The legacy admit rate at HYP is about 30%. Looked at one way, that’s a huge advantage – 4X the overall admit rate. Looked at another way, it’s not easy at all – 70% of legacies still get rejected. Both are true.
As the overall standards/admit rates become more competitive, the standards/admit rates for legacies and other hooks also get tougher too.
It is hard to believe that legacy alone is meaningful at Princeton and Harvard. I know at least a dozen legacies (in a few cases, multi-generational) who were rejected in the last few cycles at HYP. One is at Dartmouth- no legacy, just his own merits. One is at JHU- own merits. Chicago, Northwestern, etc.
Were they the absolute special snowflakes (unhooked) that get into HYP from my neck of the woods? No. But solid enough stats and everything else to make a JHU adcom decide to roll the dice, strong enough to get Dartmouth to pay attention.
Tigger- perhaps what you see as a double legacy is in reality a development admit? And not the $2500 to the class fund kind of donor- the named chair in neuroscience kind of admit???
There are thousands of legacies who get rejected at Harvard and Princeton every year and yet somehow you know the dumb, lazy ones who DID get admitted? Methinks something else besides Legacy is at work here. Legacy absent a mom who runs a hedge fund and a dad who is CTO at a tech start up is going to be a slog if the kid’s stats and work ethic are truly bottom of the barrel-- I don’t believe the dumb lazy ones get in like that anymore.
Consider this a call for (serious and real, not merely anecdotal) references to back up this claim.
@blossom - Read my #54 post.
@TiggerDad One small point, I’m not sure how the legacy pool is getting much bigger. It’s not like “elite” college parents are procreating at an increasing rate, is it? I think if anything it’s probably opposite (although second marriages might keep it flat.)
As far as the other arguments about “hooks.” @dfbdfb
The reality is that for most “elite” schools, the “good enough to get in and survive if not thrive” applicant pool is much, much bigger than seats by the pool. “Hooks” are most often tie-breakers. Sure, some drag students with stats in the bottom 25% (by definition 25% of students have to be there!), but those 25-75 numbers tend to be so fudgable (and fudged) that it doesn’t tell you that much.
Holistic is Holistic: either it is your admissions strategy or it isn’t. Which means, if you are really “holistic” standardized testing does not have be “impressive” for every student. Sports dedication and mastery, or artistic accomplishment can be “impressive records.” Thriving while taking a public bus 2 hrs each way to school can be “impressive.”
There is a circuitious logic loop that says “yeah, admissions are holistic, but the 25+ #s for SAT, ACT, GPA are the ‘real’ stats and the rest is not ‘real.’” Well, then, you ain’t really holistic…
If schools published their 25-75 for, I dunno, reaching All-conference in a sport, or getting a piece of artistic expression taken seriously outside of HS peers, or doing-your-parents-taxes-and-all-other-household-paper-work-for-them-cause-they-don’t-read-English-well-since-you-were-15 or zapping-malicious-software-for-lulz-since-you-were-13-but-taking-SAT-on-2-hrs-sleep-cause-it’s-just-a-stupid-test we might have a different idea of what “impressive” was…
But we like #s, so we’ll keep getting and comparing #s, even with tons of other #s that tell us that, after a point, those other #s don’t tell us anything…
@dfbdfb - Sorry, no hard references to offer other than the aforementioned book, The Price of Admission, but then do you know of any unhooked 25th percentile at HYPS either by references or even anecdotal, those unhooked kids with 1400 SAT and 3.5 GPA and 650 SATIIs? I’ve never met one.
@TiggerDad now you’re just making stuff up. <4% of Harvard admits in 2014 had <3.5 GPA. Those 4% had to be hooked as HECK (I’m looking at you Jared Kushner!) Common data doesn’t combine SAT, but 22% had <700 Math, 18% <700 Reading.
So I’m guess the % of kids admitted to Harvard with both <3.5 AND <1400 SAT is gonna be, maybe 1-2% out of 2000+/- admits… You do the math. 20-40 kids at most. Maybe that’s why you never met one…
Let’s see… could be an Obama, maybe… or a Kushner… or…
(Stanford 2017 had 1.93% of admitted class with GPA <3.5. 26% with Reading <700, 22% math <700 so again, maybe 1% had <3.5 AND <1400… )
@CaliDad2020 - “One small point, I’m not sure how the legacy pool is getting much bigger. It’s not like “elite” college parents are procreating at an increasing rate, is it? I think if anything it’s probably opposite (although second marriages might keep it flat.)”
When you look at the history of HYP, (The Chosen by Jerome Karabel is a great read on this topic), the legacy system started as white protestant male tradition. Later, women, Jews and internationals were included; even later, URM’s, including the new Jews, i.e., Asian-Americans have started enjoying the legacy system. So, I’d say, the legacy pool has increased and, as someone noted earlier, a greater number of legacies being rejected at elite schools.
Seems pretty reasonable that the bottom 25% by stats would be made up almost entirely of hooked applicants. Since their stats are well below average, they are presumably getting picked for some other reason.
FYI, all hooks don’t work the same way and don’t all have the same strength. The garden variety legacies, for example, would tend to have average or even above average stats. The legacy hook doesn’t really let lower stat kids get in; instead it lets legacy kids with 50-75% stats get picked over other 50-75% kids (of which these schools see zillions of). When playing a game that has many many ties, having a strong tie-breaker is big.
According to the Hurwitz et al studies, the two strongest hooks are recruited athlete and African American. Latino and legacy are a ways back in terms of strength. So you can make some reasonably assumptions about where those hooks would be populated in the quartiles. And also where the unhooked would populate.
Preference trends matter more than the absolute number of kids in an age cohort. This generation is into big metro areas. NYU, GW, BU, Vanderbilt, UMiami, Northeastern, Drexel, etc. are the beneficiaries of this trend. Grinnell, Kenyon, and the like lose out.
@CaliDad2020 - “There is circuitious logic loop that says “yeah, admissions are holistic, but the 25+ #s for SAT, ACT, GPA are the ‘real’ stats and the rest is not ‘real.’” Well, then, you ain’t really holistic…”
As far as these elite schools are concerned, hooks are a part of their “holistic” admissions practice. In fact, as far as I can tell, 60-70% essential part of it.
@TiggerDad that make no sense. To take advantage of being a legacy you have to, you know, be applying to a college in a given year.
So for legacy pool to have increased, more legacies have to have more kids. Otherwise, it’s just old people in school T-shirts.
So, what’s the prime birth years for 2018 applicants? Kids born 98-99. How many “elite” school grads had kids in 98-99? (How many killed one of their legacies by marrying another “elitc” school grad?). And has that “legacy” birth rate gone up? 'Cause if you didn’t have a kid in 98-99 or thereabout, it doesn’t matter if you got 7 degrees from Harvard, you don’t cost anyone a spot.
That’s all that matters. If you don’t have a kid in the right year, it doesn’t matter what your religion or graduation date or anything else is (this is a bit less true for schools that consider 2nd gen and aunt - uncle legacies, but most key in on parents for UG admissions.)
again @northwesty that is true if you think “holistic” is just a buzz word. But if “holistic” is really a true admissions strategy, looking at 25-75 as if those are “who belong” is a flawed premise.
Doubtful that either is stronger than relation to a huge donor or other personality (major politician or celebrity, for example).
I’m talking about the logic loop that says “real” impressive applicants have 25%+ test/GPA stats and “others” ie. <25% GPA/SAT (by the way, there’s a flaw assuming they are together. Some SAT for instance) are not “real” impressive applicants and therefore must be “hooked”.
“REAL” holistic admissions says: Looking at your WHOLE application I see you are a good fit for this institution.
I’m just calling out using the 25%+ metric for a school that claims it is “post-stat” or holistic. 25% SAT should not be a defining metric for holistic admissions. We just like to make it that because it’s easy to “hold.”
@CaliDad2020 - Yeah, those 3.5% and 1400 SAT were top of my head just to make a point. The whole point was that the bottom 25th percentile is largely made up of hooked.
@CaliDad2020 - What you think by the term “holistic” maybe quite different from what the Adcoms think. From the Adcoms point of view, all 100% admitted are holistic admits, including hooks of all kinds. As far as the issue of legacy goes, let’s suffice to say that it’s been “increasingly diversified.”
@tiggerdad But you’re using BS stats. No one (or very, very few students) with those “low” stats get in.
And there is quite a bit of evidence that the difference in “college success” between 1450 and 1600 SAT is fairly non-existent.
This really goes to @dfbdfb point about URM/1st gen admits, but takes it a bit further.
If “holistic” admissions is really “a thing” not just a buzzword, we should stop quoting 25+ stats as if those are “legit” “impressive stats” and therefore the 25% of any given class that doesn’t hit those halmarks (and again, the # of kids with combined <25% GPA AND <25% SAT is <25%) is somehow “illegitimate” save for “they had hooks.”
If we could do a quantifiable metric of, I dunno, creative problem solving, the bottom 25% would probably be a whole different grouping of the admissions class. And that 25% would have a different proportion of hooks.
The issue I’m trying to point out is as long as we suggest that “bottom 25%” students are “less impressive” and therefore need to be hooked, then we aren’t talking about holistic admissions. We’re talking about stat-based admissions.
But do the lowest 25% need to be hooked if they “cleared the bar” in the first place? Only if you’re creating a composite “score” for each candidate and something needs to make up for test scores. And that isn’t how holistic works. If the bar is set at 725 for each section of the SAT and selections are made only from the pool that has those scores or lower, there will still be a bottom 25%. This makes it all seem a bit more scientific than it really is.
And remember that low scores and low grades rarely come in the same package at these schools. The low English score may be associated with the foreign born math genius, not necessarily the child of the big donor.
@TiggerDad increased diversity, though, is not an increase in raw numbers. (This actually piqued my interest, I’m trying to find out the demo of legacy applicants and if it has changed over the years, but haven’t found any good articles/studies/stats yet… if anyone know of any let me know.)
Again, though: there is much more evidence high school grades are indicative of college success than small differences in SAT numbers (which makes sense since on any given day, the same student can have 50, 75 or even 100 pt difference in cummulative scores) so using 25%+ SAT/ACT scores as indicators or “real” “impressive” admits is a canard, esp for a school that claims holistic admission.
By definition, ALL admits should be impressive. Some by virtue of test scores, other by virtue of different skills perhaps. Perhaps “hooks” get a disproportionate number of “other” skills, (dunno if that’s true) but it is the idea that less applicants are “less impressive” because their standardized test scores are less high that puts us in a closed logic loop that will always define “applicants with less high standardized test scores” as “less impressive” when that is is not what “holistic” admissions theory would suggest is the right way to approach it.
Now, increasingly holistic admissions (and more test-optional schools) may also be contributing a bit to the impressions that colleges are. more competitive. If “elite” colleges are taking more innovate dress maker-entrepreneurs who only get 1430 on their SAT at the expence of the “usual suspects” who got a 1580/3.9, then it will seem to those of use used to those kids getting in that college admissions is getting hard. (I dunno to what extent that might be happening by the way.)
But by raw numbers, US college admissions should be about the same or slightly less competitive than 10 years ago, but more compeititive than 12 or more years ago.