<p>Xiggi, if you expected the numbers to be different, that’s fine.</p>
<p>I was just speaking for myself. I didn’t know I was taking a test. ;)</p>
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Some high schools are more difficult than college. Kids from our high school universally seem to say that college is easier, whether they are attending Cornell, Harvard, CMU, Johns Hopkins, etc. </p>
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<p>Living in the Boston area, that’s sometimes a topic of discussion–should our kids apply to Andover / Exeter / Groton, etc? I know several children that applied and some that were accepted, but I don’t know anyone that actually enrolled. </p>
<p>The kids that I know were accepted at Andover or Exeter did fine in terms of admissions without attending those schools. I’m not sure it makes much of a difference. </p>
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<p>H has a full athletic program and many of those sports require family $$ commitment. Fencing? Hockey? Lacrosse? Swimming? Even quality EC’s can require family $$. Kids who are working on the Intel projects sure ain’t slinging groceries at the local supermarket.</p>
<p>My nephew played what I will call an old money sport at Princeton. All the kids on his team (including him) went to elite prep / boarding schools. Not a non- moneyed kid in the bunch! </p>
<p>Also from the Harvard Freshman Study 2014, the average legacy student had a 59 point HIGHER SAT than the average non-legacy student. <a href=“Freshman Survey Part II: The Gilded Envelope | News | The Harvard Crimson”>Freshman Survey Part II: The Gilded Envelope | News | The Harvard Crimson;
<p>I think legacy preference should be eliminated because it is unfair to the legacy students.</p>
<p>Strong students who are legacy at one selective university are strongly encouraged to apply to their parents alma mater, rather than be allowed to choose for themselves. Such schools penalize legacy students if they don’t apply to their school ED. These schools have a large percentage of their applicants that are legacy, and if they eliminated the hype that such students were getting an advantage, their applicant numbers would drop. Penn, for example, considers a student a legacy if their parent or their grandparent graduated from either the college or one of their graduate schoosl. Since Penn graduates 10,000 students yearly, the number of students identified as legacy is very high. </p>
<p>"Strong students who are legacy at one selective university are strongly encouraged to apply to their parents alma mater, rather than be allowed to choose for themselves. "</p>
<p>Not here. We took our alma mater off the table, and S put it back on. I can truly say with a clear conscience it was all him. </p>
<p>Not here either. I knew my highly selective alma mater was a bad [location] fit for my kids. </p>
<p>Thanks for the Harvard info. </p>
<p>Those average numbers are a little goofy.</p>
<p>There are probably fewer than 800 legacies applying a year. There are probably 10,000 applicants with similar scores as legacies. If I was a legacy, I wouldn 't give up that advantage. Otherwise, instead of being part of the group with a 30 percent acceptance rate, you will be like everybody else… Single digits. (Not counting recruited athletes).</p>
<p>Having said this, it is a nice accomplishment for everybody who gets into the school. This includes legacies …it is not easy for anybody. Well… It is easier for those that donate $5 mil or more. :)</p>
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The college admit rates of the super-high-end boarding school kids definitely aren’t what they used to be. And many of the boarding school admits get in because of a hook: last name Kennedy, development case, URM, recruited athlete-- these kids would have gotten into Harvard anyway w/o the boarding school. </p>
<p>The average SAT scores in the elite boarding schools is ~2100. These schools are not filled w rich academic slackers. The top colleges like to recruit at elite boarding schools because they have a high concentration of both top, well-prepared students & hooked students. The kids who graduate from these boarding school find college to be easier academically than their boarding school.</p>
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These schools are more accessible than u think. They have per capita endowments that eclipse that of most top colleges (Exeter’s is over $1 billion) and therefore grant FA to 40% of their student bodies, including free rides for families earning less than 75k. Quite a number of outreach kids from disadvantaged backgrounds get the full ride ride along w money for clothes snd study abroad programs. </p>
<p>They are not remotely accessible to the average person, for whom the idea of sending their kid away for boarding school would not occur to them in a million years because they never heard of such a thing. </p>
<p>If the top colleges “like to recruit” at elite boarding schools because they have a high concentration of both top, well-prepared students and hooked students – well, then it also stands to reason they “like to recruit” among legacy families because they have a high concentration of top, well-prepared students, who resemble the students that they like to admit because, well, DNA! Anyway, the top boarding schools are FAR more “elite” and connected to the powers-that-be than the crop of plain-vanilla legacies who are merely your average middle to upper middle class working professionals, but again, I don’t see anyone complaining about the breaks that top boarding schools get in admissions. </p>
<p>My penniless boyfriend in college (Harvard) was a graduate of Exeter - he had a full scholarship. I made my kid apply to Harvard because I thought he had a pretty good chance of getting in, he didn’t steal anyone’s place though as he chose to go elsewhere (with our blessing.)</p>
<p>Yes, mathmom. And what part of the country did your penniless boyfriend come from?</p>
<p>My personal belief is that anyone should leverage any advantage they have. Whether it’s highly educated / sophisticated parents, having a particularly compelling sob story, being from a geographically underrepresented region, being an URM, having athletic ability, having parents who are able to pay for / schlep you to extracurriculars … whatever. I see nothing wrong with leveraging whatever advantages someone has. That’s life. </p>
<p>I would never have advised my kid not to check a legacy box. I don’t have one bit of regret. There are boxes he couldn’t check - he wasn’t an URM, he wasn’t from a geographically underrepresented area, he didn’t have recruitable athletic ability. So what. More power to people who can check those boxes.</p>
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<p>Absolutely!</p>
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<p>Indeed.</p>
<p>But for all this hand-wringing about legacies, it still comes down to ECs (for highly selective colleges). And to participate in ECs’ that make one interesting enough for the fat envelope requires family money. It’s the gotcha of college admissions.</p>
<p>Sure, there are plenty of singular anecdotes (my “penniless” friend) who are accepted to HYS with only top grades and test scores, but those are rare. The masses of unhooked admissions have very interesting EC’s to build a class of very interesting students. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s point out the obvious.</p>
<p>(As an aside, it’s also why STEM geeks have such a hard time in admissions. There are only so many Intel/Siemens/math fair winners that can fit (and still have a well-rounded class), and top scoring science geeks are a ‘dime a dozen’, as my dad used to say; a college also needs theater majors, poets, and the like)</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>Ding ding ding ding!!!</p>
<p>We’re need blind, of course. But then we do admit a lot of…legacies, lacrosse players, prep school grads, fencers, squash players, rowers, sailors , etc. Not every single kid in those demos is going to be a full payor. But on average, many will be. The biggest SES sorter, of course, is incredibly high stats and EC resumes. All good ways to fill up the 40% full pay quota. And also the quota for folks who can’t fully pay $60k, but can pay $30 or $40 or $50k… </p>
<p>With a $40 billion endowment, Harvard gives out huge amounts of financial aid – 100% free for any family below $65k in income. But even Harvard still has a budget for financial aid. </p>
<p>From what I have read and may be reading between lines, Harvard and other schools which were bastions of the rich as late as 2006 (when they restructured financial aid) prefer the poorer masses who attended Exeter on a scholarship than those who attended inner city high schools. This has to do mainly with prior acclimation to who they will be going school with rather than being hit hard by culture shock due to the disparity in personal finances.</p>
<p>“I think legacy preference should be eliminated because it is unfair to the legacy students.”</p>
<p>If you look up “First World Problem” in the dictionary, this is how it is defined.</p>
<p>: )</p>
<p>@ pizzagirl He came from New Orleans and worked bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly summers in high school. Definitely provided some geographic diversity both to the prep school and the college.</p>
<p>Wow! Did Exeter do outreach to his community? He must have had exceptional parents if they even opened their minds to that opportunity. </p>