Harvard Legacy Admit Rate -- 30%

Parents Forum
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<p>What? You mean the way they USED to be when Bush II was there, and Teddy Kennedy was cheating his way through school?</p>

<p>These schools used to have a FAR higher rate of legacy admissions, not to mention the fact that they moved to holistic admissions decades ago in order to AVOID having to turn down well-connected applicants. The schools are a mix of academic achievers and well-connected students, and they always have been. Probably there is less of this now than there ever has been, really.</p>

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<p>No need to become emotional here, pizzagirl. No one is implying that a child X or Y wasn’t worthy of his legacy or first generation spot.
In any case, my son is drawn to the Ivy education for its academic value, which has nothing to do with the current discussion.</p>

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<p>According to your other “to ivy or not to ivy” thread, your son is drawn to the Ivy education because it is easier to be employed in IB because of this degree, which has EVERYTHING to do with this discussion. Why do you think those employment loops exist? Legacies.</p>

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<p>Absolutely. Sometimes they know how to do almost impossible. Like changing a B to an A ;)</p>

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<p>Not exactly, he is drawn to the employment opportunities, but at this point he cares more about the actual learning experience (which has been the case for him since I can recall). It is mainly us - his parents - that focus on the employment factor, while he is focusing on the educational experiences.
For that reason, he is not too excited about attending a less intellectual school that is likely to offer him a generous package and great job opportunities (majoring from their most prestigious program). He is now much less interested in the job prospects, and is dreaming of having the best educational journey he can possibly have. Guess it is the benefit of being young…</p>

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<p>JHS, I withdraw my remark about Yale, as I see the comments from 2004 and another one state the contrary. When and if I find the school for which it was clearly shown that the stats were lower in the alumni group, I’ll present the info. I’m sorry I gave bad information. </p>

<p>Mini, finding 4X as many qualified applicants in any pool is not the issue. A lot of qualified kids are turned down. If admissions were done on an income blind and legacy blind basis, my guess would be that there would still be a lot more legacies accepted on a % basis; Not so with PELL kids. I have no doubt that there are additional low income kids that could be accepted, but without a special pool, that group does not tend to stand out as outstanding applicants without the disadvantaged hooks. Same with URMs and the same with athletes. </p>

<p>From what I have been told, those special hooked categories are examined outside of the regular admissions process. For athletes, an admissions officer will view the needs of the university with the list presented by the athletic director, and decisions will be made on that group of applicants. Absolutely no question that if it were not done that way, the numbers of acceptances would be lower. One of mine was a recruited athlete, and he had opportunites for admissions at schools that kids with higher academic achievements did not. The way his app was viewed was whether he was acceptable, not whether he was the cream of the crop. It’s a big difference in how the app is viewed. Alumnies, URMS, development, leagacies, tend to be reviewed separately.</p>

<p>It would be very easy to see if alumni tags are a plus or not. The same with whether PELL is an issue. Just throw them all in the bin and have them accepted without consideration of those tags. See who is accepted. </p>

<p>The kids I know who have been accepted to HPYM without any hooks, have top SAT scores including SAT2s, are taking the most difficult courses at their schools without skipping the top level Maths and Sciences even if that isn’t their area of interest. and are at the very top of their class. The better the high school, the lower the gpa/rank ring is. At most “good” high schools, you gotta be in the top 3. A lot of ballyhoo was made when the val of a high school did not get into the top schools one year despite near perfect SAT scores. I knew her. She did not take the top math and science courses though she had a lot of AP classes, and her SAT 2s were not as high as her SAT1 scores. The young man who was accepted at her school with lower SAT1 scores and class rank, had perfect SAT2 scores and had taken AP Calc BC and Physics C despite his interests and strengths as a History/anthropology buff. Overall, he was the stronger candidate. and there are many like him in those applicant pools. The other lower ranked student accepted to school where she was not, was URM with some specialty achievements on the national level. </p>

<p>But one thing is very apparent. If your kid is not a legacy, URM, athlete, development, celebrity, winner of some coveted academic national award, s/he has no where near the chances that the accept %s show. That is an overall % including those hooked categories along with anything else that happens to be on the school wish list (maybe they need a bassoonist that year, maybe classics is getting antsy with so few kids majoring in it) and then those kids who have economic, medical, life altering, first generation, situations that also get consideration. That’s how tough it is to get into these schools.</p>

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I would just note that this is an important reason many legacies want to go to the legacy school. It’s certainly why I hoped my kids would go to my college–because of the educational experience I had there.</p>

<p>Actually, I think one thing that also affects legacy admissions is this very thing–the number of kids in that group who want to go to that school. Harvard, Yale, and other schools have a lot of legacy applicants not just because those kids are hoping for an admissions tip, but because they specifically want to go to those schools.</p>

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<p>If the legacy group is so much stronger than the rest of the applicants, I don’t understand why the college even needs a legacy hook for those kids. And I do feel that legacy hooks are valid, so there is no resentment in me about them. If that group is that much more of a powerhouse, it would seem that to group them together and select who comes is giving them a negative hook isn’t it? The only other explanation would be is that a lot of the top stat kids are legacies and by grouping them together, it allows the university to accept some low outliers without skewing the average further as a group.</p>

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<p>That’s precisely what you did when you said that the girl in your school only got into an Ivy “merely because” of her first-gen status, taking the higher achievers’ “rightful spots” away from them! </p>

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<p>I would imagine that’s exactly the same thing that draws the legacies to that education too.</p>

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<p>ROFL! In the past, HYP were the institutions that just admitted proper members of the High WASP club circles and served as the de facto end point for the elite boarding schools – irrespective of academic achievement. I hope you weren’t typing that with a straight face!</p>

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<p>Perhaps without the legacy hook, the legacy admit rate would be 25% or 15%, rather than 30%, and for whatever reason the college thinks that this is the optimal balance between building the best class and advantaging its alumni.</p>

<p>Or perhaps it’s simply important for alumni-relations purposes to be able to tell alumni that their kids will get a tip…even if they’d get in at a good rate without it.</p>

<p>I don’t agree with advantaging legacies, but I also doubt that the practice alters the quality of the class in any detectable way. They are really splitting hairs at Harvard.</p>

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<p>The point being made upthread is that the admit rate of 30% for the legacy group may not even reflect any real legacy bump but may just reflect what an admit group for a well-heeled, intelligent crowd might be. And again, that’s where you answer that question by saying … ok, the admit rate at H is 30% among H legacies. What’s the admit rate at H among P legacies, or Y legacies? And if the answer is “pretty similar,” then what you’re simply seeing is that elite legacy pools are stronger in the first place and “naturally” get higher acceptance, irrespective of any specific legacy bump.</p>

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<p>FWIW, this year at D’s school not a single Yale legacy was accepted. One of them is a triple legacy. She is going to Princeton.</p>

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<p>Athletes are a separate story, and frankly big-time development quid pro quos (“admit this kid and we’ll get a new science building”) are handled separately too. But when you talk about “reviewed separately” for legacies and URM’s? You can’t seriously suggest that the admissions process works as such: Today we discuss all the white kids and the Asian kids. Tomorrow, we’ll turn to the black kids and the Hispanic kids. The files are all reviewed together. The fact that a given kid is an URM and / or a legacy comes up in the discussion – as a facet, just like the fact that the kid is the newspaper editor or won the science fair.</p>

<p>I would also add that the whole point of helping out first-gen and URM’s means that THEIR children will form a greater portion of the legacy pool in future years. Which is a good thing.</p>

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<p>I suspect the reason for the hook is for those kids who the school really feels it has to take despite stats that cannot justify it. The same with the development hook. That doesn’t mean that the vast majority of kids in either category are not way over the class averages. Kids who are legacies and are average in stats for the accepting class, are probably getting little or no legacy consideration. I know a lot of qualifed legacy kids who were not accepted by their parents’ alma maters. But I also know kids who were accepted who were, ummm, not really up there in stats. In fact, you would wrinkle your forehead at the acceptance, until you realize that not only is the kid a legacy, but the governor’s daughter or some other situation that puts it all in perspective.</p>

<p>And I don’t disagree with this either. The advantages to everyone in the school are there. The same with accepting URMs and first generation and kids with special challenges. It does give the school the diversity that is important. But it makes it very tough for anyone who is not in any of those niche groups.</p>

<p>Pizzagirl, an old classmate and friend of mine is in admissions at a highly selective school. That is what she told me. At her school, yes, the URMs , those with economic and other noted challenges, legacies are tagged and then viewed separately. There might come a day when this is not necessary, but that is the case there today. I believe the book “A is For Admissions” described the same thing in Dartmouth’s admissions procedures back 15 years or so ago.</p>

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<p>I have no idea how it works, nor do I really care. But it is possible to offer a preference to a particular group, regardless of whether the vast majority of that group actually needs it.</p>

<p>If I’m a graduate of MIT (which I am not), and I own an engineering company, I can say that I want to offer jobs to anyone who is a fellow alumnus - regardless of their qualifications. Obviously that’s not a good way to run my company, but I could do that.</p>

<p>I could get 10 applicants, 5 from MIT. It may turn out that 4 of the MIT applicants were obviously superior, and I would have hired them anyway, and that one of the MIT applicants was a real doofus, but I would still hire him based on the preference. So the “legacy” may be a bump in some limited cases, but in general it is not really relevant to the decision.</p>

<p>*Edit : Well, you answered your own question before I got basically the same thing posted :)</p>

<p>*</p>

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<p>Well, of course not. Assuming Y’s numbers are similar to H’s – they turn down 70% of their legacies. If you live in a school district where there are multiple Yale legacies in the class to begin with, then you’re living in a pretty privileged, upper middle class area. What % of schools in the country even have a <em>single</em> student with a Yale-educated parent? Vanishingly low.</p>

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<p>Tangential thought to an earlier post-- the article says that “over 80% of Yale’s legacies were rejected”. That doesn’t necessarily mean that 20% were accepted. It could mean, for example, that 10% were accepted and 10% were wait-listed.</p>

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<p>Cpt -</p>

<p>Of course one can jigger the admissions process to favor the “intangibles” more likely to favor wealthier people. A medical internship will be worth more than caring for a disabled mother, and the younger siblings. Writing a prize-winning essay will be worth more than navigating a social service bureaucracy for a family member. Going to work with an uncle’s non-profit in Africa will be worth more than protecting your younger siblings from an uncle’s drunken rages. </p>

<p>So what actually happens is that by virtue of the value assigned to specific kinds of intangibles (independent of legacy status), wealthier people are “put in a special pool”. The point of Winston’s work was that, if simply using “objective criteria”, “qualified” low-income students could be found. But there’s no way they are able to access the “special pool”. </p>

<p>And, make no mistake: these schools are not in the least bit ‘need-blind’, as the recent experiences at Princeton, Williams, and Amherst clearly indicate.</p>

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<p>mini, I share your interest in making higher education available to kids from all socioeconomic strata. However, I don’t understand the focus on Pell Grant stats as a basis for claiming a school doesn’t support “low income” kids. Is it possible the studies you cite are based on old data and don’t accurately reflect current FA policy?</p>

<p>Take Harvard. What am I missing here?</p>

<p>Their most recent Common Data Set is 2008-09. It reports 57% of undergraduates were found to have “need,” Harvard met 100% of that need, the average FA pkg. was $39,193, and the average scholarship/grant award was $36,850. Total need-based aid awarded was $142.3 million of which $130 million came from Harvard itself. </p>

<p>Fast forward to present. On the FA landing page of Harvard’s website, it says they are giving a record-breaking $160 million in need-based aid this year to more than 60% of students. Home equity is not considered in determining family contribution. Students will take out no loans. Families with < $60,000 income pay nothing, families with < $180,000 get help.</p>

<p>Yale’s FA looks the same (met 100% of need for 57% of students this year). So does MIT’s (90% of undergrads receive need-based aid). So does Williams’ (meets 100% of need for nearly 3/4 of students). And on and on. </p>

<p>Bottom line: In the recent past, there’s been a policy shift in FA nationwide. Most colleges, my state flagship included, have reduced and even eliminated merit awards in favor of maximizing need-based aid. Consequently, if we were to run fresh numbers, would federal Pell Grants remain the hallmark indicator of how good a job a college is doing to support higher education for “low income” students? Or would current data demonstrate that the vast majority of “low-income” students who are eligible for admission are, in fact, securing a college education? </p>

<p>I don’t pretend to understand FA, and I’m sure there are flaws in these FA systems that cause some “low income” kids to not be served. But there are flaws in any system; nothing’s perfect. It seems the intent to serve them is genuine and the effort is meaningful.</p>

<p>(Currently, the population I think needs more help is the middle class. But the remarks here were limited to “low income,” so I am not even opening the middle class can of worms!)</p>

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<p>Sigh. if they felt they “had to” - then the legacy admit rates would be a HELL of a lot higher than 30%. They clearly can still be very choosy about the legacy kids they accept or reject.</p>

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<p>I call BS on the concept that any parent really “knows the stats” of any kid other than his / her own kid in the first place, AND … these decisions aren’t made solely on stats anyway, so how do you know that the kid didn’t pen an outstanding essay or do something extracurricularly that you as a classmate’s parent are completely unaware of? I don’t buy that any outsiders are really qualified to judge what a given kid submits, unless said outsider is a GC or paid consultant.</p>