<p>That’s how I personally feel, too. If the kid is choosing between schools he or she would be equally pleased to go to, and you have a legacy and / or ED card to play, I say play it. As long as you (parent) can truly say you didn’t pressure the kid there. Having said that, when we had steered S away from NU (deliberately) and he came back and said mom, dad, it’s my #1, I keep comparing every other place to it but it’s really where I want to be - we said - then play your double legacy card in ED or don’t bother.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, my daughter applied RD to Northwestern as a legacy. She is currently a freshman in the engineering school (and loving it!).</p>
<p>We knew that ED would give her a better chance, but at the time she wasn’t sure of her first choice and I didn’t want her to think I was pressuring her to pick NU just because I went there. It all worked out and she’s very happy there so far, but it was a very long couple of months waiting for RD day!</p>
<p>my update is that my daughter decided on Northwestern ED despite the heavy legacy at Brown and was accepted.
she is out of her mind happy and so are we. It is a purple and white christmas in our house! good luck to all…</p>
<p>Congrats, Bear79. I know you are over the moon!</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that ED is a heavy tip as the stats clearly show at many schools. Legacy is a light tip. But a lot of legacies do apply ED, and a lot of legacies are very much qualified to be accepted to a school so that the two tips together add up. Which leaves few spots for legacy accepts in the RD round. So, IMO, for that reason alone, it can make a big difference to apply ED when one is a legacy even when there there is no policy that restricts legacy weight to ED only. A school does keep tabs on how many legacy kids are being accepted. They certainly are not going to accept a whole class or close to it of legacies. They are not upfront about giving out the % of the class accepted that are legacies as it is, for good reason. Some schools have a large %, that they do not want advertized as they inisist that so many great legacies (and this is true) are rejected. So, yes, a qualified student will have better chance ED, and even better as a legacy ED, and at highly selective schools there are a lot of legacy applicants and manydo apply ED. so…you can add it all together.</p>
<p>This is because people don’t understand math, it seems. (Not you - people in general.)</p>
<p>Let’s assume Fancy Pants U has 2,000 seats in the freshman class.</p>
<p>Fancy Pants U could have a 90% legacy acceptance rate.
This could be consistent with a HIGH % of the class being legacies or a LOW % of the class being legacies. It just depends on how thick the pool of applicants is with legacies.</p>
<p>Likewise, Fancy Pants U could have a 10% legacy acceptance rate.
This could be consistent with a HIGH % of the class being legacies (tons and tons of legacies apply) or a LOW % of the class being legacies (not a lot of legacies apply, and the ones that do barely get in).</p>
<p>There’s entirely too much confounding of the rate at which legacies are accepted, and the % of the class that is made up of legacies. Too many people look at the latter and assume it means a high acceptance rate of legacies. It may or may not.</p>
<p>I’d like to know what percentage of the classes at HPY are legacies. I remember gasping at getting an answer from a Yale adcom who had to be put on the spot to answer after spinning all kinds of other things before he was nailed to giving an estimate. The acceptance percentage was around 50%, I think. It was the percentage of those who are legacies that sent a lot of us reeling. I had no idea it was that high. The adcom was a sliver away from insisting that it was a detriment to be a legacy,when someone asked outright why it is even asked, noted, and a separate pool formed, if it made so little difference. Of course, it does. </p>
<p>Does anyone have current %s of legacies accepted to those three top schools? I am curious.</p>
<p>Yale says 13.8% alumni affiliation, Princeton 12.3% children of alums.</p>
<p>I haven’t found Harvard’s, but its out there somewhere. </p>
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<p>If it isn’t an outright detriment, at HYP its nowhere near the “rigged game” that people like to talk about it being. Other places may differ a little bit.</p>
<p>But what % of the class is legacy ISN’T THE RELEVANT QUESTION. The question is what % of legacies are admitted. What % of the class is legacy is a function of how many legacy children choose to apply and how much of the total applicant class they make up, which isn’t under the college’s control.</p>
<p>This is like not understanding the difference between what percent of the class is from Montana, and what % of Montana applicants are accepted. </p>
<p>To use extreme examples: Fancy Pants U has an applicant pool of 20,000 and a base acceptance rate of 10% for a total class of 2000 (assume full yield).</p>
<p>Someone notes that 20% of FPU’s freshman class is legacy (that is, 400 of the 2000 are legacies). Well, so? It could mean that 500 legacies applied and FPU accepted 400 of them for an legacy acceptance rate of 80%. Or it could mean that 8000 legacies applied and FPU accepted 400 of them for a legacy acceptance rate of 5%. The horizontal (what % of FPU freshman class is legacy) DOESN"T TELL YOU ANYTHING about legacy preferences unless you know the other piece - how thick the applicant pool is with legacies.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that it makes full sense that legacies of a top school are going to be, as a group, more qualified than their peers, as candidates to that school. So unless one does make it a detriment to be a legacy, I fully accept and expect the % of acceptance to be higher for legacies, EVEN IF there is no preference given to them as legacies. Being the child of the grad of a top university brings a lot of privileges to the table without lifting a finger. Not to every single legacy, but to a very high percentage of them.</p>
<p>I went to a top 25 university, and at a reunion, one of my former classmates was talking about his daughter who would be applying there the following year. The adcom was not a former classmate but someone within the 4 year window–we knew her, and her remark, was “oh, we know D since she was a baby. She’s been coming here for years.” So, really, not to mention the advantages socio econ that comes most of the time from having parents graduating from such a school, this young lady knows the Adcom since she was a baby, and the parents are friendly acquaintances from over 30 years ago with the Adcom. Advantage? Of course. </p>
<p>But what percentage of the class are legacies? That’s my question. How many of them are at the school?</p>
<p>From a direct quote from Yale: "“We turn away 80 percent of our legacies, and we feel it every day,” Mr. Brenzel said, adding that he rejected more offspring of the school’s Sterling donors than he accepted this year (Sterling donors are among the most generous contributors to Yale). He argued that legacies scored 20 points higher on the SAT than the rest of the class as a whole. "</p>
<p>Which means 20% of their legacies are accepted, and it is possible that at least 51% of the offspring of the school’s Sterling donors are accepted. Brenzel had nothing to say at a meeting when asked why even have legacy preferance when the legacies are so much better. Have them compete on equal footing if that is the case. A study I saw a couple of years ago showed that at Ivy league schools, the ADVANTAGE, test score wise for legacies ranges from 150-200 points on the SATs. That is still less than the averages for athletic and URM admissions, but still, for a group of kids already so privileged and supposedly academically better prepared, that’s a lot. It also belies that 20 point preference that Brenzel gave, though the result was for all 8 ivies. </p>
<p>If Yale has less than 10% legacies in their student pool, that means that more than half of them went elsewhere after being accepted to Yale. Probably the most qualified ones, heh, heh, or those who had another legacy card from the other parent.</p>
<p>cpt, just look upthread to posts 148 and 149. For HYP, all three are in the 12% - 13% range. There you go. Expect fairly similar results for similar schools. Why? What’s the “tipping point” where it’s too much, IYO?</p>
<p>But that kind of relationship is irrelevant for the vast majority of legacy admits, my kid being a perfect example. We were both grads, and live in the general area, but we donated trivial amounts of money over the years, and had no “connections” of any sort with anyone at the university. You know - like the vast majority of legacies anywhere.</p>
<p>I am not looking for a tipping point. I’m just looking for direct info. I was at a presentation where Brenzel spoke and he was popping all over the place like the old weasel, giving answers here and there but refusing to give a number, which I think he well knew, as he has been asked the same question many times. Trying to get info about this is very difficult. At the presentation where I was present, what came down was more like a 20-25% of those accepted to Yale were legacies. He never came out with what percent of the student population were legacies I did see the upthreads with the 12-13%s. There should not be a tipping point, IMO where any legacy who get selected without legacy status is taken into consideration should be admitted. The question then comes about those who do need that legacy status to get accepted, and clearly there is such a group. Is it because they are also part of other preferred group (certainly the URM card is but a drop in the bucket from that group,heh, heh)? So it comes down to athletics, which, ok, is another performance based thing, and development, celebrity. </p>
<p>Development is troubling, more so than legacy, as the top dogs who donate have half their kids accepted from what came right out Brenzl’s mouth. that’s a huge percentage. I happen to well know someone who has been donating large, like hundreds of thousands of dollars to top schools , probably to hit the million mark by the time his kid applies to HPY, so that he has that card to play. These folks know how play this game You don’t bribe or donate the year before, but years before and get a track record leading up to the main event. </p>
<p>I am not complaining so much as wanting transparency in these things. The accept % means little to me. A school could have a 100% legacy accept rate if only a handful of legacies apply each year, and it barely makes a dent in the acceptance states and the student pool. But when you have enough legacies applying where, say 20% of the accepted students are legacy, that’s a pretty big dent in in the accept rate. You have a 5% chance of acceptance, looking at the stats, and then you see that , it’s reduced to 4% since 20% of that is made up of legacies. When you pull out the non legacy development, athletic and URM accepts, what are the true chances for someone not in any of those pools? The Early Bird pool is really a big plus maybe the only boost one has.</p>
<p>If you have a place where tons of legacies are applying – the other thing that it tells you about the school is that the experience was pleasant / pleasing enough that alums talk it up to their kids and encourage their kids to apply there. That’s a positive about a school, not a negative. Think about U of Chicago 30 years ago - a miserable place, alums weren’t happy with their experiences. So of course they aren’t going to want their kids to apply. That’s not a <em>good</em> thing that there are (comparatively speaking) fewer legacies there. That’s a reflection of an earlier bad time. On the other end is a place like Notre Dame. <em>Tons</em> of legacies there - they don’t need to show any legacy love to still have a lot of legacies there. That says something positive about a school if people go there and they encourage their relatives to go there too. </p>
<p>Frankly I don’t see one damn bit of difference between saying “I have a 5% acceptance chance” or “Oh, darn, it’s 4% since I’m non-legacy.” I don’t even really see much difference between, say, a 5% or a 20% acceptance rate. Either way, the odds are against me and I have to know that going in.</p>
<p>I don’t really think it is all that troubling. The # of kids per year who get accepted due to development truly is pretty miniscule. And if $20 MM from someone’s parent means more financial aid or other opportunities for a bunch of other kids? I’m willing to live with it. I guess theoretically it would be best if they auctioned off (say) 10 spots a year.</p>
<p>And this article, <a href=“http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2010/03/29/legacies-face-family-pressure/:[/url]”>http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2010/03/29/legacies-face-family-pressure/:</a> “Still, the number of legacies in the current freshman class is at a 13-year low; in the class of 2013, 12.7 percent of students have legacy status, according to figures from the Office of Institutional Research. The proportion of Yale legacies peaked in the 1980s, when nearly one fourth of incoming freshmen in 1980 had a parent attend Yale. Since 1992, the percentage of legacies at Yale has oscillated between 15 and 11 percent, according to the data.”</p>
<p>At some point in the last several years, someone on CC posted a link to a chart for Yale that showed the legacy percentages over time. Yale seems to be pretty public about this.</p>
<p>I’ve seen the Brown numbers – a typical freshman class is about 10% legacy.</p>
<p>ETA: Congrats to your daughter and your family, Bear!</p>
<p>So, let’s see. You’ve got H, Y, and P all saying that it’s in the 12% ballpark. Y historically is saying that it’s oscillated between 11% - 15%. Isn’t that enough to give you a pattern?</p>
<p>As for developmental - which is a whole different ballgame than run-of-the-mill legacy – do you know people who work in development for universities? I do, and they will tell you it’s still a vanishingly small group of people who can wave around such money that it will cause the admissions office to sit up and take notice (and resurrect the otherwise-dead). These are the people whose names are on buildings and so forth, or who have oodles and oodles of money. It’s still only a handful per year.</p>