I mainly want to know generally what people think about Stanford legacy.
I’ve noticed that from my school, legacies who get in are all excellent students with strong ECs. They are no doubt qualified for the school.
But yet so are most of the applicants. Most are qualified, I think legacy just brings you to the top.
I’ve noticed that without legacy, (especially unhooked asian males cs) always need to be extremely extremely extremely insane, a lot more than the legacies.
It’s been well written about. It’s a huge advantage. Last I read it raises the acceptance rate from about 5% to 30% give or take.
It gets your application a second read. That’s it.
Unless your family is a big donor. Then, if you are qualified, you move to the top of the pile.
Agree - it gets you that second read.
You don’t get to classes that are 20+% legacy by simply giving a second look. There’s never been a non-legacy accepted from our sons school. Usually the legacy is very qualified, but I know of one instance where a multi-legacy student was very undistinguished in Stanford terms and was taken over the most well rounded, highly qualified student I’ve ever seen come out of the school. He was accepted to Yale, Harvard and Chicago.
I have heard opinions that range from “huge” to “second read and nothing more”. I think that there is a reason for both views.
Several years ago Stanford included an article on admissions in their alumni magazine. It claimed that being legacy only gave you the advantage that they would guarantee that two people would read your application, and nothing more.
However, people seem to have noticed what you have noticed, that legacies are indeed more likely to be accepted. I have also read that legacies are admitted at three times the rate of other applicants.
My guess is that what is happening is that Stanford is needing to decide between a very long list of nearly perfect applicants. For example, in the same article they said that 80% of applicants are fully academically qualified to attend. In this environment, it is very difficult for any application to stand out.
Being legacy is one way for a nearly perfect applicant to stand out in a sea of nearly perfect applicants. If you are yet another nearly perfect applicant, I think that it does help.
It is hard to know how much of this is due to legacy status, how much of this is due to having parents who might already have some clue what it takes to get into Stanford, and how much of this is due to kids being a lot like their parents, which has been described as: “the apple does not fall very far from the tree” (usually). Having parents who can afford tutors probably also helps.
By the way, I have heard that Stanford is one of the few universities that considers a student to be legacy if their parent got a graduate degree from Stanford (such as a master’s degree).
I agree that it gets you a second read.
Our three children were all legacies.
My husband got “the letter”, two weeks before decisions came out, more or less stating that just because his children were legacies, that it did not automatically assume admission. This happened with each child.
All three were strong students (High SATs, high GPA, EC activities athleticism, LORs, etc.)
Our son, who got in everywhere he applied, was “waitlisted“ and Stanford asked him for a “letter”.
He was in the middle of a massive Eagle Scout project (construction had been delayed) and physics project, applying “regular decision” to all of his schools. He was out of time, and just did not want to complete more paperwork, and was happy where he had already gotten in.
He only missed one question on his SATs. Our daughters’ SATs were not above 1500 but, one was a recruited athlete, and the eldest was using her biotech class for diabetic research at the local UC- this generated interest and interviews from Harvard.
The counselors were generally very cautious about admissions at Stanford, but in our son’s case they felt that he was a very strong candidate.
We have donated to Stanford for years, and this is the first year I asked my husband not to donate. Sour grapes? Maybe, but what’s the point? We have our choice of 8 universities that have asked yearly for donations.
I remember that article. I think it came out after all three of our children had already been through the admissions process.
I remember that article too. And the variants of it that have been published over the years.
Many of my alumni friends have kids who have gotten in, including off the WL. A few have been major donors and a few of them have also had kids turned down who ended up at other Ivies. And many non-major donors have had kids who were not admitted but had acceptances at HYP schools. With legacy status given to kids who parents have graduate degrees too, it’s a big pool. That 400 of them are highly qualified and admitted each year is not surprising.
My kid had no interest in Stanford. He was rejected from another school where he had legacy status from both parents and grandparents only to attend a more selective school. While I felt like it wouldn’t have been a great fit for him, I totally relate, @auntbea, to that face-slapped feeling.
My impression based on the high school I know best is that being unhooked is a huge deficit to make up re: Stanford admissions, perhaps more so than other elite schools. Those that get in have something, frequently legacy or urm, on top of being qualified. It is the rare unhooked kid who makes it through. That isn’t to say all legacy applicants get in, but the odds are improved over no hook whatsoever.
In my older son’s grade 4 were accepted, 2 legacies and 2 that may or may not have been legacies, I just don’t know. Two kids were clearly top of the class in every way, but one kid appeared to be completely unremarkable. Not straight A, not NMF or commended, not full IB, no awards listed in grad program, not in class plays, or dance program…Turns out kid has a relative who is not just a professor at Stanford, but a very big wig professor. Kid was WL and then accepted.
Based on our school, legacy doesn’t help and certainly doesn’t help like recruited athlete. Legacy a few years back with perfect stats - valedictorian, full IB, 36 ACT and tons of international level extra-curriculars - denied - accepted at CalTech and CMU - so definitely had the goods. Stanford takes 1-2 of our athletes every year and no others - all solid students, don’t get me wrong, but none are top academically.
Personally, I don’t have a problem considering legacy, or ties to professors, or families that donate heavily. Many think that because of that there is no way in for other non-hooked. But I know several. A kid in my daughters high school class as already been accepted to Stanford with no “hooks”. Son S16 was accepted EA with no hooks and his cousin was also admitted a few years ago. No legacy, no hooks, but strong academics and essays.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that there isn’t a route into Stanford for and unhooked student. It’s just that the odds are steeper.
Agree, but sometime it “sounds” like that’s how many feel. Scarcity of seats for whatever reasons decreases odds of admittance.
The problem is that, for the 1,200 or so non-hooked acceptances, which are the majority of the acceptances, there are at least 45,000 non-hooked applicants, so we’re talking about maybe 3% of these applicants being accepted. Considering that there are about 1,500 graduates each year, that means that it’s unlikely that there are more than 2,000 legacies applying each year for around 350 places (around 16% of the students are legacies). So Stanford can easily accept some 15%-20% of these each year.
In generally, it is worthwhile to consider that, except for the legacies and kids of donors, other hooks generally mean that the applicant has already gone through a tough selection process. Athletes have gone through multiple selection processes to get to the point that they are at the level to interest a selective colleges. URMs have generally gone through far more difficulties in order to reach the achievement level that makes them competitive for colleges like Stanford.
For this last reason, URMS are also generally a far lower percentage in the applicant pool than they are in the population, and, if a college like Stanford wants a student body which better represents the demographics of the USA, they will need to accept a higher proportion of qualified URMS than of applicants from populations which are already well represented in the student body. that is the real reason that acceptance rates of URMs are higher - the relative much smaller number of these groups in the applicant pool.
Finally, one must remember that, because so many non-hooked kids are applying, if the colleges stops considering hooks at all, this will barely make a difference for the non-hooked kids.
So, instead of there being a 97.5% chance of rejection, there will be a 96.5% chance of rejection.
@mwolf, I like the way you’ve thought about this. But
“Considering that there are about 1,500 graduates each year”, well…
It’s closer to 5000 because legacy, for the purpose of admissions, includes holders of graduate degrees. Yes, some of those will be folks who hold more than 1 degree from Stanford, so that # is a bit overstated.
And to be a recruited athlete at Stanford, yes! - that’s a very rigorous process! Could’ve agree more that that’s a very tough path.
Good points, and yes, it looks that there are about 5,000 graduates each year from Stanford.
The Arcidiacono data indicates that about 1,000 legacies apply each year from Harvard, and Harvard has some 1,700 undergrads graduating each year. Considering that there are many double (or triple) degrees, the higher likelihood that people receiving PhDs will not have kids, etc, I would say that 2,000 legacy applicants a year is a good rough estimate.
The number of “legacy” applicants is likely smaller than that.
FWIW, I believe for purposes of Harvard and the Arcidiacono data, the definition of legacy is “at least one parent who attended Harvard College.” Graduate schools do not count. In the SFFA dataset, there were 4,644 legacy applicants over six years, or about 775 per year (with a 33.3% acceptance rate for this subset over the time period). So, as a general rule, Harvard will expect each year a number of legacy applicants that is about 45-50% of its typical, historical class size of 1,650 per year (e.g. if most graduates have 1.8 kids or whatever, then maybe only 25-30% of legacy children even eventually apply. Many legacy kids may simply self-select out.)
The relationship between historical undergrad class size to legacy applicants also ties with what Yale has said about their own legacy admissions. Historically, Yale College graduated about 1,300 per class (vs Harvard’s 1650, so about 80% the size), and Yale has said that legacies of Yale College make up about 9-10% of each class and generally have about a 25% acceptance rate. (Note that Yale releases both the percent of students that are legacies of the college, and then both the college and graduate schools (grad schools represent another 2.5%). Assuming that both groups of Harvard and Yale College legacies have about a 90% yield, then Yale gets about 600 Yale College legacy applicants per year… so pretty much in line with 45-50% of its (smaller) historical class size.
Stanford probably generates the same ratio of legacy applicants from their past undergraduate college alums as Harvard and Yale: about 45-50% of whatever was the historical undergrad class size. If Stanford historically had ~1,550 graduates per year, then they likely get ~700 applicants per year who are legacies of the undergraduate college.
As for the graduate school alums and their kids, I would expect that the ratio of future legacy applicants to past graduate school alums is a much smaller fraction than for alums of the actual college, especially since those people often went elsewhere for undergrad and that would be where their kids would consider their best “legacy” chit.
From personal experience, Stanford encourages those with graduate degrees to have their kids consider Stanford and makes sure they know they will be considered legacies. And many take them up on it.