<p>My dad did post doctorate/Ph.D. at Harvard. Would that be considered as a legacy?
Or is legacy only constrained to undergraduate level of study?</p>
<p>Only Harvard college (undergraduate) legacies are considered.</p>
<p>Would admission officers take notice and give this statement weight or just ignore it.</p>
<p>It has some bearing, but it’s negligible.</p>
<p>I was in the same situation as you (my dad did his PhD at Harvard GSAS), but harvard waitlisted me while 6 ivies (including Yale and Princeton) and MIT accepted me, 2 with likelies.</p>
<p>So yeah I guess it doesn’t help that much.</p>
<p>My father went to Harvard College. I was denied admission. I’m at my next choice school which is ten times better :-)</p>
<p>Okay, this is my observation: lately colleges have seemed to care a lot more about sibling legacy. I’m an only child, so this doesn’t apply to me, but every single younger sibling from my school is going or got into the same ivy as his/her brother/sister. The older siblings have all been pretty successful at those colleges and all of them are graduating this year or have already graduated. A lot of ivies try not to have siblings at the same school at the same time because then it’s not the college experience, being without your family, on your own. Still, if both siblings are exceptional athletes or musicians, they’ll want both.
Why don’t colleges care as much about parent legacies? My thinking is that college curriculums have become much harder and the parent who got in 30 years ago was in a different game. The sibling, on the other hand, is younger and is succeeding/succeeded in the University’s current program, and is therefore, a more accurate gauge for the applicant’s success.
If your sibling is a senior in college when you’re a senior in hs, it also makes it that much easier with financial aid. But that’s minuscule compared to the reasoning mentioned above.</p>
<p>^I doubt they check the sibling’s performance. My older sibling didn’t perform well at Harvard (sub 2.5 GPA), yet I still got in. And we are ORMs.</p>
<p>You’re right; I’m sure colleges don’t check the older sibling’s performance, yet the older siblings admittance based on merit was more recent, and therefore, the potential for your talent, the same talent they saw in your sibling, is more likely than that of a parent some 30 years ago when the admissions game was completely different. Sibling legacy matters a lot. Our parents were accepted when it was a different game.</p>
<p>i’m skeptical that sibling legacy matters more than parental legacy…i in 4 children of alumni are admitted to harvard, compared with 1 in 13 for the normal pool</p>