<p>The real question is what is the admit rate among everyday legacies vs Legacies. Anecdotal only, but of all the legacy kids I know at S’s school, only one is a Legacy. The rest are just everyday.</p>
<p>
It’s not just the miniscule portion of legacies who are donating millions that have an advantage. The study The Impact of Legacy Status on Undergraduate Admissions at Elite Colleges and Universities compared rate of admissions for legacy vs non-legacy among applicants with similar academic qualifications, such as a similar SAT range. The difference in admission rate was huge, particularly among apps who were academically qualified. Dartmouth’s newspaper writes:</p>
<p>*“The study concluded that when primary legacy applicants apply early decision, they are 15.5 times more likely to gain admission into the sample colleges. Primary legacy regular decision applicants, meanwhile, are 5.5 times more likely to gain admission” *</p>
<p>“Any legacy,” which includes legacies besides parents, had a 3.1x admit rate. Note that the degree of legacy impact varies significantly between colleges. For example, MIT and Caltech claim to not give preference to legacies.</p>
<p>Yes, but as been said NUMEROUS times on CC, the admit rate to (say) Harvard amongst Yale legacies is ALSO high, because legacies of selective schools are likely to be smart, affluent, value education, and have made the most of their opportunities. Could we all stop pretending that the legacy pool is the same as the non-legacy pool and think for a minute here?</p>
<p>
Pizzagirl - I think this means they are comparing like for like, not just legacy pool vs non-legacy pool. If that’s the case, then 15.5 times is a huge difference.</p>
<p>D1 graduated from a school where a large percentage of students went to top 20 school. Since D1 was top 5% at her school, we thought she had a good shot at getting into few of those schools, but it wasn’t the case. There were a lot of students with much lower stats than D1 who were admitted when D1 was WL or denied. Some of them were recruited athletes, but a lot of those students were legacies. The school had a great reputation of sending a lot of students to top schools, but the parents have wondered if it is really due to school’s academic rigor or students’ hooks.</p>
<p>Yes, my post mentioned the study controlled for differences in applicant strength between the legacy and non-legacy pool. For example, legacy apps with a 1300-1340 SAT were compared to non-legacy apps with the same SAT range. The degree of the boost varies by SAT range, which likely fits with being academically qualified or not. An article in the Chronicle at [Legacy’s</a> Advantage May Be Greater Than Was Thought - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Legacy’s Advantage May Be Greater Than Was Thought”>Legacy’s Advantage May Be Greater Than Was Thought) specifies percentage point increase by SAT score range (10 to 15% is 5 percentage points, not 50). The article explicitly states the controls:</p>
<p>“Mr. Hurwitz’s research found that legacy students, on average, had slightly higher SAT scores than nonlegacies. But he was able to control for that factor, as well as athlete status, gender, race, and many less-quantifiable characteristics. He also controlled for differences in the selectivity of the colleges.”</p>
<p>I’m an Ivy grad, and my kid didn’t apply to my alma mater. She’s a great kid, but not Ivy caliber. My brother, also a (different) Ivy grad, did not have his kids apply to his alma mater either. I’d bet a lot of Ivy parents do the same thing, so the actual legacy pool that applies is stronger than just a random legacy pool. Ivy grads are not stupid. They know the legacy thing is tiny in the total scheme of things.</p>
<p>Completely agree. My friend works in Yale admissions and said even though it technically shouldn’t matter, it does both from signaling standpoint and fact that being considered for both ED and regular means you get considered twice = higher chances.</p>
<p>One of the reasons to figure out how various schools treat legacies is that often an applicant gets to decide among multiple schools for legacy status (parents went to different u/g schools, throw grad schools in too, and then there are grandparents or other relatives). But there’s only one SCEA/ED choice. Obviously if the kid has a strong preference, that’s the school to apply to, but from a game-playing POV, how do you go about deciding (assuming all schools are loved equally)?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But she did go to a top-20 school, right? And she was admitted even though she was competing with that university’s legacies (one of whom was my kid, admitted in the same year to the same college within that university).</p>
<p>
I wonder about this–I think it’s possible that some legacy kids might apply even if their stats are somewhat lower than average for the legacy school, in the hope that legacy will help them. I think it’s probably the case that the stats curve for legacy applicants is different form the stats curve for non-legacy applicants–but just how it’s different is not clear to me.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe. But maybe also their parents, knowing the difficulty of the work at the legacy school, would discourage underqualified offspring from applying. After all, it’s not just about admissions. It’s about what happens after you get to college.</p>
<p>Anecdotal again, but the alums I know are very realistic about their kids’ abilities and whether they should apply. I haven’t seen any one of them “offer up” a kid who wasn’t clearly qualified and in the ballpark.</p>
<p>Marian
Not sure if you remember…My kid was WL at Cornell and Duke and later admitted to both of those schools. We were surprised with D1’s result. She was not admitted to any top 20s the first round. A good friend of hers, legacy at Duke, was admitted with A- GPA and not very rigorous curriculum. Same with few admits to Cornell that year, they were top 15-10% at their small school and they were legacies. Now, all of those admitted students did well at their schools, graduated in 4 years and are all gainfully employed. So I don’t think the adcoms made a mistake by admitting them, but I think the legacy card did put them in front of the line. Yes, those kids all applied ED. Some were deferred ED, but were ultimately admitted RD.</p>
<p>I would bet you might get a larger proportion of qualified but not absolutely exceptional applicants (3.9 UW GPA, 2200 SAT) among legacies but far fewer not-even-in-the-ballpark applicants (valedictorian with a 1700 SAT). Alumni are more likely to be savvy about the application process and know where that ballpark is.</p>
<p>One of my kids applied to my alma mater. We knew the school and its ethos well and were able to talk with our kid about how the school saw itself. I think it helped him to identify the aspects of the school that most appealed to him and to craft his application accordingly.</p>
<p>I think you have to make a distinction between people who are qualified for the most selective schools, and those who are competitive. I think the first group is much larger than the second. It may be that legacies who are qualified–but perhaps not really competitive–are more likely to apply than non-legacies, because they hope the legacy advantage will make them more competitive. And perhaps it does, but I don’t think it does all that much, since the most selective schools reject a majority of legacies–including, in my estimation, many that are sufficiently qualified to succeed at those schools.</p>
<p>Yes, but percentage of legacies get accepted could be as much as 15 times higher than non-legacies. I don’t think anyone here is saying most legacies get admitted, just higher percentage even when you compare like for like. It would silly for anyone not to take advantage of legacy during ED. If your kid is a legacy at NU and likes Cornell a little bit more, I would still go for NU as a legacy.</p>
<p>
. Well, not that much–Yale, for example admits about 30% of legacies (as I recall).</p>
<p>One post cited Dartmouth’s studies on legacy admittance and it showed as high as 15 times in general. Of course each school is different. But 30% is still a lot higher than single digit for regular applicants. I wonder if Yale stripped out non-qualified legacies, what would be their legacy admittance rate.</p>
<p>
Note that the 15x figure was for a specific type of legacy – primary that apply ED. Among similarly qualified applicants (similar SAT score, race, athlete status, …) the average acceptance rate difference across all types of legacies and all types of early/non-early status (ED/REA/EA/RD) was 3.1x . Also note that different colleges had a widely varying degree of legacy influence. The author writes,</p>
<p>“Some schools appear not to give legacy students an advantage at all while others give them quite a sizable admissions advantage.”</p>