<p>Loremipsum - I checked with a parent whose kid had 2400 and 36 in class of 2013 and he confirmed that a couple of ivies sent likelies after the application was turned in, sometime in February or early March. I suspect it was Penn and Columbia since the kid did nt apply to Brown.</p>
<p>In post #34 PizzaGirl replied to a parent complaining about a spot being unduly given to a first generation student. “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>I agree with you PizzaGirl. My D is high achieving, but her high school peers don’t know it. Although she attends all the same AP and honors courses, they disregard her abilities and talent. Why? Largely because she is quiet and Latina and because, unlike many of her white and Asian peers, doesn’t share information about her grades or class rank. She is competitive with herself, but does not feel the need to compete outwardly with the others in her classes. Many of the students disregard her, and send overt and covert messages to her during group projects that lead her to believe they think she is less than competent. She doesn’t feel the need to prove them wrong because she is secure in her own abilities.</p>
<p>When she gets admitted into a highly competitive and selective university, you can bet the students in her classes will certainly claim she got an unfair advantage because of her gender, her ethnicity, her lower income social status, or her athletic prowess. But the reality is, she is academically capable and deserves the spot.</p>
<p>Mom23DD…applause!!</p>
<p>there is a kid asking why he/she did nt get in as a legacy with excellent credentials.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-2015/1139082-legacy-advantage.html#post12661481[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-2015/1139082-legacy-advantage.html#post12661481</a></p>
<p>…Interesting…</p>
<p>I think I’ll weigh in as my thread was just referred to on this thread.</p>
<p>Both of my parents got their undergraduate degrees from Harvard. I have a 2390/3.90, substantial extra-curriculars, was accepted to Amherst, Pomona, Duke, UC Berkeley/UCLA, and wait-listed at Harvard and Dartmouth. I was rejected at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, deferred–>rejected at Stanford.</p>
<p>My experience with the process has led me to conclude that legacy really only helps you if your parents have been involved with the alumni community or have donated to Harvard. My parents have several friends who went to Harvard and whose kids applied. Virtually all were wait-listed, including at least one who has a 2350+ and got into Stanford. The two legacies I know who got into Harvard aren’t just an ordinary legacy applicants–their parents have leadership positions in their local Harvard club, serve as interviewers, (and probably donate to Harvard annually.) Of course, these people were qualified, but were highly unlikely to have been admitted without legacy.</p>
<p>How can your experience help you conclude that legacy only helps if you are a donor? You don’t know that, at all. It could be just happenstance.</p>
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<p>And you think this whining had nothing to do with your WL?</p>
<p><a href=“Midyear Report... damage? - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>Midyear Report... damage? - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums;
<p>^^^^ LOL, good catch BlueBayou. Looks like the legacy advantage was enough to earn a Harvard waitlist, but couldn’t fully overcome the senioritis for acceptance.</p>
<p>3145926, given the long list of rejections, I think the more logical conclusion is that your application was on the cusp. I agree that your midyear report was the real culprit in tipping you the wrong way. My son got in over kids with (very slightly) higher GPAs and I never give more than $100 a year.</p>
<p>mathmom - Do you have a second son at Harvard or is it the same one that just graduated from CMU?</p>
<p>This kid’s assumptions about why the legacy did nt work may be inaccurate but I requested a post to point out that a legacy with good GPA and SAT score is not automatic. I dont agree with the donation point but I do agree however with the involvement part. How is an adcom going to deny the child of a local rep for them who is putting in hours and hours organizing the local community, arranging interviews, getting the feedback in time. Our local Princeton interview organizer proudly announced a couple of years ago that his child was in the next batch. Another guy last year mentioned that his boss would fire him if he saw his mailbox during the interview time because he spends so much time trying to match people. Our local Harvard rep mentioned she arranged close to 500 interviews last year which took several hundred hours of effort (let us say 200 hours at $100/hr - 20,000 in kind and she has been the in charge for 2 or 3 years at least). If she had a child applying, how does one say no?</p>
<p>Bluebayou: Thanks for the background check! Thanks for setting me straight, and I’m really sorry about the whining. To be sure, getting 3 B+'s and lowering my GPA to a 3.9 (weighted 4.3) couldn’t have helped my application. However, my grades were still good enough for Amherst, Pomona and Duke, which are quite selective in their own right, as you know. It’s not possible for you or mathmom to infer with any degree of certainty the “reason” why I was accepted or denied or waitlisted anywhere. Would I have been accepted to Harvard with straight A’s first semester senior year? Maybe, but I doubt it. Would I have been accepted if my mom were a senior interviewer and vice president of the Silicon Valley Harvard club? Seems more likely.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: I’m not just referring to my admissions decision, but to the admissions decisions of the other legacies I know. The pattern I have observed is that many are rejected, most qualified ones get waitlists, and only the ones whose parents are involved with the alumni associations or otherwise connected to the university are accepted. My observations may or may not be representative, but they are as good as anyone else’s. The fact of the matter is that we don’t have the aggregate data we would need resolve this issue definitively–acceptance rates for legacies whose parents donate various amounts and acceptance rates for legacies whose parents have various leadership positions in the alumni community.</p>
<p>^^ Your parents would’ve donated more if they could/wanted to, and it seemed the lack of more donations didn’t hurt you. Lots of kids of more involved parents didn’t get in.</p>
<p>Drop in grades in senior year may not be the problem but the reasons behind the drop, if spotted early on in your HS career, could be.</p>
<p>At this age, where you go to college becomes increasingly less critical. UCB is a great school. Move on, happily.</p>
<p>31415926 raises an interesting issue, to me.</p>
<p>Let’s assume that there is a legacy “tip” to admissions. Should this “tip” go to all legacies, or mainly to legacies whose parents have been active – either consistently giving money or regularly volunteering. And I’m not talking about huge donations which pushes them into development admits, or volunteering on the board of trustees level. Giving $50/year and/or interviewing a few applicants each year works for me.</p>
<p>Even if a college reserves its legacy tip to children of active alums, there will always, of course, be legacy applicants who get in of their own accord. </p>
<p>My opinion: I’d rather see a tip given to the kids of active alums than to a kid whose parents graduated 30 years ago and haven’t lifted a finger or opened a checkbook in those past 30 years.</p>
<p>^ I cannot cite my source but I had seen some data that while regular alumni are not necessarily all good about writing checks for the college, the children of alumni who attend the shared alma mater become very loyal supporters and donors. This is one of the rationales for maintaining legacy preferences even for children of ungenerous alumni.</p>
<p>vp, I’ve heard that too.</p>
<p>texaspg, my younger son also applied to Harvard (mostly to humor his Dad). He didn’t expect to get in, and didn’t. His GPA and scores and outside activities were not at the same level as older brother’s, and he didn’t make the extra effort on the application that he did for Tufts and Chicago (where he was admitted.) Of course there’s no way I can know why a student didn’t get in, especially with so little information. I will say though that my younger son got in everywhere the admissions rate was above 20% (EA at Chicago) and rejected everywhere it wasn’t. There’s nothing wrong with Pomona, Duke and Amherst, but their admissions rates are still double that of Harvard’s.</p>
<p>I know a good GPA and scores don’t automatically make for a legacy admission. My niece was #3 in her class of over 600 and wasn’t admitted. Her alumni interviewer was shocked that she wasn’t even waitlisted. 30% odds still means you are most likely to be rejected.</p>
<p>I have not been an active alumni, but I will admit that there have been many generations of my family that have attended Harvard. (Though my mother’s father was forced to leave and ended up with a degree from the institution down the river.)</p>
<p>texas pg: “I dont agree with the donation point but I do agree however with the involvement part.”
I am not involved at all in any sort of local organizing or interviewing for Harvard…don’t donate…just to point to the fact that that argument does not hold weight in my daughter’s case.</p>
<p>Radannie - It is quite possible your daughter got in despite your credentials, i.e., on her own merit (not everyone gets into college because of their legacy which is one point of this thread). As you pointed out, several others from your high school got into other highly selective colleges and unless all their parents were also alumni of those schools, it may have been simply a great batch from your school this year.</p>
<p>I am not suggesting only those whose parents volunteered time get in. All I am saying is that I can see some level of evidence of what he suggests that major volunteers kids do seem to get in simply based on our individual local college clubs (he is in CA, I am in TX but we both seem to see the pattern). As I mentioned, I know one Princeton alum incharge of interviews whose kid got in, and I met a Harvard alum who is heavily involved with the local club who had at least one kid at Harvard because he mentioned how things have changed over 30 years but in some cases they still had similar experiences at Harvard.</p>
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<p>I don’t disagree with you, but I would note that if my S got a legacy advantage at the top 20 school where he was a double legacy … my H and I were not involved at all with any committees and our checkbook-opening was sporadic and minor over the last 25 years. I actually just did join the 25th reunion organizing committee – but after S got in. Hee hee.</p>