Yup, that’s true. Hence, the point of my original post, which was essentially asking for data:
So far, one and only one person responded with a factual, that they a) requested a staff interview (not based on any guidance but their own history from 20-30 years ago), and b) they were told to just wait for the alumni interview request. I considered @FloridaFever 's response to be appropriately measured, as “not sure if they were not doing any staff interviews at all or just not giving one for my daughter.”
No one has posted here regarding whether they did have one, nor whether they didn’t. I would guess that the longer that silence/absence/non-response lasts, the more likely it is that Harvard did not do a lot of staff interviews. Which seems appropriate: if you accept >80% of the people you interview, it’s not an especially useful allocation of resources!
I know someone who told me that she had a good relationship with the AO for the New York area. She got her first two in, but the 3rd got waitlisted and went to Georgetown. Her kids got in mid to late 2000s. The last one applied 2010-2012 timeframe. Double legacy. But I remember her telling me that she had knew the AO well through the process of her kids applying. And I think parents took their kids to Harvard for the tour and probably set up a meeting. Then lawsuit and covid and maybe this just isn’t a thing anymore for the general legacy. I do not know how many legacy parents are on this site, but as Brownshoe stated, no one volunteered a staff interview. So for the general legacy, this doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. For more elite, maybe…but they don’t seem to be here.
FWIW, nobody on Reddit has said they had one either.
While you can’t really prove a negative, I suspect that with the dramatic increase in REA applications this year and last, it was all-hamds-on-deck to process them in 6 weeks, leaving no time for nice-to-haves.
REA applications increased 57% last admissions cycle from the previous cycle. Unless staffing in the admissions office also increased 57%, AOs would either have to work longer hours to review more applications and/or there had to be adaptive process efficiencies.
Unless one really believes in magic that a detailed case could be miraculously transformed by a few minutes of talking, it makes sense to me that the least consequential/determinative component of the case—the applicant interview—would be offloaded as much as possible from the admissions office to alumni to free up case review capacity needed from AOs because of the jump in application volume.
Has this in fact happened? No one knows except the admissions office and maybe the Schools Committees chairs. Just speculation, but the particular pattern derived from the numbers made public from the court case might not have much relevance this year or in the years going forward. Moreover, the interview patterns of prior years could very well show correlations that are not proximal causes that offer any advantage to an ALDC if they try to flip their interview from alumni to an AO.
In the other Harvard early thread, someone posted that she goes to boarding school and the GC called the AO to arrange an interview. It is Wednesday, the day before announcements. She also said that kids at her boarding school generally get AO interviews. Hence, my earlier comment about donors at Andover etc.
Not just for her; the GC likely prioritized their applicants. And they do that regardless of legacy. The effectiveness is likely much less than it was even a generation ago.
An interview the day before announcements will be a courtesy and will simply confirm the pile in which the applicant was already placed, IMO.
That also points to my hypothesis that students at well-connected feeder schools will have inside information readily shared and available. It’s possible that pre-pandemic interviews were more widely available to interested students visiting campus. Now that time is severely restricted for AO’s, they are only doing a handful for the most connected schools. Hopefully, these AO interviews are just a courtesy with no real impact.
Since AO interviews had an admit rate greater than 80% for legacies, and very few AO interviews were done at all for non-legacies, these particular ones are likely hand-picked, or if not, it is still an effective strategy. (Exeter does not get 82% of its applicants into Harvard).
And from that post about Exeter, we have confirmation that AO/staff interviews are still being done - the purpose of this thread.
The rest is now speculation as to how often relative to the past.
But in the not-distant last (less than 5-10 years), when they were done, they were exceedingly indicative of an acceptance.
I think it makes sense for any legacy applicant parent to call and arrange a staff interview, or try to get one’s school’s GC to confirm that they have tried to do so.
Of course, there are legacies, and there are legacies. As I posted on another thread, although “only” 21% of Harvard alumni end up in the top 1%, 46% of the legacies who matriculate to Harvard are from the top 1%. While, according to the Chetty article, 35% of Harvard alumni end up in the bottom 80% by income, only around 12% of the legacies who matriculate to Harvard are from this SES.
Of course those are their SES at 34. When their kids are attending college, they likely have more money. Still, according to the Chetty article, 9.2% of Harvard graduates are in the bottom 20% at the age of 34, but only 1.4% of matriculating legacies on in the bottom 60%. So even accounting for increases in income between the age of 34 and when their kids attend college it demonstrates that poor legacies do not have much of an advantage.
Unlike people from low SES families in general, poor Harvard alumni are familiar with college application process, know that they can afford Harvard, think of Harvard as a possibility, etc. So there is no reason to believe that poor legacies apply to Harvard at lower rates than wealthy legacies.
So it seems that legacies in the bottom 60% by income get no boost from being a legacy, or maybe a tiny one. It is also likely that, if we looked only at the wealthy legacies, we would see a far greater legacy boost than what was reported in the Harvard lawsuit.
Moreover, I am willing to bet that Harvard will continue to reduce the legacy boost, but only from applicants in the bottom 80%, or even bottom 90%. However, legacy boost will still be provided to those alumni in the top 5%, and especially to those in the top 1%.
I would think that legacies in the top income brackets, tend to have many activity options, maybe the expensive college consultants providing the right research opportunities, packaging, helping with essays. They make sure their kid is doing varsity rowing, they can have their kids building a well in Bolivia, working on irrigation systems during a 3 weeks summer stint. It may be just a matter of donations, but there have been double legacies, donating millions and their kid did not get in. And they were not happy. And this was about 10-12 years ago, during prime legacy admissions. I can understand the stats, but I think the fundamentals may be just a matter of being able to provide the better packaging.
True, but there is also the fact that, since the 1970s, the number of very wealthy has increased, while the advantages that a Harvard degree provides in placing a person in that bracket. That means that there are many more very wealthy people, and a larger proportion of them are not Harvard alumni. There are the tech billionaires, all of those CEOs who did not attend Harvard, all of those new international billionaires who want their kid to attend Harvard, the wealthy from across the country, not just the East Coast.
Competition for a place in the “bucket” of “wealthy donors” has also increased substantially. Moreover, the advantage of being a “return costumer” may not outweigh that of a new costumer who is willing to spend more money
Prime legacy admissions was in the 1960s, as admissions started to become more competitive to “elite” colleges, and colleges, rather than increase diversity, wanted to maintain the exact same population, the people who they thought of as “Harvard Men” - Wealthy, White, Private Prep School, Christian Men (and then some women). Legacy preference helped this quite a bit.
This is an interesting theory, but practically speaking, thinking of wealth vs. Harvard lineage has little to do with the social trend numbers you present.
The “wealthy donor” advantage only becomes manifest when the development office has placed a candidate on its ranked list of applicants that it provides for suggested incorporation into the Dean’s Interest list. The overlap of this list with the Harvard lineage candidate pool waxes and wanes. The overlap is small enough that it isn’t really predictable from larger trends that you quantify. If you are wealthy, and your child is not on this list, your “SES” means no more than all the soft advantages that people of means have…but, you also do not have the admissions advantage that being from a disadvantaged background (eg, first generation) tangibly gives.
The engagement Harvard seeks to cultivate from its alumni is not about only about money, but a desire to have an energized and loyal constituency that helps to keep the Harvard “brand” strong and desired by a broad aspirational population.
This seems to have gone off my original topic. Maybe a moderator could close it down?
In the meantime, I’d suggest that @MWolf has it backwards. The data from the SFFA lawsuit and then some of the follow-up, published work allows you to estimate boundary conditions for the general numbers, overlap, and admit rates between the legacy group and the Dean’s List/Director List. As it turns out, there’s a sizable overlap, maybe 25-35% of the legacies are on the Director’s list, and these ‘overlap’ people have a markedly higher admit rate than those legacy that aren’t on the Director’s list. The thing is, the typical giving pyramid suggests that getting into the top 30% of givers is not millions, but maybe $5,000-$10,000 over a five year period, and yet the average advantage to the average member of this top 30% is large relative to those who give less or nothing.
So the lesson isn’t really about increasing concentrations of wealth, or “Those who give millions get the advantage” but really, “Those who give nothing get little advantage.” It’s a very different choosing process, not even mentioning that people can volunteer in substantive ways, too…
In 2018, around 240 Legacies matriculated to Harvard.
Admission rates for legacies during that period was 33%, so that means that around 730 legacies applied to Harvard.
The top 1% by income, those whose families make more than $500,000, make up 46.4% of the matriculating legacies in class of 2022, or 111 students. About 21% of Harvard alumni are in the top 1% according to the Chetty data, so 153 applicants. That is an acceptance rate of 72%.
Since their admission rates are those of the Deans admission List, I would say that the overlap between to 1% legacies and the Dean’s List is pretty high.
That was not my point. My point is that Harvard has its “buckets”. Very Wealthy Families Who Will Donate Millions is one of them. Like any other “bucket”, there are only so many places. Until now, they tried to fill as many of those places with alumni, since maintaining “return costumers” is a good business policy, and that particular bucket is all about increasing Harvard’s endowment.
However, since there is a very large increase in the number of Very Wealthy Families, and many of these are even wealthier than most of the very wealthy alumni, some alumni need to be removed from the bucket to make room for non-alumni. An alumnus/a whose family makes $1,500,000 a year and who has $50,000,000 in accumulated wealth is a good investment. However, when there are a number of non-alumni families which make $6,000,000 a year, and have 300,000,000 in accumulated wealth, and who really want to get their kid into Harvard, who do you think they’ll choose? When it was a few dozen, it didn’t matter. However, there are 700 billionaires now in the USA (in 1983 there were 15), and so competition for the places in the Very Wealthy Family admissions “bucket” is likely increasing.
This is, as I have repeatedly written, just one bucket. As @tamenund wrote, Harvard is all about its “Brand”, which also requires other “buckets”.
Legacy boost was also about maintaining homogeneity. When the ruling class of the USA was almost entirely homogeneous, that homogeneity helped Harvard maintain its network among the powerful. Patrician families sent their kids to the right elementary schools, the right prep schools, and on to an Ivy, and from there to a high position in the government, business, diplomatic corps, etc. Legacy boost made sure that these families, like the Roosevelts, were sure to keep on sending their kids to Harvard
However, homogeneity is no longer desired, and many of the older ruling families have been shunted aside. This which weakens the advantages that legacy admission have for Harvard, and, with the number of applicants increasing, including very wealthy applicants, the advantages of return costumers drops. There is new money, new families in positions of power, new ways that a alumnus/a can change the world without being from a small select cadre of White Christian families from the NE.
From the 1960s or so, legacy stopped being as helpful in maintaining the network of people in power and money, changing attitudes and changing demographics put pressure on them to accept people from outside the ruling class, and while the increase in the number of very wealthy people increased the benefits of expanding the “costumer base”, the changing advertised mission meant that Harvard could not simply accept even more wealthy people.
Unlike in the 1960s, having a student body made up mostly of White, Wealthy, Christian men from the right families from the NE is not good for the Harvard brand, so that limits the number of legacies that they can accept.
Whether Harvard will maintain, expand, or reduce legacy advantages really depends on how the demographics of wealth and power change in the coming years. If the same set of families continue to consolidate wealth and power, legacy advantages will return with a vengeance. If the ruling class is more fluid and diverse, legacy advantages will be reduced.
That is my opinion, and I don’t want to continue to drag this discussion on, since it is taking over the thread.
If @BrownshoeLawson or @tamenund would like to add something, I will let them have the last word. I don’t agree with some of what they are saying, but they both make good points.
You might very well be right. I think, however, you could be substantially underestimating the denominator, and therefore overestimating the admit rate, of what you categorize as “1%” applicants. This is because the financial characteristics of the sub-population of Harvard lineage families with college-aged children likely skews much higher than individual Harvard alumni as a total population (I assume the latter description composes the Chetty data?) for reasons related to average age, position in career paths, and because in the US such families are likely dual income/dual wealth.
I’m trying to remember the source, which I think is Harvard magazine, but dual income is the norm for Harvard families with children. It has been true for a hundred years or more that Harvard alumni have substantially fewer children than average, so the ones that do are a subset with different demographics than the alumni population as a whole.
No one could argue with your point that there’s been a global swelling of the ranks of the rich. I don’t believe, however, that being wealthy by itself is enough to land a younger member of one’s family on the Dean’s Interest list unless that donor target has a history or demonstrated interest in being generous to Harvard. I am sure the development office is alert to potential cultivation, but direct tit-for-tat is seldom worth the bad press for Harvard if news of it gets out. As much as the Harvard administration loves money, it fears bad press even more.
Neither am I sure that everyone finds Harvard that desirable (hard to believe, I know, on this board, full of aspirational students and parents who often have a deep belief that admission to a specific college or selectivity of college is essential.)
But all this is entertaining speculation. Who knows what actually corresponds closest to reality.
Crediting this for my Ivy. There are students with 34 ACTs, 4.0s, decent ECs etc. who check all the boxes and still don’t get in even after seven figure donation track records. There is no recourse after such a rejection except to stop donating.
Crediting this. It is not a significant boost at any Ivy whose numbers I have seen unless it is tied to a large donation track record. The legacy itself does not matter much then, they could have been foreign nationals non-alumni giving two million with the same effect. When you go outside the T20 legacy starts to matter a bit more, but not much until you go a ways down.
I m not sure the bolded part is correct. While 21% of Harvard alumni are in the top 1%, that doesn’t mean that they represented 21% of applications to Harvard. It is likely that the top 1% are over-represented among applicants because they can afford to pay Harvard’s tuition, whereas those in the “donut hole” cannot.
It doesn’t change your conclusion much, which is that the wealthy legacy applicants are far more likely to get admission than unhooked applicants from upper-middle class backgrounds. But I don’t think it will be 72%.
I’ve enjoyed this thread, thanks for the discussion.
I believe @MWolf has made some very good points, though I might suggest that the forces he describes (e.g. increasing concentrations of ever higher amounts of wealth) might not inevitably lead to non-alumni super-wealthy crowding out somewhat less wealth legacy kids. There are at least two reasons for this: a) the endowment is likely now passing a size where returns exceed new money raising, so the university can make decisions increasingly independently and less based on prospects for new, large donations, and b) nothing makes a brand/geffen good like Harvard more attractive than putting velvet ropes around it too (e.g. having it known that you reject uber wealthy potential donors in favor of their less-wealthy legacy kids will only make the uber rich more desirous of getting in…
I’d like to spend some time thinking more generally about the implications of legacy policies and wealth. It seems to me that Harvard could have a legacy policy that could be completely neutral to a separate choice of choosing an income/wealth stratification for incoming classes. For example, if the legacy policy were expressed as follows: whenever we see two comparable kids that a) we want, b) that are from the same wealth/socio-economic status, and c) whose parents went to one of the 5-10 schools whose graduates look like our economically, then always admit the Harvard legacy and reject the other kid. Recognizing that several other schools (Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, etc.) have also had a long history of producing a similar proportion of wealthy, talented children that apply, I’d think the math would support much higher acceptance rates for legacy admission while having zero impact on income stratification. If all of these schools had the same policy, then they all would simultaneously have high legacy admission rates and the policy would have no impact on the income stratification of their classes. In other words, the legacy policy would have no impact whatsoever on the wealth distribution of the class.
