the School of Computer Science) I actually appreciate Ivy admissions more than I have in a while. (I’m an Ivy grad with a somewhat jaundiced view of sports.) I think, it’s not so much that the Ivy’s value sports, which they always have, and I suspect always will, it’s the way (many) athletes admissions circumvent the process the rest of us have to follow that irritates me. I know there are a handful of students who get likely letters that aren’t athletes, but they are few and far between. I think if we heard more about recruiting for musicians, computer nerds, Intel winners or something else it would seem less unfair. That said, I understand that a large part of what is driving the likely letters is the way sports recruiting is done at other colleges. In any event, I will defend any college’s right to build a class any way they like. If it means my oldest didn’t get “his place” at MIT because (horrors!) the female in his high school got it - that’s okay with me. I certainly would not want the Ivy’s to turn into school where only 2300+/4.0 GPAs ended up. My favorite fellow students were the ones with passions outside academia.</p>
<p>BTW, I don’t think National Merit is a particularly good measure of the quality of a student. And I think many students blossom in college and it is fine for colleges to select some of those late bloomers.</p>
<p>Also it was quite clear in 2007 that MIT would far prefer an applicant who was a great student AND an athlete than one who was only academic.</p>
<p>Having said all that (whew!) - none of this changes the fact that even though everyone bemoans their own pet peeve (too many URM’s! First-gens! Undeserving legacies! Dumb jocks! Ill-prepared public school kids! Snotty private school kids! Kids with a GPA 0.1 below my own kid!), they still salivate at the chance to send their kids there. Clearly the elite schools <em>do</em> know what the “product” is (if the product is the fellow classmates) and they still have figured out how to season that soup to make it very appealing.</p>
<p>@PG - I thought that was European dream carrying on family tradition. With low estate tax, they insure wealth get handed down more easily than in the US creating astrocrats.</p>
<p>No expert in America but I thought American dream was through hard work become whoever you want to be regardless of your birth. Legacy is not hard work, is it?</p>
<p>I will note one difference between legacies and athletes (and to some extent, between legacies and URMs): the Ivies, at least, do not go out of their way to lure legacies to go there. Indeed, they send a letter to alumni parents explaining to them (in advance) that their kids may not get in.</p>
<p>The American dream is to work hard and provide a nice life for your family – which may include access to luxuries and better educational prospects.</p>