What I have seen is different. @Data10 would know more, but I have heard that legacy status at elite institutions can increase admission probability by 3x or more. It’s not that these legacy admits can’t do the work, it’s that they are not actually the best of the bunch. I figure that the best legacy applicants should be able to get in on their own merits, so have nothing to fear by removing legacy status. So those that object are admitting they wouldn’t get in on their own merits. Personally I know a lot of examples of legacies who wouldn’t have gotten in on their own merits, including 2 kids from the same family with double legacy status at Stanford. Each got completely shut out of the Ivys (not even waitlisted) but got into Stanford. No other hooks, not even geographic tips. Both of their applications were managed by expensive private GCs. One was able to get SAT “into range” through lots of coaching. The other one wasn’t, applied test optional, and still got in. Nice kids, but really nothing special.
I don’t believe all legacies are equal in the eyes of the AO. I feel confident that AOs look at the relationship the parents have had with the college over the years. Have they stayed connected? Are they involved? Do they donate? As mentioned above, legacies often will overlap with development cases.
A classmate’s kid got shut out a few years ago and he was well-qualified - a double legacy. But the parents had no connection whatsoever, weren’t donors, and weren’t super wealthy.
Once again people are confusing “the qualification that I think that colleges should consider” with “the qualifications that colleges actually consider”
The admissions of these “elite” colleges have decided that legacy is a qualification, ergo, if two applicants are identical except for one being a legacy, by definition, the legacy is more “qualified”. After all, why should they consider “leadership” to be a qualification? That does not help get an A on an exam or to submit an excellent essay.
The entire point of “holistic admissions” is not to increase the chances of a student succeeding in college. It is to increase the chances that the alumni of this college will succeed in life after they graduate.
Kids of wealthy alumni are set up to succeed, and will likely do so, no matter what they accomplish while in college. They are from a wealthy family with parents who are highly educated - the two most important factors determining success in life. It is a low stakes bet on the part of the college. Not as low stakes a bet as in admitting an applicant who is already famous. After all, no matter how well she did in her classes, Brown will benefit from the publicity that Emma Watson brought to them.
I’m going to refrain from discussing what “qualifications” colleges actually consider because that will get us way off-topic.
I’m not sure any elite college has ever stated, or will ever state, that legacy is a qualification. If it did, it’d become a laughing stock. I do agree with the rest of your post, though.
For colleges that manage their yield rate, legacy should be a qualification. Schools take into account the applicant’s likelihood of attendance based on geography and school history; legacy is a far more predictive indicator of likely attendance than those factors.
Colleges manage yield in a variety of ways, including using ED/ED2, etc. but I wouldn’t call any of these measures “qualifications”. I don’t believe even these colleges would.
At Penn, the admissions office has a presentation on reunions weekend for alumni who have kids in HS and explicitly state that children of alumni have an advantage in the admission process if they apply ED. The admissions rate of legacies in the ED round was 25%, almost double the RD rate.
No one in the audience was laughing…
Anecdotally, I know many, many Stanford alums with children, often multiple children, that have attended or will attend Stanford.
Legacy is a big boost at Stanford, but all those kids that I know “in the neighborhood” are generally as qualified as any other local applicant to Stanford.
This had been Penn’s policy for years under Furda, not sure if it still is. There was no legacy advantage in RD. I think it’s dying there, though. There is no longer any mention of this on the website and the AO has done away with the sessions for children of alums. Even the alumni magazine has changed the little box they use to have about this.
Elite institutions are selling a product. Nominally that product is education, but in reality the product is social access to the “better classes.” They won’t be able to continue to sell that product if their schools are overrun by the striving children of Asian immigrant pharmacists. No, elite institutions need legacy admissions to create a place where you can major in Art History and later get tapped for a business consulting job by the dad of your buddy from Freshman dorm.
They didn’t say that being legacies makes them more qualified, did they? Legacy preference, by definition, gives these children of alumni “an advantage”. So what’s new?
True, it’s a different discussion.
Be that as it may, and as ridiculous as it may be, if it is a line on section C7 on the CDS, it’s a “qualification”.
That may be true as my experience/information may be dated a few years.
However Penn seems to be adapting to the times with their recent FGLI flap and athletic recruiting challenges.
Even if it is a tie breaker, it still skews the admissions unfairly toward the legacy applicants. With legacy, the tie is 100% broken toward them, while without it, it would be only 50%.
Nobody believes that. It is a simple and easy way to IMPROVE fairness without requiring too much work.
The majority of kids applying to elite schools are qualified. Anyone not looking for advantage is probably not getting in…so what’s new?
They aren’t equally qualified. Some will be less qualified. And some of them will be looking for an advantage. I don’t expect them to complain if legacy preference gives them an advantage so that they can displace more qualified applicants without such preference, perhaps in exchange for money. It sounds to me like age old corruption than anything new.
It seems we are at the point where the issue is the definition of ‘qualified’ and how it’s measured. In a holistic evaluation, an applicant’s qualifications are measured by both objective and subjective measures as interpreted by the app readers, the admissions committee, whomever is making the final admissions decision…whomever is shaping the class.
One reader’s ‘less’ qualified is another’s ‘more’ qualified, but every applicant who is ‘qualified’ can do the college level work. As long as the evaluation of applicants is holistic, the subjective pieces will play a role in the applicants who are getting selected.
I expect if we CCers got to read and evaluate some apps as a group there would often not be consensus on all applicants’ level of qualifications. There are just so many trade offs (a facet of the subjective piece) far beyond hooks, things like intended major, enough musicians for every orchestra and on each instrument, enough actors, etc. etc.
This applicant then would have two hooks…legacy and development.
The legacy parents are usually not big donors. More often they have been active or semi active alumni going back many years before their kids were in high school and even thinking about applying. Activities like interviewing several local applicants each year, organizing and/or attending local alumni events, contributing $1000 or less per year etc. Colleges including very selective ones encourage and appreciate that. So when the well qualified (however defined) child applies the college considers all that. Even then the large majority of legacy applicants don’t get in. Is that “unfair” or “crony capitalism”? Or is it envy on the part of those who use those words?
Some are.
Some of the highly selective schools carefully track alum participation and giving, and even categorize alum by their level of involvement and cash donations. If and when a legacy student applies, the weight of the thumb on the scale is at least partially determined by the parents’ giving/involvement category.
I was agreeing with you. If the donations are big enough, they check 2 boxes: legacy and development. Most legacy parents are not giving big dollars that check the development box. But small dollar gifts help the “participation rate” which colleges also like to see. They like to encourage the sense of belonging by alumni.
I don’t think Cambridge and Oxford do that. They have relied on major gifts from royalty and nobility in most of their history and lately on government support. Just a different business model