This was covered in another thread here on CC in the past. There are many reasons for higher acceptance rates for legacy applicants: access to the best high schools, academically minded parents etc. The flip side of the legacy acceptance rate is that 78% of legacy applicants were denied admission at Penn.
I wonder how much alumni giving would be impacted if the legacy benefit was eliminated? Of course this is highly unlikely, but I think it would be very painful for * some * schools.
The legacy benefit is just a part of doing * not-for-profit * business IMO.
How does the admit rate for legacies compare to admit rates for other similar applications (ignoring legacy status)? Do legacy kids have better applications (even ignoring the legacy status)?
This is from memory and the source is the colleges themselves but I recall reading that while one of the HYPs was examining its legacy admit rates, they found that many of its legacy admits were also cross admitted to one or both of the other two schools at about the same rate. They found this to be confirmatory evidence that the relatively higher quality of the students (who were children of highly educated parents) was a bigger correlation to admissions success than their status as legacy kids. Again, take grain of salt here.
I think it’s important to distinguish between legacies (who are not necessarily unusually wealthy and whose families have not necessarily made major financial contributions to the college) and development admits (whose families have made major contributions and may or may not be alumni).
They’re two different situations, and blurring the distinction between them leads to confusion.
The factoid I have heard from multiple others, and repeated myself many times, is that at some point Harvard did an internal study (or does it continuously) and determined that it did not admit Harvard legacies at a significantly higher rate than it was admitting Yale and Princeton legacies (who, of course, received no special consideration). That corresponds to what I have observed in real life.
My extended family is chock-full of Harvard legacies, going back several generations. The last one to get admitted was in 2002 – a kid who was also admitted to Stanford, Yale, and Princeton, by the way, with no legacy status at any of them. There’s another one applying this year, a fourth generation legacy with great stats, but no one is counting on admission. Luckily, the dad went to a “public Ivy” where the combination of legacy status and Harvard-able stats probably means something.
The colleges in question are not likely to give any useful information that will help you answer this question. They presumably want alumni parents to think that legacy status is a significant advantage (to keep the donations coming), but they presumably want others to think that legacy status is a very small consideration (so that they are still willing to apply instead of deciding it is not worth applying because legacy is too big of an advantage that they do not have).
Obviously, legacy preference can also be used to tip the admit pool away toward higher income family (less financial aid) students, since college graduates tend to have higher income than others.
@JHS “My extended family is chock-full of Harvard legacies, going back several generations. The last one to get admitted was in 2002 – a kid who was also admitted to Stanford, Yale, and Princeton, by the way, with no legacy status at any of them. There’s another one applying this year, a fourth generation legacy with great stats, but no one is counting on admission.”
How many legacy applicants were denied admittance to Harvard? Do their parents/relatives stop giving to H as a result? Just curious…
I can attest that Yale, at least, will admit legacies whose parents did not make large donations. I can also attest that if my kids had been rejected that my donations to Yale, however modest, would have ceased. I think the legacy thing is only partly about money, and it may be more about what the legacies themselves may give later than what their parents give. As noted above, development cases are a different thing entirely.
Penn has long had a policy of only giving a boost to legacies if they apply ED (see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/the-early-decision-racket/302280/). Furthermore the article later points out this year Penn took 54% of its class ED vs 45% a decade earlier. And it’s well known that ED has a higher admit rate than regular applicants. Any legacy kids getting a boost are in that ED cohort, which the article then compares to a mix of ED and non-ED applicants. Apples and oranges. In short, there is little that can be reliably concluded from this snippet about any change in advantage.
The information that would be relevant, and that’s missing, is what percentage of legacy ED applicants got in compared to non-legacy ED applicants in the two time periods. To state, as the snippet does, that the “advantage” for legacies has increased seems to me unsupported by the evidence presented.
As mikemac notes, this is pretty nonsensical. It would make just as much sense to write, "Legacy admissions declined from 38% to 22%, a decline of 16 points, while overall admissions declined only 12 points from 21% to 9%. Please note that I realize that this is also nonsense.
How I wish we could have this sort of discussion based on substance, not speculation and fear. The last thread got closed in part due to wandering off track to talk about ancient history.
Closer to truth: you don’t know why a kid gets in unless you know what that school is looking for and how the kid conveyed it in his full app and supps. If the main cause for the fear is some notion they’ll discriminate against your kid, you should already know the deck is stacked against 90% of applicants. Don’t let him or her apply because they “can,” or just based on stats, or based on the idea a kid is tops in his one high school, so that must be all that matters.
It’s so frustrating to see how often the ‘voice of authority’ is some journalist with a partial view (and strong desire to achieve something.) We could do better than that.
Many legacies get admitted from families who make minimal donations, and of course many get admitted from families with more-than-minimal donations. I do have the impression that some kind of personal involvement helps (like alumni interviewing, or writing fundraising letters to classmates). But I had friends with four Harvard degrees between them, lots of alumni club activities, and well over $1 million cumulative contributions to Harvard over 25 years, whose kids were both rejected there, notwithstanding perfectly good stats and high-quality schools. And on the other hand, I have friends with three Harvard degrees and not so much involvement all four of whose children were admitted. It probably helped that they were URMs, and three were recruited athletes, too. In contrast, another Harvard alum I know, who is well-to-do but not a Master of the Universe, also had all four children admitted to Harvard, all of them lily white and supremely unathletic.
One Yale friend made regular six-figure donations and lived in Asia for over a decade; only one of his four children was admitted; the others all went to other Ivy League colleges. Another classmate is a practice chair at an old-line, white-shoe Wall St. law firm; in college he was head of a large campus organization and a secret society member. 0-for-3 on children admitted, coming out of top-of-the-line NYC private schools. But I have several classmates who have had multiple children admitted, including one where both parents are teachers at a small private school, who barely pay anything for their children’s college, and would be challenged to donate more than a pittance. You just can’t tell.
Of course most people stop donating when their children are rejected. My wife and I certainly did, although recently we decided we were over it and started giving small amounts from time to time again. Many people, myself included, shift most of their allegiance to the institutions that do accept their children.
This is the reason I advocate for merit-based admission, only. Or top 10%, like in Texas. Or a threshold GPA/SAT number +lottery for everyone, who is above the threshold.
Current “holistic” system is supposed to benefit minorities and underprivileged. IMHO, it is just a veil to obscure muddy and opalescent process, used by adcoms to select the “right” candidates - VIPs, athletes, donors, children of politicians, and ,yes, some minorities, to provide the cover for all other holistically-selected students from uber-rich families.
Please, remember, that all Trump’s children, who applied to UPenn, were admitted to UPenn. His son-in-law was admitted to Harvard (after the 2.5 million donation). For comparison, our magnet school, that has super-motivated, super-smart children, many from poor communities, sent only two students to UPenn last year and one student to Harvard (an athlete).
<. If the main cause for the fear is some notion they’ll discriminate against your kid, you should already know the deck is stacked against 90% of applicants.>
I am OK with “the deck is stacked against 90% of applicants”, if it is fair. For example, math Olympiad. My daughter failed, miserably. However, nobody had bad feelings, because the winners were really great. The competition was fair.
“fear is some notion they’ll discriminate against your kid” - DISCRIMINATE. This is the crucial word. Discrimination is never fair.
Actually it’s not. It benefits the colleges who get to choose all the students they want based on the varied needs of the school in a given year.
If they wanted all top 10% rank kids or top 2% SAT score kids or whatever, they’d do that. A few schools DO do that.
The current holistic system benefits all kids if they are on the ball, aware, activated, and can think-- and that includes knowing what their target colleges seek. More than stats in high school. More than whether or not your principal likes you. More than whether family and friends believe you deserve “the best.” Or yu want X major and that college has it.
The deeper issue is they can’t take every kid they like. Nor load up on kids from any one area, any one major. And there are plenty they don’t find impressive on all levels, even if they are superstars in that one hs.
Is it discriminating, if you kid doesn’t know what he or she is applying for, just wants prestige, all the colleges blur? One of the large advantages for many legacies is they do have knowledge of the college, are not assuming US News is the way to go.
When 90% are rejected, it’s hard to prove your one kid got the short end of the deal.
Indeed. And this isn’t only applicable now, but was also applicable when my HS graduating class was applying to colleges in the mid-'90s as my GC stated that the legacy tip for those with borderline/below par stats for those schools only applies for those whose parents have had a sustained history of donating tens of thousands for years or making a multi-million donation or few to the school in question.
A legacy with ordinary upper/upper-middle class parents who do not have the financial wherewithal or willingness to donate at that level may be counted as legacies in the admission stats(acceptance and rejection), but are very likely to be assessed on their HS academic stats/scores no differently than an otherwise unhooked applicant unless they have some other hooks to fall back on.
It would be much more illuminating if it was somehow possible to gain access to admission stats which provide breakdowns within the “legacy” applicant category between those whose parents donated substantial sums whether it’s a sustained tens of thousands or more per year or a few multimillion donations and legacy applicants whose parental donations amount to a few hundred or less/year or even $0 which is likely the vast majority of legacy parents here on CC.
And of course, such colleges will never release such data to maintain the mystique of their “holistic” admissions policies. Some would use this factor to argue by implication that the idea of wealthy families manipulating admissions at such universities is absurd or not worth having.
Only 2? Sending 2 to Penn from one school is fabulous! Did anyone else get in who didn’t go? Even if not, of an incoming class of around 3800 or so, with an admissions rate in the single digits for RD, 2 from one school is great!! Either of them ED applicants?