How important is legacy status?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
21

<p>this is gonna sound extremely pretentious but it's a good perspective:</p>

<p>me: building at Pton with family name on it, massive donors a while back and board positions. deferred, then rejected (although not perfect stats, they were very solid). probably because the money "ran out."</p>

<p>friend: countless generations at Pton. huge Pton family. best friends with the chairman of the board. deferred, then rejected. roughly the same stats, solid and qualified.</p>

<p>basically, the moral is (as is the same with most schools) that legacy is only really a huge hook if you are a development candidate, which many colleges are aware of and is defined as a child of parents who have donated a lot or are going to promise to donate a lot. i.e. since my parents themselves didn't donate a building, the legacy and the other building doesn't count so much. i mean yea it counts in as much as the 30% admissions rate vs. 12 but that's not astronomical. you still have to be qualified et cetera.</p>

<p>bottom line: legacy does not necessarily equal development candidate, which (the latter) is basically a guarantee of admission. legacy helps, but only a little. and it's starting to help even less.</p>

<p>ps - janet rapelye (sp?) who i believe came from Wellesley has shaken things up since i guess 2007, if the other guy were still dean of admissions (who reviewed most applications himself) i might be there right now. but who knows. anyhow, she said when she got there that she wanted things to change a lot. and i think that they did. </p>

<p>pps - i'm happy with my school!!!! haha i'm not bitter or anything. i'm sure that someone else was more qualified than i. but don't worry about the legacy thing, it's like not a big deal. if you belong at Princeton, then it's my view that you will end up there. it appeared that i belonged at Cornell instead! good luck all of you crazy Tigers.</p>

22

<p>sametwowords, were ur parents alumni themselves? or grandparents?</p>

23

<p>grandparents actually, the other person had parents though.</p>

24

<p>it kind of seems unpredictable. obviously we can't do a fair evaluation but there was someone from my school last year who was a legacy, high SAT scores, good GPA, high classes, nothing else that special and got in. Maybe a lot of it's just whose table your application lands on? dunno lol :)</p>

25

<p>sametwo, it seems you were a fairly strong applicant(you got into cornell), so maybe the Adcom reps didn't notice the fact that ur family had contributed so much in the past.</p>

<p>i mean, did you indicate anywhere that your family has such a history? the application itself only asks for your PARENTS' NAMES and the colleges they attended. and i doubt the adcom reps would just research everyone's last names and do a background check w/o any indication(i mean, many people have the same last names)</p>

26

<p>legacy is fairly important at princeton. aren't 30% of ED acceptees legacies?</p>

27

<p>40%</p>

<p>I had a friend rejected from Dartmouth ED, accepted to Princeton RD. His father was legacy and his brother was accepted ED that year. 1500 SAT, Eagle Scout, Outside Top 10%, SAT II's 620, 700, 760 or so. Not the greatest applicant..</p>

28

<p>wow..not cool :( and all these crazy 2400/4.0/36 kids get rejected.</p>

29

<p>I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I guess I could be a good test canidate for the importance with legacies. My dad donates some money and is semi-involved in the university still. I wouldn't get into Princeton without legacy. No chance. But if I do, it will be largely because of my legacy status and applying ED. I am bright, just not perfect like some of these canidates so Princeton would be out of reach without my dad (I hope I didn't sound like a spoiled rich boy, because I am really not that rich, compared to most of my dad's friends and I think everyone here deserves to get in out of sheer dedication).</p>

30

<p>you probably have a good chance. best of luck</p>

31

<p>pk: i actually mentioned something about family history in an essay like not bragging i don't totally remember everything that i said, but yea it was there. i explained how i was into that stuff and whatever and they definitely knew. i mean i blatently said it. it's not that common a name. and it's a dormitory. and there's also an arch. </p>

<p>anyhow, like they definitely knew, but the thing was that my parents didn't donate the building and that made me not a development candidate and basically i think that janet r. the admissions director wanted to end many of the Tiger legacies. such as my friend's as well. if anything, although her family had been there for many generations, she had a more direct link because her father's best friend was the chairman of the board. like from reading about the dean, she just wanted to change the exclusivity of Princeton and make it like Harvard or something. haha i could talk wayyy more about this PM me if you want but yea that's basically it.</p>

32

<p>If i was a princeton legacy, i wouldn't have applied there. Going to your parents' school is just weird. It'd be like getting married and then using their bed.</p>

33

<p>haha. except getting a high quality education and getting laid isn't exactly the same thing.......:p</p>

34

<p>Yeah, I don't like the bed analogy. I think it would be more like getting to drive your dad's old Ferrari.</p>

35

<p>Um, that's ridiculous. You should like a school regardless of whether your parents went there or not. I think that's pretty silly to exclude your favorite school or a school from your list because one of your parents went there.</p>

36

<p>I'm with viva.. that's an absurd and naive conclusion, Clen.</p>

37

<p>i think that he was half-kidding...</p>

38

<p>lol i think he as just all out kidding</p>

39

<p>Some guy published a book recently--I read excerpts somewhere on CC.com, but can't remember where--and argued that legacy status is worth 300-400 points on the SAT...</p>

<p>OK, a quick Google search produced this article from the 11/16/06 edition of The Daily Princetonian.</p>

<p><< Reporter Golden blasts unfair legacy admissions</p>

<p>By Anastasia Erbe
Princetonian Contributor</p>

<pre><code>The advantage enjoyed by children of rich and powerful families in gaining admission to elite colleges violates basic notions of fairness, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden said in a lecture Wednesday night.

Golden, author of the recent book, "The Price of Admission," argued that there are essentially four groups of people granted "preferences of privilege" by college admissions officers: legacies, "development cases," which range from Hollywood stars and their children to the children of state legislators, athletes and children of the faculty and staff of the university.

Legacy preference is given at "the vast majority of America's top-50 universities," Golden said. "This includes legacy preference [for] anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent [of those] admitted, at three to four times the rate of admission."

Children of alumni make up roughly 10 percent of Princeton's Class of 2010. In his Pulitzer Prizewinning 2003 Journal series on college admissions, Golden reported that roughly 35 percent of legacy applicants to Princeton are accepted. For all applicants, the admit rate is around 10 percent.

President Tilghman has defended Princeton's practice of giving special consideration to legacy applicants, arguing that the financial wellbeing of the University depends on the generosity of alumni.

"I have looked very carefully at the statistics of our legacy admits and our non-legacy admits," Tilghman told the Associated Press recently. "And if you look at their academic qualification, you cannot tell the difference between those two pools. They are really indistinguishable [from] one another."

Golden described Tilghman's statement as "a bit misleading," saying that one must look at the difference between completely "unhooked" applicants
</code></pre>

40

<p>Never mind, I feel silly now ;)
Thanks for clearing that up you guys.
Sorry about that. :)</p>