Legacy can have a greater impact at some schools than at others. And who is helped by it at Harvard may not be who is helped at Stanford or Yale. My response was solely about Stanford.
Our local public high school has about, on average, 8 students each year enroll at Stanford. Usually 1 maybe 2 don’t have a hook in the 3 categories that I mentioned.
Of course you must have high stats, but legacy is a big bump at our school. A sample of one, In our neighborhood that’s what happens.
The employees are typically PhD’s and/or MD’s working at Stanford. I’m off topic here. Sorry.
Could it be that UChicago just sees the 3.6 to 4.0 range from H-W as “good enough” to check the box, so to speak, and the tie breaker is the essays, recommendations, and other stuff?
And perhaps, this is just an echo of the once celebrated idea of a “pointy” applicant that has now lost favor from the rest of the Ivy+. (A case for a Math genius or an avid writer or promising historian who are awesome at one thing and okay at the rest.)
Also, I agree that H-W seems to be a “feeder/favored” school for UChicago. I am sure that there are dozens of similar schools that are looked upon in the same way by other Ivy+, based on other criteria.
Lastly, if 1 out of the many elite, “top 5” universities give some room to unhooked, probably middle class, pointy, west coast applicants… this is probably not such a bad thing in itself, yes?
Agree. It’s clear that UChicago has chosen not to admit more from the higher GPA category. The same numbers apply there as for the 3.6-3.799. That means they don’t believe that you need a 3.8+ from HW to do well at UChicago.
I suspect it comes down to the essays, recs, fit, etc.
Maybe being “pointy” is a hook at UChicago! I do wonder if they are middle class, however. That would be annual household income somewhere around $69k with a range of $46 - $137k or so. Some of those will be at the prep schools but most will be from families with a household income well above that upper amount. They will know kids who are significantly richer than they are, but they will be fairly well off themselves.
Using the USNWR list, Georgetown falls right after Berkeley and right before Michigan. Here are the acceptance rate for unhooked HW kids with a 4.3 and above gpa, classes 2017-2019, to those three and some of the other comparably ranked schools:
University of Southern California 75.0%
UCB 75.4%
University of California Los Angeles 78.0%
University of California Irvine 79%
University of Virginia 83.3%
University of California San Diego 86.0%
University of Michigan 88.6%
Georgetown University 90.5%
Boston College 100.0%
Bump in admissions? Georgetown is admitting a lot of highly qualified HW students, same as other comparable schools. Seems like one of two things are going on here:
- Either you don’t understand just how qualified these kids are, or
- You over estimate how competitive certain schools (Chicago and Georgetown, for example) for these and similar students.
I think it is interesting to compare how relatively transparent Harvard Westlake is with matriculation statistics to UChicago’s total black out on information on the number of applications and acceptances for the various rounds of admissions. Makes you wonder what Nordorf is trying to hide. Don’t just say it is for competitive advantage since other school’s release that information.
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Unlikely. The difference is most likely explained by the pattern of early applications vs. RD. Applicants outside the upper gpa echelon have a much better chance applying early to Chicago than they would applying early to HYPSM or a number of other schools, so they apply early to Chicago.
Kids in the upper echelon would have a great chance at Chicago if they applied early but their chances aren’t quite so grim at HYSP etc., and they prefer these other schools, so they apply accordingly. If these top students don’t get into their early choice(s), they apply to Chicago RD, but have less of a chance then.
We were also applicants in the last cycle. There was a lot of discussion of the wondrous-by-my-estimation math flow chart and AP scores and some discussion of goals of improving the somewhat meager diversity of the school but absolutely nothing about many of the topics of this thread.
Legacy is definitely a boost for Cate students at Stanford. The unhooked v hooked Stanford admit numbers are similar to HW. There aren’t (m)any recruited athletes coming from Cate at all. The Stanford admits don’t appear to be disproportionately urm. That leaves development, legacy and children of employees. Of those, legacy has to be the biggest share of admits. But that is granular info I do not have.
It surprised me how much legacy does matter at Stanford, but it does seem significant.
I think the Chetty thing defines Ivy+ as the eight Ivy League colleges, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke.
Personally, I think Caltech is the best university in the entire world, even if I did not end up going there, because Sheldon Cooper did. And it should be part of Ivy+ 
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@CateCAParent – Not refuting you but surprised to hear that too since they make a point - a big point-- of telling alums otherwise!! And since they consider the children of grads of all schools, not just UG, as legacy, there are lots and lots of legacy applicants.
Those who are children of big donors, different story… There is a boost there.
I will say, anecdotally, that the legacy kids I know who have gotten in have also gotten into HYP etc. Iow, pretty strong candidates. But I also know a few legacy kids who didn’t get into Stanford and did get into Harvard. But we digress…
Surprises me, too. I don’t doubt that the students who get in are super qualified (whatever that means - it is interesting to me that Stanford has a lower mean SAT score than any elite). And I also don’t doubt that there are plenty of legacies who don’t get in. The number of applicants is just so huge.
Cate is within the geographic zone of Stanford. You would expect more alums per capita nearby. There are wealthy students, not sure how many are donor class. I don’t think there is a cap on the number of students Stanford will take from any school, but wouldn’t be surprised if half of the Cate students apply — almost all of them qualified. The admit rate is low overall among Cate applicants. But I can’t imagine that the percentage of Stanford legacies at Cate is anywhere as high as the percentage of legacies at Cate who get in. Regardless, all of them earned it. It just that a lot of other students earned it, too. My view is sort of a shrug - Stanford’s loss.
But to be clear, I am not privy to that legacy information. I am speculating, beyond the fact I do know - admit rate of unhooked appears much lower than hooked. Oh, and there aren’t recruitable athletes among the admits.
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I suspect this is because unlike the Ivys, Stanford has not specified minimum criteria for athletes. The Ivys have an Academic Index that is a combination of GPA and test scores. The average athletic AI has to be within 1 standard deviation of the total population.
We are exploring why there’s a bump at G-Town. We are not exploring whether the bump is justified or is indicative of a lowering of admissions standards. You might want to jettison that underlying assumption for the time being. Bumps can easily be associated with getting top kids - remember, they are all technically “unhooked,” correct?
Most of your schools listed are CA schools so those really are not comparable due to location, esp. the publics which deal with different admit rates for in-state vs. non. UVA has early decision as does BC (two rounds). Michigan is a fair addition. Recall that “comparable” in this context would be other T-25 privates (for the most part) outside of CA which don’t have ED. There aren’t many, and G-Town’s bump clearly isn’t due to binding early decision (though might be related to self-selection in the early round, as I indicated earlier).
That’s further interesting testimony, @SweetBoy1 .
I assume your reference to “many of the topics of this thread” include our discussion of the CRT-infused curricular changes and other practices intended to combat racism that are emanating from HW and are being complained about by the dissident parents. Whether or not their complaints are justified one could reasonably conclude from the public statements of HW that what the school is undertaking amounts to far more than “wonderful math flow charts” coupled with an improvement of the “meager diversity” of the school.
Some of us are inclined to take words, rhetoric, and ideas more seriously than do others. The rhetoric of CRT is itself deeply satisfying to some, deeply offensive to others. To still others, maybe to most, it is meant to be given lip service to on the venerable principle that it is good to go along to get along. When I was growing up in the fifties high school classrooms were infused with anti-communist teachings: One of my teachers of a World History Course never got us beyond the Fall of Rome because she veered off every day to start in again on Stalin and company. Spirited kids don’t react well to that sort of stuff. Some just naturally take the opposite point of view out of sheer contrariness. That’s one of many unintended consequences that arise when schools start politicizing and propagandizing even the best of causes and with the best of intentions. Your observation makes me wonder whether even HW itself is fully committed to going down the road they seem to have set for themselves. It wouldn’t be the first time that individual members of an institution have wriggled out of its official teaching by being just, well, ordinary dodgy human beings who don’t believe everything they’re told they should believe.
No doubt. But looking at the scatterplots, it is true among Cate students, too. Athletic recruitment doesn’t explain all of it.
And yet the upper echelon has more apps, just fewer admissions. So UChicago is slightly more popular in that GPA range but appears harder to get into. Could be RD vs ED, could be that UChicago is really good at figuring out who among the non-binding admits are most likely to matriculate. We don’t know. But @FStratford’s point is valid: clearly 3.6+ is “good enough” for UChicago, since that is the GPA range they basically admit from.
HW discloses more than do many colleges and universities. And many prep schools.
UChicago’s app. numbers for the rounds are shared if you ask them. We know, for instance, that out of 15k applications in the early round, only about 4,500 or so are ED1. We also know from prior comments that they have a strong preference for ED1 over EA and admit about 2/3’rds of the early applications that way (however, they are likely not bound to any strict percentage). They have indeed disclosed this information - perhaps they don’t publish it so that the casual applicant who confuses admit rates for personal chances doesn’t waste their time applying to UChicago. They are likely matriculating something near 90% of their admits this fall - my guess is that they would prefer not to attract the casual applicant.
That’s odd. You’d think they’d want to share the details of their Anti-Racism initiative, since it includes curricular as well as other modifications to the student experience and seems so important to them.
There were “diversity” presentations but they dealt with things like affinity groups, interview of students of color, faculty and staff of color, the (IMHO totally misleading) %POC. We were in two application cycles and I was never able to get the breakdown within this groups. CRT and the like was not discussed at both middle school or high school entries.
We did not find most LA private schools to be academically competitive with the types of schools in other major cities. There is much more focus on comfort, support, feelings, feeling good, and not that many schools that also have top notch academics.
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