<p>Yes the average legacy may be overqualified. The fact that 70 percent are rejected does not mean legacies are not advantaged.</p>
<p>There may be groups of other people that are overqualified and rejected at a higher rate than 70 percent. </p>
<p>It is hard to get into the school. With 34,000 applicants and 2,000 people receiving acceptances, there can be thousands of overqualified students getting rejections. </p>
<p>I think this is one of the admission issues…</p>
<p>Thousands of over qualified applicants are receiving rejection notices and they don’t understand. </p>
<p>“I am over qualified. Why didn’t I get in?”</p>
<p>Because there are a lot of over qualified applicants compared to the spots available.</p>
<p>This link is somewhat old. But it shows how Asian students on the other side of the pond who are in preparation for elite college admissions in US “work their tails off”. They are just teenagers but their “working hours” remind me of those 22-24 year olds employed in the i-banking industry. I guess many Asian Americans from newly immigrated families may behave similarly to those in their origin country (likely not as extreme - that is why they immigrate here - to avoid the high pressure life there):</p>
<p>"Korean applications to Harvard alone have tripled, to 213 this spring, up from 66 in 2003, said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions. Harvard has 37 Korean undergraduates, more than from any foreign country except Canada and Britain. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have a total of 103 Korean undergraduates; 34 graduated from Daewon or Minjok.</p>
<p>This year, Daewon and Minjok graduates are heading to universities like Stanford, Chicago, Duke and seven of the eight Ivy League universities — but not to Harvard. Instead, Harvard accepted four Korean students from three other prep schools.</p>
<p>“That was certainly not any statement” about the Daewon and Minjok schools, Mr. Fitzsimmons said. “We’re alert to getting kids from schools where we haven’t had them before, but we’d never reject an applicant simply because he or she came from a school with a history of sending students to Harvard.”</p>
<p>I am going to make a wild guess. Harvard could have accepted applicants from Daewon or Minjok and the students would have excelled there. </p>
<p>That’s a pointless wild guess. Harvard could have accepted thousands more of their applicants and those students would have excelled there. </p>
<p>I find the statement from the article “This year, Daewon and Minjok graduates are heading to universities like Stanford, Chicago, Duke and seven of the eight Ivy League universities — but not to Harvard” also completely pointless one, because Stanford, Chicago, Duke, and the other 7 Ivy Leagues are the equivalent of Harvard in every single way. I’m really sorry that people who don’t know any better elevate Harvard to godlike status, but there’s no “hmmm” to be had, at all. </p>
<p>DS told us he had met many students who were from a somewhat similar background (either studied at a high power prep school overseas and then came here by him/herself, or his/her family immigrated here and studied at a competitive high school here). His opinion is that their academic preparations are all very solid. Some of them could lose out a little bit on soft factors outside of academics. (e.g., they may believe they understand something but occasionally they actually do not. It is more a cultural issue than the language barrier.) He also said most of them tend to be quite smart. When they are among the top hundreds or so students who are selected by US’s elite colleges and professional schools, the probability that they are quite good academically is quite high. What is more astonishing is their work ethics. Many of them could pull a 14-hour self-study time per day for a month when needed for a big test after college. It is believable that many of them managed to have done the exactly the same, i.e., studying for long hours, even as a high schooler. (For the US med schools, last time I looked it up, there were one or two hundreds admitted international students only, from foreign countries but had attended a US college, even though the size of the incoming class for all med schools combined together may be 28k? It is really an uphill battle for them to get to where they are at.)</p>
<p>For some unknown reason, DS hang out with several students with such a background more often at a grad/prof school than when he was at UG college. It is likely because DS continued to live in a dorm after the first year of grad school just like most international students tend to do. (What makes me interested in their upbringings/culture is that some of them are his close friends now. For a record, we are not of the Korean ethnic group but are interested in their culture nonetheless, and we started so just recently.)</p>
<p>"When they are among the top hundreds or so students who are selected by US’s elite colleges and professional schools, the probability that they are quite good academically is quite high. What is more astonishing is their work ethics. Many of them could pull a 14-hour self-study time per day for a month when needed for a big test after college. "</p>
<p>In your culture, that may be a point of pride. You might be surprised to hear, or have a hard time adjusting, to the fact that in American culture, just being able to study for 14 hours a day isn’t as prized as other things – including the ability to take time out for exercise, free time, hanging with friends. </p>
<p>DS grew up here and he does not do that (i.e., he does not study for 14 hours a day). He takes time out for exercise 2 to 3 times a week, has some free/down time (has more music gears in his dorm room than most college students do and spends quite some time on them regularly) and participates in club activities in college. (I heard he had “earned” over a thousand dollars for a charity in his college years, using his EC skills.)</p>
<p>It is just some of his peer students who often do this. This gave him some peer pressure because he thinks he studies for up to 11 hours a day only in that intense self-study month prior to the test. We as parents never try to make him study more. If anything, we tend to ask him to do less and not to be too intense. (For example, we suggested a year of break from academics between college and grad school quite early in college.)</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl, I am not sure what they tell the alums. However, on the face of it, a 30% acceptance rate when the overall rate is around 6% seems like a significant preference despite the fact that the majority are still rejected. While the group as a whole may be significantly better qualified, there are also sure to be many who aren’t standouts in the applicant pool. WIth all the other factors, I’d be surprised if it’s even a two-fold boost instead of the 5-fold boost it appears to be.</p>
<p>I would be concerned that a student who needs to spend every minute studying while in high school would not be able to keep up in college when the difficulty ramps up again. Not to mention what a boring college that would make. </p>
<p>Legacies have higher SAT scores than the student body in general. I think you’re mixing up “let athletes in with lower scores” here. Colleges track these things. If legacies were falling to the bottom, they’d know it. </p>
<p>Again, if your kid is a legacy, urge him or her NOT to check the legacy box on the application so that he or she can get in on his or her own merits. Colleges won’t change this policy, but applicants can.</p>
<p>Well, I do. My kid’s elite school explicitly said (the year before my son was accepted) the regular acceptance rate is x% and the legacy acceptance rate is y% (which was about 2x). I might have even posted it on here. They send it out every year. It’s pretty transparent. </p>
<p>“I would be concerned that a student who needs to spend every minute studying while in high school would not be able to keep up in college when the difficulty ramps up again.”</p>
<p>Yes, I’m sure the motivation for being concerned about legacies is purely selfless and altruistic – not wanting the poor dears to struggle. It has nothing to do with fearing that your own kid’s chances are impacted! LOL</p>
<p>I love how people get worked up about legacies, but they never seem to get worked up about the incredibly high acceptance rates at super-high-end boarding schools like Choate or Andover or Exeter. I guess elite boarding schools, which are accessible to very, very few people, are the third rail. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl, those income numbers don’t surprise me. They confirm what I expected.</p>
<p>40 percent of students do not receive scholarships at Harvard? That is pretty amazing. Harvard is pretty generous with scholarships so to see such a high percentage…</p>
<p>I am not thrilled about the boarding schools being such feeders. It is what it is. </p>
<p>In my community, at least when my kids were applying to college, kids with the same ability were more likely to get into Ivy League schools if they went to private high schools compared to public high schools.</p>
<p>One reason why is the college counselors at the private schools had better relationships with the adcoms at the Ivy League schools. </p>
<p>Another may have been legacies.</p>
<p>I am not worked up about this. I find it fascinating. </p>
<p>I’m surprised that it is so low. (I’m guessing that many students really don’t know their families’ wealth.)</p>
<p>Regardless, with ~40% still full pay, with H’s extremely generous need-based aid…the 5 per centers have to be the masses at H (and other top private colleges.)</p>
<p>Harvard is one of the few schools excluding home equity completely.</p>
<p>Technically, every school which is claiming to be need blind is still need aware since their total scholarship amounts are not going up a lot. If Harvard were to give everyone a free ride, they need twice as much in the scholarship funding pool which means they are forced to admit what amounts to 60% full pay on average if we assume the other 40% pay nothing.</p>
<p>How do they get around to saying they are need blind? Just admit a lot more private school students who they know definitely can pay.</p>
<p>And some might expect the numbers to be even higher! After all, why would there be an expexctation that the Harvard students come from mostly destitute environments? And that Harvard legacies are among the poorest of applicants? Don’t people equate attending Harvard as the surest path to a life of riches and power? </p>
<p>Are we really expecting schools such as Harvard to redress all SES injustices in the US. Heck, their attempts to maintain their admissions to a feeble semblance of the US are criticized and now challenged in a federal court. </p>
<p>The reality is that a large part of the problem is that close to 40,000 students are led to believe that Harvard is the nec plus ultra and that the education offered represents the best fit. And the second part of the problem is that the 40,000 distribution hardly reflects the distribution of the US HS graduates, with very large over-representations of particular subgroups. </p>
<p>The interesting part is the most vocal discontent continues to originate from the most over-represented groups! Be it the uber-wealthy or the uber-sathletes! </p>