We can argue about how strong or weak the legacy preference is at any given school. But the the assertion that you made that “Legacies were far more likely to apply RD than REA” just doesn’t ring true. My point is that they apply in RD to the school where they’re hooked likely because they failed to get into another school via ED.
The majority of those admits who are in the RD pool because they didn’t get into their first choice school so it doesn’t really make sense that they are, as a group, is more qualified than the unhooked EA admits.
In the latter years of the lawsuit sample, ~8x more students applied RD than REA. So in order for a larger number of legacies to be in the REA group, you’d need the REA applicant pool have a 8x larger % legacies in the REA pool than the RD pool. This didn’t happen. It may not ring true to you, but that’s what occurred in the sample.
I agree that a good portion of legacies applied to a different college in the early round, but I disagree about the reason. I very much doubt that a large portion of legacies skipped the Harvard legacy hook because they felt they’d get and needed a more powerful ED boost at a different college. I expect a far more common scenario is that Harvard wasn’t their first choice, and they instead applied to their first choice during the early round. Plenty of kids whose parents attended Harvard favor other colleges. I’m sure some applied to their first choice in early round, were rejected, then applied to Harvard in RD… perhaps after strong encouragement from their parent who attended. I interview kids for Stanford. One of the questions I regularly ask about is why they applied and/or want to attend. A significant portion of answers have been something in the form of they promised a relative (often one who attended Stanford) that they’d apply + something to the effect of Stanford generically being a good college.
Another relevant scenario is kids who do not apply to any colleges during the early round and only apply to colleges RD. There are numerous reasons why this may occur. Wanting to compare FA offers has been mentioned, and there are indeed legacies who claim FA. But I expect a more common scenario among legacies is simply the student procrastinating. Plenty of great students wait to the last minute to submit things, including college applications. A large portion of “elite” private websites say they don’t favor the early applicant over RD, and I’m sure many students believe it. For example, Harvard’s website says,
“For any individual student, the final decision will be the same whether the student applies Restrictive Early Action or Regular Decision.”
Why apply months before the deadline, if you don’t have to and believe it won’t have much impact on chance of admission? There are also many legacies who attend regular public HSs that don’t have GCs, peers, or others in community placing a lot of pressure to apply to colleges during early round. There are also some who need extra time to get a certain aspect of their application in best form, which may include doing something that they believe boosts chances. There are many other reasons.
If Harvard or other college applies a boost in admission chances for applying as REA/SCEA/ED, then the logical conclusion is that the RD admit who does not get that boost needs to be stronger on average. And the lawsuit did find that that applying unhooked REA offered a significant advantage, which conflicts with the quoted website commends above.
Unhooked applicants with identical application reader ratings and other controls were ~4x more likely to be accepted if they applied REA than if they applied RD. On average , the RD admit needed higher admission reader ratings to be admitted. Some specific numbers are below. The specific value varies depending on controls, but all were easily statistically significant at a 99.9% level. I chose a midrange of different reasonable control options, so specific numbers may differ slightly from other references. Applying REA was associated with a similar boost to what the guidelines describe as increasing test scores from <1400 to >1500 + improved grades + recognition in noteworthy academic competitions.
With same reader ratings of applicant and other controls a Harvard applicant who is…
Double Legacy --~16x more likely to admitted on average
Legacy – ~9x more likely to be admitted on average
Academic Rating* Increases from 3 to 2 – ~5x more likely to be admitted on average
Applies REA – ~4x more likely to be admitted on average
*Academic Rating Guidelines 2. Magna potential. Excellent student with top grades and,
a. SAT and SAT Subject tests: mid 700 scores and up
b. 33+ ACT
c. Possible local, regional or national level recognition in academic competitions 3. Solid academic potential; Cum laude potential: Very good student with excellent
grades and
a. SAT and SAT Subject tests: mid-600 through low-700 scores
b. 29 to 32 ACT
Applying RD also doesn’t necessarily mean that Harvard isn’t the student’s first choice. For example, in the Harvard freshman survey, 59% of RD admits said Harvard was their first choice. I’m some were lying, but there were also some who did not apply anywhere RD or for various less common reasons did not apply to a first choice college during early round, like my personal example, where I applied to my 5th choice during early round and 1st choice in RD. Given how many tens of thousands of well qualified applicants Harvard gets in RD, I’m sure they have no problem finding “super qualified” kids among that large sample.
RD applicant pool is alway much larger than the SCEA/REA applicant pool, so it’s not surprising that there’s more of everything in the RD pool (majority of them in the RD pool were deferred or rejected from other schools in the early round). This doesn’t mean, however, that “Legacies were far more likely to apply RD than REA”. All it means is that either they weren’t admitted early elsewhere (a much smaller portion of them may have been admitted EA elsewhere but still want to shop around for more options at decision time).
First of all, we aren’t talking about ED admits. For ED admits, I agree that they’re, on average, tend to weaker than RD admits. For EA admits, it’s a different story. Unhooked EA admits tend to be stronger than their RD counterparts.
No doubt here. No one can disagree. We did not apply to ED anywhere, not because we didn’t have a first choice, but because we could never take the risk of locking in to an unknown rate. Now, if the full price (say 80K to top schools) was not an issue for us, we could of course go ED.
This entire college system is sad and disappointing, and continues to evolve further in the favor of the wealthy, deserving or not. In our town, we saw a number of wealthy (at least wealthier than we are) families go ED, and celebrate their acceptances super early. Was their price 30k net? 60k? 80K? who knows? They didn’t care, obviously.
I’m happy for the child, but it’s sad to know that we weren’t “wealthy enough” to participate in ED.
As for my family, we are in the middle somewhere, with some money to spend for college, but not enough to just pick a first choice college. We’re currently down to two choices, one school which is 10K per year more than the other, and for us, 40K over 4 years does make a difference, as our child would have to take on that difference in additional loans. Having said that, the more expensive school is a bit higher ranked, with a higher “ROI” and starting salary claim. Hard to know if that will actually return on the investment, but my point is, for many families, this 10K per year difference is large. For ED families, it’s more likely to be a gnat in the wind, a small hurdle.
I was clearly referring to the relative numbers of legacies in the admission REA and RD admission pools at Harvard, which was relevant to the original comment about the relative number of hooked students in the REA and RD pools.
The key is whether the group receives an admissions boost. If a group receives an admission boost, then on average the admits who do not receive that boost at a highly selective college tend to be stronger than the ones who do. For example, if a highly selective college gives a noteworthy boost to legacy applicants, I expect unhooked non-legacies admits who do not receive that boost on average to be stronger. However, if a highly selective college does not favor legacies, then I do not expect non-legacies admits to be stronger on average.
Like legacy, the degree of REA/SCEA/ED boost also varies by college. During the period of the lawsuit sample, Harvard appeared to give a boost for applying REA. The statistical significance of that REA boost was actually much higher than occurred for most traditional hook groups because the REA boost was more consistently applied to a more consistent degree, with a small standard error. However, not all colleges have the same REA/SCEA/ED policy as Harvard. For example, based on admission decisions, I believe that Stanford offers a far smaller boost for applying REA than Harvard, perhaps insignificant. It’s a matter of speculation. It’s a similar idea for ED. Different colleges have different degrees of ED boost for unhooked applicants – sometimes highly significant, sometimes insignificant, sometimes only significant for certain subgroups of unhooked, etc.
No one is disputing that ED admits usually average higher income than RD admits. However, the difference in income distribution between early and regular admits at “elite” privates is not as stark as some have claimed in this thread. For example, 4 of 8 Ivies posted information related to the income distribution of early and regular admits in their admission decisions announcement for the class of 2025. A summary of those 4 is below.
3 of the 4 available Ivies seemed to have a higher income distribution among early admits than regular, which is expected. The 4th was Dartmouth ED, which appeared to have slightly more low income kids in ED than RD for reasons that are not obvious to me. Nearly 60% of ED admits applied for FA at both Ivies that reported this figure. The overwhelming majority of those ED admits who applied for FA received FA, and the grant was often quite high. For example, the average grant was $62k among ED FA recipients at Dartmouth. Sure the 59% of ED admits who applied for FA is not as high as the 69% of RD admits who applied for FA at Brown. Nevertheless most ED admits applied for FA, and a large portion of those received >$60k in aid. Many ED admits clearly care about FA, even if they are not shopping around beyond NPC estimates.
Ivy Class of 2025 Admits: Early vs Regular Income Metrics
Brown ED Admits – 59% applied for FA
Brown RD Admits – 69% applied for FA
Dartmouth ED Admits – 18% Pell, 58% applied for FA, Average FA grant = $62k
Dartmouth RD Admits – 17% Pell, ~50% qualify for FA, Average FA grant = $61k
Penn ED Admits – 13% Pell
Penn RD Admits – 18% Pell
Harvard REA Admits – 15% Pell, 22% HFAI (less than ~median income, near $0 cost to parents)
Harvard RD Admits – 22% Pell*, 29% HFAI* (less than ~median income,~$0 cost to parents)
*Converting from full class to RD
I think - and this is theory, that the reason is that it’s the middle class and upper middle that get hurt the most with ED.
If I’m making peanuts and I know my EFC is tiny, heck yeah I’m applying to an elite school ED, knowing I am likely to get an amazing financial aid package and offer. For example, UVA and UNC make the cost of attendance for the low income families a few thousand. So they can get an A+ college and a small loan and they are in
If you’re middle class and struggling to stay afloat, and you ED you may end up with a 30k per year net cost, which is 120k. Or worse, you may end up with a much higher number
The process should be kids can get a free “quote” or at least an estimate before applying ED. Of course, the colleges use ED as a weapon to milk more money from people, masquerading as a game of “allegiance”. The earthy know that they can go ED and essentially buy a few extra acceptance percentage points.
Probably not, because if you’re used to being poor, you’re also very, very conservative with financial decisions – you can’t afford to gamble. So you’re not going to go near the risk of being told you’re locked into an out-of-pocket that’s a major chunk of your annual income. You’d need all kinds of guarantees from a school’s FA officers that this would never happen, and then you’d still be nervous, because rich people’s idea of “affordable” is often a disaster if you’re poor – you’d likely be all “you understand, we can’t afford, it’d be better if you rejected our kid,” etc.
Well, 15k poor people apply for Questbridge. Over 1000 of them are matched, and another 2000 get accepted RD with generous aid, so apparently some have figured out how to work the admission process.
That is what net price calculators are supposed to do, although they are not binding quotes.
However, students in schools in low income areas may not hear much college talk from peers, counselors, parents, teachers early enough to be ready to apply ED (or EA) to colleges that require lots of application items (essays, recommendations, CSS Profile, etc.) when counselors may be just telling students about how to go to the local community college or minimally selective local public university if they go to college at all.
Obviously, some low income students figure this out, although many if them may be in schools that are not disadvantaged environments overall (e.g. they may live in the poor corner of a middle or upper class school zone, or have gotten into a magnet school, or have gotten into an academically oriented private school on financial aid), so they may have heard the college talk earlier and more.
Yes. Questbridge and other such programs are different, if you’re poor, from going on a wing and a prayer and hoping that ED means you’re not courting disaster. Those are heavily-sherpaed programs, and parents have built a trust relationship with the Questbridge people over the course of years. (Their process isn’t normal ED, anyhow; they have a match process.)
It’s also the Questbridge people guiding the process, not the parents, usually. The parents don’t usually go and find QB independently, either: kids are funneled in by guidance counselors at school with whom the QB people have relationships.
Very true, and you see this across class lines because this behavior actually originated among parents in the American upper-middle class. And by now, it’s filtered down to all SES levels.
That’s sort of a fair point but only sort of because the US also spends absolutely insane amounts of money on boondoggle defense projects that really do nothing but line the pockets of defense contractors:
We engage in some of the most costly and inefficient welfare projects because it falls under the heading of “Defense”.
By way of comparison, while that failed fighter jet costs $1.7T, we could make all public college free for everyone in this country for $100B/year. 1.7T also could pay for a decent number of infrastructure projects.
This really depends on the university. At UIUC, even the in-state kids often save money by studying abroad (granted, UIUC’s tuition even for in-state is high). Most study-abroad programs I saw on the UIUC site were cheaper than in-state costs.
At GaTech, most of their study-abroad programs come in at or around in-state costs (and you can still use the Zell Miller/HOPE scholarship on them).
Well – I see differences in how these things work, lower-middle-class native and rich native.
If you’re talking about a poorish community, and there just isn’t much around, dignity becomes important. A lot of effort goes into telling kids that they’re fine people. Humiliate the kid publicly, and it’ll be remembered forever. Sports as well…they used to stay local, but well-off parents drove the interstate-playoff thing, so you get families that can’t afford it driving hundreds of miles and staying in a motel so the kid doesn’t miss out. Missing out, being excluded, these are deemed unbearably painful things. Nobody wants to tell a kid “you’re too poor for vaunted childhood experience.” I did it all the time, but I’m not from around here and I wasn’t going to let my daughter believe that I had time or money to schlep her hither and yon for children’s games. I also wasn’t about to risk our lives driving through horrible weather for these things, or buy a store’s full of presents I couldn’t afford. If the other parents wanted to believe I was traumatizing my kid, that was their business, though I don’t know how cavalier I’d have been about that if I hadn’t been white and bedecked with degrees.
And yeah, the well-off schools and parents are infinitely savvier about how to use and apply these things. As for how they educate the kids…sometimes they don’t. The kids learn to fake it, which means they show up at college already committed to living as frauds. It’s not just for Hollywood types. Sometimes they just get very good coaching from actually bright people without money. A lot of those people exist and they staff the testing and test-prep businesses. Sometimes the kids are lucky, or unfortunate enough to have very sharp parents who coach them intensively from early childhood on. An MIT friend has spent years homeschooling his kids in math, and by middle school they were ahead of most college grads I’ll ever meet. Dude could afford it, though.
The emphases hurt non-rich natives because they’re told to play but don’t have the money to put up. They’re told it doesn’t matter, the kids are told it doesn’t matter, anyone can be a winner. It’s lies. It’s more than a little cruel, but it helps a lot of people feel democratic.
Poor immigrant families don’t have time for this nonsense.
It depends on how you define “high” but in any case, the bigger problem is societal: The American working class has been set back economically (the China shock was real), and all sorts of societal issues cascade from that.
Oh, cripes. Someone made a big deal at me about this once but didn’t have details; eventually I went and dug out this trope. We’re not all over Europe out of the goodness of our hearts or their refusal to protect themselves, and there’s a big European contingent who didn’t want us there at all. It was a feature of being American in Europe in the 80s and 90s, getting yelled at for planting our military all over the place there.
Offhand, would you prefer that Germany spin up a very large standing army? Read up on AfD before you answer.
Yep, instead of direct racial discrimination, many elite privates (Caltech is a notable exception) seem to practice indirect discrimination.
In this case, history is rhyming so much it’s essentially repeating. The Ivies first tried to keep out Jews by starting to use the SAT. When that backfired on them, they recruited (invariably WASP) kids from the rural hinterlands (in the name of diversity). Then they just flat-out instituted a Jewish quota.
This is an argument for funding magnet programs. Lower-SES kids do get exposed to possibilities there.
Learn to code and get yourself in to high tech. I’m not going to say there’s no discrimination but from what I see, there seems to be less there than in other industries where the leadership is dominated by men (that is, most of them). It’s still much more of a meritocracy than many industries and the pay is good too.
Get in to an elite grad school or healthcare. That does mean loans but the pay in healthcare does seem good enough and stable enough for them. For med school and elite law schools, high stats can get you places (likely with a scholarship at a T14 if stats are high enough). Is this dancing backwards like Ginger and in heels, though?
I appreciate the gratitude, but I’m also a government employee. State U, yo.