Here's what it really takes to get into the Ivy League these days

Applying to College
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But pickpocket, yes, the sort of kid likely to be admitted to another tippy top is strong, to begin with. (And again, this defined by more than stats, ECs, and fancy camps or parents paying for enrichment opps.) But where legacy can play for the parent/s’ alma mater is in the way the applicant knows the school, can match himself to the college and the college to him. (This is something many kids struggle with. They know the superficials of a college, not what it takes. This would apply to a legacy applying to other top schools, too.)

I don’t disagree legacy offers an advantage. But on the whole, I don’t consider it unfair. There are no guarantees for legacies. Tippy top admissions is holistic, requiring more than the right stats, some big dawg status in one’s hs. And honestly, in a discussion of what it takes to get an admit, it’s frustrating to veer off into personal opinions of what’s unfair.

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@lookingforward Going to certain schools, even public schools in more privileged areas, DEFINITELY helps you to get in as they offer more APs, EC opportunities…etc. Having parents who know the college process and can help you with it and revise your essays is a huge advantage too. So is having parents that check your grades and make sure you do well academically. And are you seriously denying that private tutors, and private college counselors are a HUGE help? Why else would it be that 40% of people attending MIT, which is one of the BEST schools about more “meritocratic” admissions, go there without receiving any financial aid? You can’t sit here and tell me those things aren’t a huge help. You don’t need to be making millions of dollars a year to be privileged.

And clearly P doesn’t only consider parent alum status, because look what the article said. You can’t misconstrue the phrasing in an article and then blame the wording of an article and say it’s “poorly written” or “a bad/biased source” if it doesn’t support the point you want it to support, at least without evidence to support the latter.

@DeepBlue86 thanks for backing me up! I’d even argue that a lot more students than that are cross admits, because that’s just HYP. Many may get into some other combination of schools, like Including MIT, …etc. and I’d argue that more students don’t even apply to all of HYPSM + all 8 ivies, even if they could get in. But, yes I’d reasonably argue that 2k out of 7k of the Ivy spots are cross admits. (If you include non Ivy top schools like MIT and Stanford and Caltech and Duke and the list goes on the number is bound to go up).

It seemed at Stanford, everyone I talked to was a cross admit, or only applied to Stanford cuz EA. (But that’s only anecdotal evidence, and I couldn’t have talked to more than 100 people).

And I’d also venture to guess URM yield rates are significantly lower at top schools because they admit the same URMs too. I’ve actually met at least 30 other cross admits to MIT and Stanford who were African American. And I think, especially for Stanford and MIT, the classes of URMs were made up of like, 30% cross admits to both schools. (This is anecdotal though, these numbers are probably exaggerated). But I remember there were so many of us deciding between Stanford and MIT at the Stanford admit weekend, all the African American students were actually enough to sit in a large circle and debate it.

Tl;dr
But I believe that that 200 number would go up if you accounted more than just HYP and instead said “at least two of HYPSM”, and I believe that 2k number would go up if you account for non Ivy top schools. The rest of it is just me rambling about my experience

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@lookingforward If that kid ‘is likely to be admitted to another tippy top’ anyway then they are not benefiting from a legacy advantage. @sweatearl would call it privilege. I would call it parenting with a strong academic focus. Maybe we are all saying the same thing really.

Personally I don’t think a small legacy advantage is a bad thing. Didn’t help my kid but that’s ok.

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I’d argue A would be many times more common, that was the case for all the legacies I know (given I only know 3). Alas, I doubt that data exists. We just have to work with the data we have.

@lookingforward @pickpocket

But if B WERE the case, id once again, argue it was because of privelege, which colleges must correct for, because that legacy status was helping them years before they actually submitted that application

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Sweatearl, I see this on a more complex level than you do. It’s not tutors that get a kid in- it’s the match. And low SES kids, even in under-resourced high schools, can be driven, have AP opps, a variety of experiences they take on, sometimes actually with more impact (as high schoolers) than the rich kids just doing what their preps encourage/facilitate, divvying up their time among all the camps, travel, and prep classes- and the internships their school facilitates. I’m very aware of how low SES kids are stereotyped vs what the best of them produce and are qualified for. And how many of them are quite well mentored. How many write so well- and not sob stories.

We’re talking tippy tops and that’s the pool I refer to.

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If you’re interested in my conjectures about HYPSM admits and cross-admits, @sweatearl, you can find them here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20623381/#Comment_20623381 (see also the follow-up post below it).

Related to the above, and to what @lookingforward said, imo it misses the point to get into a discussion about what’s “fair” or not. College admissions are about as fair as the weather. No one’s entitled to a sunny day, and it’s a waste of time to get mad about the rain; all you can do is try to dress right based on the best forecast you can find and what you’ve got in your closet.

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I don’t think you see this on a “deeper level” than me, I think you see it from a more privileged bubble. I don’t think you know how much, how significantly easier, it is to accomplish the same thing is with the privelege of things like pro tutors, parents who know the game, …etc. arguing that “poor can accomplish the same thing” is futile. Yea, they can, but how many hundreds of times harder is it for them? It’s like arguiing inventing a web app and inventing the FIRST web app are equal accomplishments. One has significantly more barriers, and probably took years, and one had online tutorials that let them learn programming in a month. And saying “they can be driven” it’s not that simple if you don’t know these opportunities even exist. I go to the top school in a very poor county and, my parents are very well off, but given my school zone, and school, I was not offered the same APs, same summer opportunities, same SAT opportunities, …etc that other students I met at top schools had. I can still recognize the fact that my parents help, encouraging me to do well academically, paying for me to take the SAT more than once, and helping read my essays, helped me a lot more, which is why all the other students at my school ended up getting rejected from top schools, and I got in, despite only being ranked 15/116, even being chosen over other African Americans ranked above me, who were both QB finalists, and ended up getting all rejections. While I am nkt privileged to the extent I wrote about others (I never had a private tutor/counselor, prep clas and my parents are both immigrants, so everything I learned about the college process was on my own) a little privilege clearly goes a long way. So imagine where a lot of pribemrbe takes you. This is why you get the income disparity at all these top schools that are need blind. 40% of MITs class makes enough money to attend without financial aid. And that’s a LOW number for too schools. You have to be in the top 5% of Americans for that. That doesn’t even include people whose families make over 200k but under 250-300k.

I’m talking about tippy tops here too. I don’t think you’re aware or thinking on a deeper level than me. I just think you happen to not reallly recognize how far privilege really takes you @lookingforward

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I agree completely. @DeepBlue86 I’m just replying to someone who posted

“I have to question the “helpfulness” of legacy in the ivies. I have been constantly shocked by kids with double legacies and great stats rejected by the ivies in recent years. It may help a tiny bit, but definitely should not be mentioned in the same breath as “athletic recruit” or URM.”

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@sweatearl

We all have different opinions about what the college admissions process should be. However, the point of this thread is to describe college admissions as it is. As multiple posters have said, discussing what the college process should be is a detour.

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But sweatearl, I’m not a high school senior, nor simply looking at this and suspecting x or y. I work for one of these, I see what I comment on. I know what kids can accomplish. And where kids, even what we consider privileged “top performers” can stumble, in their choices during hs (I refer mostly to ECs) and in their apps, themselves. I know there is often an advantage to legacy, in how the kid is a true match and expresses it- and little sympathy for any kid who cannot, legacy or not.

Anecdotes are not representative. I’m not doubting what you say you found. But it’s a slice, a bit.You are clearly analytical, trying to make connections. But getting in is a much bigger array of factors than many think. And the pool strengths shift, even year to year.

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@pickpocket You are correct about the relative strength of the legacy pool. Harvard Crimson reported that the average stats of the legacy admits were higher than the average Harvard admit. Also, the Yale legacy admit rate is about 20%. The legacy kids they admit are very strong. There was a poster who worked in Harvard admissions and his job was to track the percentage of Yale legacy admits to Harvard. It turned out to be just two percent below the Harvard legacy admits to Harvard. If I find the post I will link to it. Kids who get accepted as legacies these days have very competitive stats and get into other top schools as well.

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At Yale Bulldog days, more than half the parents I met had kids also admitted to Stanford, Harvard, and/or MIT. At Penn, I met only one parent who had a kid admitted to HYPSM. Coincidentally, I did not meet a single parent with a kid admitted to Princeton. I agree with prior posters that the tippy top schools are looking for and interested in the same type of student.

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The only real advantage to attending an IVY in this day in age is the opportunity to work at Goldman Sachs. Other than that, there’s no point. You can talk about research, alumni networks, caliber-of-student all day, but in 10 years the cost of tuition and job placement will make them useless. Plus, the SJW mindset at these universities is getting crazier and crazier. At some point it’s going to affect job placement.

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If anyone wants to read a fuller discussion of legacy admits at the tippy-tops, you’ll find one here: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1980224-are-legacy-preferences-dead-or-at-least-over-rated-p1.html

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As an Ivy alum whose children are not likely to go to alma mater, I have no issue with the current level of legacy admissions. It seems like enough to help maintain some of the character and continuity of these places, but not so much as to be slanting the admissions process in any meaningfully harmful way. I was a first generation college student and I loved what the legacy families brought to the mix in terms of emotion, commitment and history.

The legacy kids I know going to Ivy schools in 2017 are, to my untrained eye, indistinguishable from the other kids I know going to these schools. Many are recruited athletes, Asians or URMs and all are very strong students who have worked hard throughout high school. I am happy for their families and know how much it means to them. My kids are on a different path and I’m fine with that as well.

If you want to see crazy legacy admission rates, go back a few generations. Those were the salad days of disgruntled alumni whose kids didn’t get in when the acceptance rates were 50% or higher.

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Just saying, DeepBlue, that thread was a mess of assumptions, issues with superficial interpretations of reports, and complaints. As long as everyone wants to aim as high as they want, something will disgruntle them. Ironically, most don’t even know what it takes, just what they “want.” Same mess with the anti-ED arguments.

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@pantha33m In the very limited sample of my son’s class, the Ivy admits are mostly recruited athletes or big money legacies. A couple of the legacies could maybe fit in the “ivy league caliber academic student”, but the majority of them are solidly middle of the pack students who you wouldn’t expect to see at places like Brown or Dartmouth.

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@HazeGrey Yes, of course, the recruited athletes are the recruited athletes, and often stand out as being academically a notch below, but that’s true whether they are legacies or not.

In my experience, if it’s big enough money to move the admissions needle for a “middle of the pack student” it must be pretty big money.

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@pantha33m Agreed on the recruited athletes and that doesn’t shock me. In my examples, it is pretty big money. One parent was chair of his class’ reunion fundraising committee that made a record gift. Two other parents are the right hand man of two different household name hedge fund managers both of whom were on the school’s BOT.

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I am also attending an Ivy in the fall, and I can debunk the myth that you need straight A’s. Ive gotten atleast one B every year and I’m still good. What I felt was really important, was to write good, genuine essays. SAT/ACT and GPA are only used as benchmarks for if you will be able to withstand the rigor of the curriculum. Essays allow a glimpse into the person that you are and that’s what colleges are looking for. So good luck to all applicants next year and if any of you reading this want more advice please feel free to DM me a question!