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<p>Thanks for starting my day off with a smile! :D</p>
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<p>I think this is a poor analogy. The SAT analogy reflects two different sets of qualifications. In the case of legacies at a a highly selective school is that those accepted (which is only 30%) are not necessarily less qualified to get in than admitted non-legacy students. At schools like Harvard, there are many more very qualified kids who apply than will be accepted. If all things being equal in qualifications, a legacy gets a tip in, it doesn’t mean he/she wasn’t already qualified on their own merits.</p>
<p>By the way, the overall admit rate of 7% includes the fact that there are those in the applicant pool who have NO chance of acceptance and apply with very very unrealistic perceptions. The legacy applicant pool likely has very few applicants of this type and is more concentrated with qualified applicants overall as a pool than the overall pool who applies to Harvard. </p>
<p>I don’t get all this angst over legacies. I don’t mind if it is a tip at all. My kids went to very selective schools where they were not legacies. Kids do get in who are not hooked. And I don’t care that others had a tip factor like legacy, URM, or athlete. There are reasons a college wants some students from these categories. The tip factor for a legacy is merely a tip. They have to be qualified to get in.</p>
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This is certainly what I have observed in admissions at our high school.</p>
<p>If you look at the results threads on CC, it is unusual to find a legacy admitted to one of these top schools who was not also admitted to other top schools. Indeed, the legacies who are rejected or waitlisted at the legacy school are generally accepted at other very selective schools. This is anecdotal, of course, but it’s consistent with what the schools say about these students.</p>
<p>Look at it this way–Harvard gets 30,000 applications. I’ll bet 20,000 of those kids–maybe more–could do the work at Harvard and graduate with good grades. Probably 10,000 of them would look like highly qualified, highly accomplished kids–including all of the ones Harvard eventually admits. To choose which of those 10,000 to accept, Harvard uses some criteria other than just academic achievement.</p>
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<p>Adding my 2 cents/story from D’s HS here-- D attended a small, private all-girls HS. Up until a week before graduation, one of her classmates was headed to Villanova – an excellent school, and her “best” acceptance. Lo and behold, at graduation she was suddenly going to Harvard, starting a year later. Turns out dad, a Harvard alum, made a donation of about $2.5 million. Not long after that, H was talking to a business associate, also a Harvard alum, and told him this story. H’s associate said most Harvard alums knew about this “program” – if you pay the price, your kid can usually get in, starting a year later.</p>
<p>You all should note that colleges define “legacy” in different ways. Stanford’s application pool may be especially thick with legacies because its definition of legacies includes children (maybe grandchildren, too) of any degree-holder, not just college alumni. Penn is similar. At Harvard, though, only a child of a college alumnus/a will be treated as a legacy. So some of these rates don’t really apply to the same pool of applicants.</p>
<p>As I think I said above, my experience is the same as Hunt’s and mathmom’s: Legacies admitted to one of HYPS are usually admitted to similarly selective non-legacy schools as well, if they apply. What’s more, legacies rejected at their legacy school are often admitted as non-legacies to similarly selective schools. E.g., third generation Princeton legacy rejected outright ED at Princeton four years ago, then accepted RD at Harvard; Yale legacy deferred and then rejected at Yale but accepted at Harvard and Oxford.</p>
<p>And I completely doubt CBBBlinker’s story above, for three reasons:</p>
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<li><p>The last time I heard a number, it was much higher than $2.5 million, and that was 6-7 years ago. (Not for Harvard, by the way, but equivalent.)</p></li>
<li><p>I know several people who were in the ballpark for that kind of donation and who might have made it to get their kids in, but their kids didn’t get in.</p></li>
<li><p>I also know at least one legacy kid (a fabulous kid) accepted to Harvard on a Z-list basis whose family was probably $2.49 million short of being able to make a $2.5 million donation.</p></li>
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It seems to me that this is a very inefficient way of doing this. Why not just auction off a few slots each year? You could set some minimum qualifications, and then just sell to the highest bidder.</p>
<p>JHS – doubt away all you want. This is first hand knowledge. I will admit that I may be wrong on the price tag – D graduated 5 years ago. So, perhaps the price tag was somewhat higher.</p>
<p>CBBB: I don’t doubt that it’s possible to buy a marginal kid in. Just not for as little as $2.5 million, especially that late in the game. I also dispute that the z-list has that function.</p>
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<p>Oh, come on. If Harvard really were selling its seats at $2.5 million a pop, they wouldn’t even care if the buyers were alums or not, you know. Green is green.</p>
<p>What does the existence of the occasional seven-figure-donating legacy have anything to do with the discussion at all? Because if you’re a seven-figure-donor to anywhere, it is IRRELEVANT whether you are an alum in the first place. Really, if $2.5 MM is going to move a needle someplace, it’ll move the needle regardless of whether the check is signed by an alum or just a rich parent.</p>
<p>It’s pretty clear that if there is legacy advantage (above and beyond the "they represent a smart, achievement-oriented subset of the applicant pool by virtue of the parent being an elite grad), that the bulk of it accrues to the children of everyday, run-of-the-mill, a-couple-bucks-a-year alums. Given that the donation pool from such alums isn’t funding the new science wing, then presumably colleges believe there is benefit to admitting some alum kids which is separate from believing big donations are in the immediate offing.</p>
<p>Legacy admissions accomplish three things all at once: 1) school loyalty; 2) higher future donations; and 3) Less to give out in financial aid. (Yes, it is true: there are alumni whose kids receive financial aid: raise the cost of attendance by $5,000, then give $5,000 in aid, and you look very generous.) </p>
<p>It’s a good strategy, and if I were HYP, I’d do even more of it. (And it doesn’t matter in the least that, “objectively”, they could find five other candidates at least as good as the legacies they accepted. They just aren’t as “qualified”.)</p>
<p>Someone who makes a huge donation to a college falls into a different category…development case. The legacy status wasn’t the tip in that case. </p>
<p>I have no problem with hooks like legacy, development, URM, athlete. These categories all serve a purpose in building a class and fulfilling the needs of the college. I don’t see it as “unfair.”</p>
<p>“It seems to me that this is a very inefficient way of doing this. Why not just auction off a few slots each year?”</p>
<p>I’ve been suggesting that for years. They could accept silent bids from parents along with the applications. The student wouldn’t even have to know whether the bid was accepted.</p>
<p>It would also be more efficient for the school, than the dance of “will you / won’t you” on both sides. </p>
<p>So now someone needs to start the thread, how much would you have paid in a silent bid to get your kid into Harvard! And does that change if your kid is in the reasonable ballpark for Harvard (or if he doesn’t make it there, he’ll make it at some fine school and all will be well) or if your kid is a slacker.</p>
<p>If I were Harvard, I wouldn’t take the real slacker for any price. Yale claims that it turned down half of the children of large donors. If you only allowed bidding for people with SATs of 2100 and above and GPAs of at least 3.6 unweighted, you still get plenty of bidders.</p>
<p>That’s right…colleges may use “legacy” or “development case” as a tip but are only willing to “tip” in students who are qualified to do the work. Since not all qualified applicants (including non-legacy) get accepted, what’s wrong with some having a tip? Doesn’t mean they admitted unqualified students. They have a very high graduation rate in fact.</p>
<p>It benefits the school to have legacies. It benefits the school to have athletes. It benefits the school to have huge donors. It benefits the school to have URMs. If I were a college, and had way more qualified applicants than spots in the class, I would make sure that out of all the highly qualified applicants, that I took some within each of these categories.</p>
<p>I also find it ironic that some who poo poo the whole legacy admit issue, have chosen to give their kids other advantages that helped their children gain admission…be it private K-12 educations, SAT tutoring, expensive summer programs, and the like. These things all helped some kids over some other applicants too.</p>
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<p>Exactly. Really, there would be enough mega-donors with smart kids who would be capable of doing the work that there really wouldn’t be any compromise needed as long as some minimum was set. In this sense, it’s qualitatively different from athletic recruiting, where at many schools it is evident that they dipped below the normal academics of the schools because there really are only so many people who can be a quarterback at a certain level. </p>
<p>Is there anything to suggest legacies flunk out at any higher rate than non-legacies?</p>