Harvard Legacy Admit Rate Five Times That of Non-Legacies, Court Docs Show

I’m not surprised at this. I know a Radcliffe grad with 4 kids. 3 were accepted at Harvard between 2007 and 2016. (4th wasn’t, but landed at Brown). They are great kids, high GPAs and test scores and very accomplished in ECs, and excellent human beings. But maybe not world beaters. Definitely not a development family.

cupcakesmuffins
“Ivy admissions are as holistic as a religious person’s believe that God is fair and will listen to his prayers if he did everything right. Yeah, sure. God does meditation while innocent children get bombed in warn torn countries and shot in peacful suburban schools. God wants to carry out His plans, Harvard folks want to carry out their plans. Powerful don’t let fairness inconvenience them, collateral damage is a necessity for bigger plans.”

Being dismissive of people with faith in God is elitist, offensive and suggests a false air of intellectual superiority. In addition to generalize that all people in power abuse their power is both factually incorrect and once again offensive to the majority of people who follow a moral compass regardless of their positions in society. I respect your cynicism but please don’t project it upon everyone.

Otherwise nice post.

I think “everyone” sounds pretty unpleasant. Perhaps that sense of entitlement was evident in the app that was rejected. Test scores aren’t everything. People who think they’re better than others based on a single test seem to be assuming selective colleges have the same values, but that doesn’t make it true. The right fit can matter a lot too, and being a fit at Harvard and Yale doesn’t prove you’re a fit for Stanford. Even if the “pedestrian” student had been rejected it doesn’t mean the other student would have been accepted. If Stanford had wanted the student who was accepted to Harvard and Yale, what prevented them from accepting him?

@Data10 I certainly am not one to think that scores are the be all and end all, but it does suggest that harvard isn’t admitting unqualified kids. However @SatchelSF’s analysis indicates that it isn’t simply that these kids are “more” qualified because if they were, it wouldn’t be a hook. Harvard’s own data suggests that there is indeed a bump. Even assuming that @lookingforward is right and that these kids know better what the school is looking for, that would be an actual qualification, not a hook. My guess is that given kids who have relatively equal qualifications, including holistic aspects, Harvard will tend to favor legacies.

"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)."

-To me, this is the most interesting thing to come out of this Harvard lawsuit. It shows just how hard it is for an unhooked white kid to get into a school like Harvard. By the time their application gets looked at, most of the slots are gone. Almost not even worth applying unless you have mind-boggling stats.

“approximately one-third of the entire class is chosen from less than 5% of Harvard’s applicants.”

Another really interesting fact.

@lookingforward

Yes, this does happen. I wonder whether or not Stanford was actually his first choice, because if not, it is very possible that also came through in his essay. Moreover, the fact that he was accepted to Harvard and Yale is actually evidence against the power of legacy. I assume, he was not a legacy at all the other top schools which accepted him. So, if he could get into Yale without legacy, why isn’t that the headline here?

What exactly is an “earned” privilege. Did my kids “earn” the privilege of growing up in a safe, suburban neighborhood? Did they earn a loving and supportive family? Did they earn the right to be born into a family that values education? I would argue that most of us posting on this site have either benefited from or have children who are benefiting from some form of unearned privilege. I know there are posters here who climbed out of extreme poverty. But their kids aren’t doing that.


[QUOTE=""]
What exactly is an "earned" privilege

[/QUOTE]

To me an earned privilege is someone excelling in a middle or higher income family/community.

  • Top 5% student in a good school
  • 1500+SAT/34+ACT
  • Research in a university as a high school student
  • Athletes - I hate the entire recruited athlete game, but I can’t deny the amount of time and work it takes to get there, especially for something like swimming. I give a pass for high level D1 Football and Basketball since they actually make money.

Unearned privilege

  • Daddy Kushner donating 6 million to Harvard just before you submit an application
  • Kids of politicians or foreign royalty. Dems - Kennedys (Harvard/Brown) and Repubs - Trumps/Bushes (Penn/Yale)
  • Faculty Kids with lower stats where the college doesn't want to loose the professor.
  • Racial goals (quotas) where socioeconomic status is ignored.
  • Kids of famous actors.
  • Daddy/Mommy "helps" you start a non-profit - Basically your name is on top, but you do nothing.

Yes, but what consitutes Dean’s and Diretor’s list? We can’t assume.

And GJ, if they " were, it wouldn’t be a hook." Well, that begs, maybe it’s not the all-fired “hook” so many assume. Not some special glue. So many top colleges only promise a “second look” at legacies. Any kid past first cut gets a second look- and more. Maybe these kids would be finalists without being legacies, in a straight comparison of merits. (And remember, all they have is your app package and stats are just one component. They aren’t calling the hs to ask who they want in.)

Again, we don’t know, we don’t see those apps…and metrics dug up about categories don’t tell us. One of the reasons I nag about digging in for what makes one compelling is this very advantage that informed kids do have. Some of the mistakes kids make (and I understand this is a sensitive topic) are entirely avoidable, if one thinks a bit more carefully. Ime, the great bulk of kids past first cut have the stats. What’s hard for any kid (outside athletes) about getting in is mistakes by their own hand. That includes both during high school and in the app.

Also, how muchyou want the college is not what should go in the personal statement. You either show your stuff throughout or not. The essay is a chance to highlight those qualities or traits.

*corr typos

@NoKillli So there should be no issue if child of a legacy who works hard to earn those grades and stats gets admitted to Harvard. Afterall, the information released from Harvard indicates their test scores were higher than the average of the student body.

NoKillli, you also assume what matters, in the end. It doesn’t have to be “a good school” (big CC misunderstanding,) research is NO tip (most kids can’t get this. In many cases, it’s family or school pull or dumb luck. And it’s a low level of involvement. What is good about this is how it shows the kid has more vision thanjust the usual hs in-the-box menu.) And the score bar is lower than 750/750. You’re really focusing on the high school view, not the colleges’.

It’s also off to promote the idea they auto admit royalty, actors, politician kids, etc, etc. Try to sort the CC fears from the reality. You assume sub par kids have some finger on the scale. Fed by the media and the etceteras.

“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)."

These are very telling data, but why we assume these 4 categories are “all white admits”? Or did I miss something?

@CupCakeMuffins I have always equate “holistic admission” to “hogwash”, your analogy is a lot more elegant.

It’s too easy to dismiss what you know very little about.

Think of it this way: you want to be unprepared, because you assume you have no control, at all? Or you’re willing to explore, process, consider, on the chance it does shape your record and app in the right ways?

And which sort of thinking do you suppose a tipy top would like to see? “I don’t care, it’s a crapshoot and twisted?” Or, you did all you could?

Every time I read some advice to just do what you wish, in hs, be yourself, then write a killer essay, I cringe. Even the usual advice about what makes a good essay is off.

And sorry, but the link to the study is right here. This is a short thread. Post 29.


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It's also off to promote the idea they auto admit royalty, actors, politician kids, etc, etc. Try to sort the CC fears from the reality.

[/QUOTE]

Never said auto admit but there is absolutely no doubt there is an impact, and what says your reality is correct vrs CC fears anyway.

Hey kids trying to get into journalism. Here a research project for someone more motivated than myself:

  • Take a look at congress/governors/dpty governors/very high ranking federal govt officials and see where they went to college.
  • Now see where their offspring went. Is there an ivy bump?
  • For Cornell contract colleges, take a look at the kids of state legislators and high ranking commissioner types.
  • I wonder if the results would look different for HY vrs. the rest of the ivys.

I’d love to wager on the results!

High legacy rate does look bad politically, but it seems that all top private schools do that and Harvard is hardly the worst offender in that regard. Though racial preference has been litigated for over half a century I wonder if there has been any legal cases against legacy preferences. It seems all private enterprises have some kind of customer loyalty programs and how do you set the boundaries?

Several highly selective private colleges claim that they do not consider legacy in admissions decisions, including MIT and Caltech. For example MIT’s CDS says they do not consider alumni relation. MIT’s website lists a more detailed description of MIT’s position on legacy admission and reasons for that position is at http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-dont-do-legacy .

The paper that was linked earlier also concluded a wide variation of legacy boost among different private colleges. The author writes the following. The listed range was a 15.7x admission advantage compared to not legacy after controls to 0.74x disadvantage. He said the latter was not different from no disadvantage at a 95% significance level

I don’t think anyone said Harvard was admitting unqualified kids in this thread. Harvard claims to have a 98% graduation rate. Some bigger hooks than legacy typically average within 1% of that high rate. The overwhelming majority of legacies are almost certainly successful at Harvard, as well as beyond. However, a college as selective as Harvard can give notable boost to hook groups, without admitting unqualified applicants.

MIT and Caltech are just a different breed. There are no gentleman "C"s, so legacy who can’t handle a rigorous workload, wouldn’t survive. That is why I didn’t go to Cornell many years ago. I wasn’t legacy, but I knew I could not hang with the math geniuses or grunts due to my immaturity and lack of interest in hard school work. Also, the cost was scary to me, even back then.

The other top schools have plenty of non-quantitative majors or Business, to hide out safely.

Should people really care so much about what Harvard or a few other “top” schools do or don’t do in admissions?
If top students are being denied and then accepted elsewhere…Harvard’s loss.
It is this endless bickering that keeps Harvard in the limelight as the “best” school and perpetuates the cycle.
Basically, does anyone really think that the Harvard/Yale/Stanford…undergraduate experience is that much more valuable?
Could that be because those schools have fine tuned their admissions to be perceived as “best?”
Anyway, my NMF, 15AP, top test score/GPA kids were also rejected from those schools.
White, middle class kids—never thought to litigate over it.
They had great experiences at their universities and are successful in their chosen fields.

Harvard and the other Ivy’s are not the only show in town. Many great schools out there. The SAT’s, grades and course selection only tell part of the story. While parents and students hear gossip at one’s school you have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. For instance my D’s classmates had no clue she was born with a birth defect and had zero comprehension of how it affected her, nor what really made her tick. So while you hear stories you hear only part. And those stories can be compelling and add to diversity while being equally or even more capable than the one with the higher score.

Things to consider:

I was a college student at a time when there was admission bias against white males, in favor of Asian students (and other URM’s). I didn’t complain, most didn’t.

Being a Harvard legacy and being a top-notch admit are not mutually exclusive - far from it, most studies show some hereditary component to intelligence, and a great fostering environment helps, too - obviously.

The fact that a kid may come from an impoverished broken home, or no home at all, and still manages to go to school, avoid a life of crime, alcohol and drugs, and also manages a 20 on the ACT ought to count for a lot, a hell of a lot.

Admissions is faced with so many competing factions, it will never please everyone

Getting denied from Harvard is not the end of the world.
Sometimes it happens for reasons of preferences, sometimes the committee truly believes it’s not in the applicant’s best interest to attend: It may be the best thing that could happen for that student.