I was having a debate about college legacy’s and their influence on admissions for ivy’s. I was wondering what some of you think. Let’s say you are trying to transfer to Vassar, Princeton or Brown. (Again this is hypothetical!). You have a cumulative first year grade of a 3.5. Your great grandfather, and your grandfather both went to the same ivy and you’re applying to it. Both were professors, and one has a building named after them. What do you think this person’s chances would be?
Admissions is impacted by legacy. Yes that person would have an advantage But even then admissions isn’t just about the GPA and legacy status. You’d need to know the entire record before predicting. Since this only a hypothetical case, let’s also make up some ECs. We’ll say that person has a history of criminal activity. Then no, that person would probably not be admitted despite the legacy status.
The only significant advantage a legacy would enjoy is when the family has given significant amounts of money to said school. (And by significant, we’re talking in the hundreds of thousands.) Otherwise, a legacy’s advantage is only a tiny bit better.
Let’s assume that they did lots of EC"s while in high school, was active in school programs (sports, debate, & newspaper). Do you think that the this student would qualify for legacy status? I mean I would assume a building named after their great or great great grandfather would be a big boost?
@wisteria100 were they good students? I’m wondering if there is a difference between if the school names if after someone because of their achievements, or because they donated money to have something they built with their name on it.
With all the many highly qualified applicants at schools such as Ivies and Seven Sisters, I certainly hope that not knowing how to use an apostrophe gets an application an immediate rejection, regardless of who grand daddy was.
Sorry, ‘hundreds of thousands’ likely isn’t enough. Generally, it’s millions (or more) in total, over a period, and continued potential to give.
Nor is a building based on a great or great great grandfather enough. This is much more complex and the 3.5 is about this individual student, his own abilities.
If the family continued to donate mega amounts, the development rep would be the first line of contact and have admissions give some private feedback. If you really know this hypothetical school and the requirements to get in, I just don’t think you’d be posing this question. And you’d now gpa is just a number. What matters is the full record and the application itself.
Edit: I mean hundreds of thousands isn’t enough for the kind of development pull OP seems to be describing.
Good thing I’m not applying to schools, Millie. Also, if I were, I doubt I would forgo a proof read! I’m going to call this a win for my debate. Thanks everyone who commented.
Anyone interested in this topic can read “The Price Of Admission” by Daniel Golden, which I learned about in another thread. Warning, though, it probably won’t make you happy!
This particular scenario will give the applicant very little advantage. The people who mattered are probably dead. The university has the money or whatever they received to name a building after the ancestor, the applicant isn’t particularly stellar and the university risks nothing or very little by denying admission
Agreeing with @VeryLuckyParent and @lookingforward, and disagreeing with @wisteria100: it’s not necessarily a ‘huge’ advantage. Correlation is not causation. You would expect that alum kids would have a somewhat higher acceptance rate than non-alum kids- even if the legacy element was not known to the AdComm. Ivy alum kids are coming from families where educational achievement is valued and who know how the system works. They are likely to have grown up with adequate nutrition and health care, and have the genetic dice may be somewhat loaded in their favor. They may have had personal contact with people from the college through friends and family. Etc.
Anecdotally, I know students whose legacy is a grandparent (and in one case multiple generations, and yes, buildings named after them), who were credible candidates (ie, high GPAs & test scores, good ECs, etc) who did not get into Yale or Princeton.
Often, the advantage of legacy status needs to be combined with ED to demonstrate interest for it to provide any type of ‘bump’ for admissions. AdCom’s that I’ve spoken to at several highly competitive schools have explicitly said that without a students willingness to commit via an ED application, their legacy status doesn’t provide much of a boost.
When asked about the financial factors that may prevent a student from submitting an ED application, one AdCom (at a HYPS school) rather cynically said, “Well, then perhaps they don’t really want to continue the family legacy, and are only applying because their parent(s) want them to.” Yikes!
One exception to this was Brown, who clearly said that considering legacy is a factor for all applicants, regardless of ED vs RD.
If legacy provides an any type of advantageous boost or not is something that will always be the subject of discussion, since there are no easy answers – only yearly anecdotes that seem to balloon into urban belief tales.
