I recommend both of the Arcidiacono reports, as well as the Harvard expert report. Also, the Harvard OIR Reports. The very best narrative summary - the place where everything in nicely contextualized - is the Statement of Material Facts. I’d start there and refer back to the source documents. Heck, just read everything - I promise you it is fascinating.
Legacy admits that I know personally to various Ivies are generally very well qualified in their own right–if they are “less” qualified I would venture that most of the time it is in very small increments unlike say athletes or URM
The Arcidiacono’s model regression coefficients are listed below, which included more controls I expect a key additional control for legacies is Early Decision. Dean/Director’s list may also be important, if it includes legacies making large donations. I also included some other hooks for reference/comparison.
Full Controls:
Dean’s/Director’s List – 3.301 (0.417)
Faculty or Staff – 2.630 (0.353)
Legacy – 2.329 (0.164)
Hispanic – 1.959 (0.086)
Early Decision – 1.531 (0.096)
Full Controls, excluding Personal Rating:
Dean’s/Director’s List – 3.246 (0.417)
Faculty or Staff – 2.472 (0.359)
Legacy – 2.141 (0.155)
Hispanic – 1.908 (0.081)
Early Decision – 1.480 (0.092)
“Cherry-picked” is a direct quote from the lawsuit.
I have seen well qualified legacies accepted and have seen nearly perfect candidates passed over for pedestrian legacies. One year a student at my son’s HS had an UW 4.0 and perfect SAT and was admitted to Harvard and Yale, but was passed over at Stanford in favor of a legacy with an 1800 SAT and sub 4.0 GPA. The parents were not mega donors.
According to this published by Harvard in 2011, legacies at elite schools benefit by an interval of over 20%. That means if it’s 5% for the average applicant pool, it’s 25% in the legacy pool. The benefit, a 500% increase in chance, is HUGE.
Harvard admission decisions depend on far more than who has the highest SAT score. Applicants can have higher SAT scores than typical Harvard students, while still having little chance of admissions. Similarly subgroups may average higher SAT scores than typical Harvard students, while still getting a substantial admissions boost or still usually being below the reader overall score ratings that are highly correlated with admission. It is likely that legacy applicants have substantially higher average test scores than the overall pool and likely that typical legacies do not excel to the same extent in various other non-score admissions criteria.
“Dont forget about development admits–there are more than you think.” How many more?
At the school I know best, discretionary admits are less than 1% and that includes development and other interests. But even with development, as with legacy, unqualified will get turned down.
“was passed over at Stanford in favor of a legacy with an 1800 SAT and sub 4.0 GPA.” How do you know student A was specifically turned down for student B? Maybe you just mean one got in and another didn’t. What can you tell us about the differences in their apps and LoRs, to shed some light? Because it’s not just stats.
And in that “rest” they want to see, it is likely a qualified legacy will understand more of what that is, considering the longtime connection to the college (or his parents’, sure.) What if I posed that the bulk of applicants, even very top hs kids, don’t get what matters in addition to scores? (And I don’t mean hs titles or cancer research or national awards, the stuff CC insists. Nor any old “good” essay.)
For those following the esoteric discussion of regression coefficients for legacy and Hispanic attributes (see posts #9 and 15 above), I was using Harvard’s own estimates of the strength of the hooks, reasoning that Harvard of course has all its own data but plaintiff’s expert had only the more limited subset provided by Harvard under court order.
Note the legend on the bottom of each page, “Highly Confidential – Attorney’s Eye Only,” which appears to have been an ex post attempt to shield the documents under either work product doctrine or attorney-client privilege.
There are so many models floating around in the litigation papers, that it is good to crowd source the analysis, but the basic takeaway under either Harvard’s own estimates or Arcidiacono’s is that legacy is a powerful hook, greater than even race preference for Hispanics, though we can certainly debate by how much.
The real issue is why legacy can be a hook. And the deeper thinking will take that beyond the simple ideas that it pleases alums or brings in donations. Or that it conspiratorially ensures some continuation of an old model of privilege. And it’s not even a given that legacy kids don’t need fin aid.
You also want to he cautious not to assume Hispanics get in solely based on some notion of preference, without other assets that make them/their apps compelling.
Thanks to SFFA and the work of Blum and the support of DOJ, we don’t need to speculate about Harvard. “Dean’s and Director’s List” includes development candidates as well as certain other special “friends” of Harvard (they have not disclosed publicly the exact composition). There are also separate categories of legacy, and faculty and staff children. As a percentage of white admits only, here are how the numbers shake out:
Dean’s and Director’s List – 15.92%
Legacy – 24.50% (!!)
Faculty child – 0.79%
Staff child – 1.03%
As you can see, those 4 categories alone constitute more than 42% of all white admits. There are also of course athletes, which I believe constitute well over 10% of the white admits (not precisely sure and I don’t want to check).
The lawsuit points out that the acceptance rate for these categories is so extraordinarily high - ranging from roughly 30% for legacies to almost 50% for faculty children – that approximately one-third of the entire class is chosen from less than 5% of Harvard’s applicants.
@lookingforward, there is absolutely NO doubt that the student who got rejected at Stanford was one of the most qualified students to ever set foot in my son’s well respected private school. He was a great student, had perfect test scores and was a very successful school athlete. Additionally he had great volunteer ECs. His quality was confirmed by admission to every school he applied to except Stanford, including Harvard and Yale (where he eventually attended). He designed an app that made national news as a college freshman.
The student who got in his year was fairly pedestrian, but a legacy. Several of his siblings have attended Stanford too. He was not an accomplished athlete. I know his stats from Naviance. He scored 600 points lower on the SAT.
Of course I didn’t see the LoRs, but I’m certain, they couldn’t have been stronger than the student who was rejected. He was universally loved by the faculty.
In all the years I’ve followed this, every single student who has been admitted to Stanford from my son’s school was a legacy. I have never seen Stanford accept a non-legacy from his school. Some, including the girl from my son’s class, was very qualified. Some haven’t been the top students.
There’s no hidden secret special talent for you to discover.
Any hint what comprises the Dean’s/Director’s List? Because that figure could amount to 300, which is exceptionally high.
Though mega donors with qualified kids can get a boost, the actual number per year, at the dollar value it takes, is small. (Remember, not all mega donors have kids who are hs seniors, in a given year.) I wonder if that includes some of the ‘approximately 300’ kids “of exceptional promise” H talks about, primarily highest achieving math award winners. We know they exist, not by what mechanism they get an admit.
What I can’t get around is that much of what many now point to is based on the plaintiff’s resesrch which , by necessity, underscores the plaintiff position.
And we dont know what hampered that great kid, @eyemgh. It could be other local competition with a similar presentation (app/supp,) same major, etc, got the nod. Hey, maybe he screwed up his roommate letter. Or wrote something about wanting to be back East (kids make all sort of goofs.) . It hinges very much on the app a kid actually chooses to submit. And I don’t have visibility to that app. The fact H and Y took him and S did not, isn’t enough info. In fact, we know they look for a slightly different profile than S.
It does not define a problem with legacy admits, across the board.
Also, legacies of Harvard parents likely grew up in highly advantaged environments that can help them earn high test scores (i.e. top-end public or private schools, not financially limited from test preparation, etc.).
Whether or not that is the intent, the effect of legacy preference is to add unearned privilege to a group of applicants who are already more advantaged than the overall applicant pool.
While some do need financial aid, it is rather likely that the overall financial aid need level of legacy applicants (particularly Harvard legacy applicants, many of whom have parents who are Wall Street bankers, management consultants, and other very highly paid people) is much lower than for the overall applicant pool.
Eye, I’m actually looking less hard than many. “Everyone around the school” is not the pool of decision makers. And kids do make serious mistakes in their apps. Neither kid was owed a seat. It’s not just stats and some impressive ECs in that one hs, that the other hs kids and parents know about. We need to just disagree here.
Ucb, it’s a continuing misconception that all Ivy alums are wealthy. And nothing says it’s only the wealthy grads whose kids apply. What they more likely are is savvy enough to guide their kids well, regardless of the parental occupations.
I doubt it’s unearned privilege when 2/3 are rejected. Legacies are not separated into their own pile and rubbered stamped “admit.”
That not all Ivy alums are wealthy does not mean that they are generally more wealthy than others.
Unearned privilege does not necessarily mean automatic admission. It can mean greater chance of admission compared to being the same applicant without the unearned privilege.
