<p>Interesting, though wholly academic question – let’s face it at the time of application (and in most cases at birth) there’s precious little that we can do about it, you’re either a legacy or you’re not.</p>
<p>I’ve known legacies whose generally qualified offspring were rejected at top (Ivy schools). I’ve known legacies whose generally qualified offspring were accepted at those schools. In some cases the parents donated in other cases, not so much.</p>
<p>FWIW, by D and Nephew were each accepted Cornell last year (in each case both parents and three grandparents had attended). However in both cases they had highly competitive grades and scores, so who knows whether it made the difference, it certainly didn’t hurt.</p>
<p>Overall, it’s a plus. My guess is that the schools take the long view, and that even if you haven’t contributed heavily, the hope is that you will (or your children or children’s children) will in the future. Also, it may depend university to university on how important it is.</p>
<p>Stanford is unusual in treating the children of graduate attendees as legacies.
[quote]
The University Undergraduate Admission Web site defines an applicant as a legacy “if at least one parent or stepparent received an undergraduate and/or graduate degree from Stanford.”<a href="%5Burl=http://www.stanforddaily.com/2009/12/02/legacies-a-fifth-of-the-class-of-2013/%5DLegacies%20a%20fifth%20of%20the%20Class%20of%202013%20%7C%20Stanford%20Daily%5B/url%5D">/quote</a></p>
<p>My D applied to a small LAC school. She and H went to an Open House, when they had 10 students go to the stage and hold signs that said “SAT Scores, GPA, Transcript, Recommendations, Extra Curricular Activities, Interview, etc.” The last sign was “Special Circumstances”. The object of the activity was for the students to line up in order of what they thought was most important to the school. Transcript ended up being the #1 spot. Then, the ad com said “What about “Special Circumstances?” If your grandmother went here and donated $2Million, you are pretty much accepted.”</p>
<p>So, if you have an extra Million hanging around, it may be worth a shot to donate to your alma mater before the kids apply.</p>
<p>^then the question is… is it worth donating that much money just for an acceptance? Maybe if you’re ridiculously rich, but even then you better not be doing that just so your kid goes to a particular school</p>
<p>Sikorsky - my contention is not that an 1800 SAT score kid in the top quarter of his class gets admitted by Harvard due to legacy status (can happen if it is Bill Gate’s son and he will certainly welcomed at Duke from his mother’s side even without an SAT score).<br>
I know of one private school in California with probably 50 kids who are quite competitive. If they all applied and 3 happen to be legacies at Harvard, the 3 stand a better a chance of being admitted ahead of everyone else. This is a school with at least 5 or 6 perfect SAT scorers. </p>
<p>There are a lot of high performing kids out there and most of them do apply to Harvard with what the heck attitude. Harvard says they can admit just valedictorians for what amounts to 3-4 times the class size each year. They are offering fullrides for international kids and so there is no dearth of qualified applicants. So if we have to take Harvard’s definition of can they do the work, it sounds like they probably have 70% or more applicants who can do that. </p>
<p>Essentially, Harvard admitted 250 kids from a pool of 700+ kids as legacies while admitting 1750 kids from 34,000. If Harvard says it is just an additional look, there are people out there that believe that, but count me as being skeptical.</p>
<p>Exultationsy - UPenn counts legacy as having gone to any of their schools at any level.</p>
<p>I don’t deny that. I don’t think anyone does.</p>
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<p>Then clearly “able to do the work” isn’t sufficient for admission, no matter where your parents went to college. Harvard isn’t admitting 70% of legacies. And according to Dean Fitzsimmons in the Crimson article where I assume you’re getting your 30% admit rate for legacies ([Legacy</a> Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/]Legacy”>Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson)), legacies who apply “are better candidates on average” than the general applicant population.</p>
<p>Yes, it is undeniably easier for a highly qualified son or daughter of a College alum to gain admission than it is for a highly qualified applicant whose parents went to college elsewhere. I’ll even say, it might well be too easy. As a graduate of the College (who was a legacy himself, and whose kids haven’t and won’t apply to Harvard), I think a 30% admission rate for alumni children is too high.</p>
<p>I suppose what I’m reacting to in your posts, texaspg, is this: I think you are sticking on the 30% figure and the 5:1 ratio and ignoring the rest of the picture. It isn’t easy for anyone, including children of alumni, to get into Harvard College. Legacies are overrepresented in the current population of the College, it’s true. Some of this overrepresentation is probably owing to the fact that children of Harvard alumni tend to be privileged, both educationally and in other ways. Some of the overrepresentation is probably owing to the fact that alumni discourage their own children from applying to Harvard if they think their children either won’t be admitted or don’t have the wherewithal to be successful in an atmosphere where everything from organic chemistry to working on the college radio station is highly competitive. And some of the overrepresentation is surely owing to Harvard’s giving preference to legacies in the admissions process. Whether too much preference is given to children of alumni is a question that merits serious consideration–not just now, but probably year in and year out. But I think if you assert that it’s five times easier for children of alumni to get into Harvard solely because the admission rate for alumni children is five times as high as the rate for the general population, you’re making a conclusion that the available data don’t support.</p>
<p>I had read it somewhere and have no reason to doubt that legacies to one of the HYP schools are admitted to the other two of them in numbers that exceed the average admissions rate. If anything, there should be a bias against admitting them to maximize yield statistics. Clearly the kids of parents who attended a top 20 school are more likely to grow in a priviliged environment with access to academic resources that makes them successful and competitive college applicants. It also is true that parents from these schools, especially ones that interview applicants, have much more realistic expectations about their top 10% 2150 SAT progeny and the difficulty they have in gaining admission. The group as a whole is more self-selecting which pushes up the admit rate.</p>
<p>A high level developmental office employee at one of the HYP schools (who is a personal friend) told me that the admissions officers at her school do not contact the development office to ever inquire about donations. She said you have to give so much that the admissions office doesn’t need to call and ask about a donation (ie. build a named building). I assume communications could go the other way and the people giving so much that they have an expectation of some admissions pull call their personal contact at the development office and ask for a favor. As far as garden variety donors at Y, the school has announced that more than half of the donors in the highest annual category of giving ($50,000+ x 5 years in a row) have their kids rejected. At least for Y, the stats on admitted legacies are much stronger that the typical applicant pool accounting for much of the admissions success.</p>