Legacy chances?

<p>I wasn't aware that having a grandfather that attended Yale qualified me as a legacy; I thought that it only included parents. However, my grandfather got a letter from the college last weekend that said otherwise and that they would pay "special and close consideration to my application." Withholding my academic information and based purely on statistics, how much does this increase my chances?</p>

<p>The answer is 42 basis points. :)</p>

<p>Just kidding, but I don’t think that there are any stats available. I’m not sure though. I don’t think it can be considered without reference to your GPA, scores, etc. </p>

<p>The answer is: not as much as legacy families would like, but more than non-legacy families think is fair. </p>

<p>The real answer is that it may help a bit, but probably not a lot. In the past, I’ve heard that it can heal the sick, but not raise the dead. I suspect it will only heal a minor illness.</p>

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<p>Funny Hunt. My D felt the same way this very day last year. As a legacy and URM, we still knew that she had to have a stellar high school career to be considered. Luckily her stats would have been good whether she was a legacy or not. I am sure it is the same for you @qwc123</p>

<p>My kids had very good stats and ECs, but I can tell you that we were still sweating bullets before the decisions came out, because other legacy kids with good stats and ECs have been rejected every year.</p>

<p>@Hunt - Oh trust me, my stomach was in knots all day that day last year. I wasn’t intimating that she was a shoo in - I know almost 85% of legacies are not admitted. But we knew that without stellar stats, her legacy was not going to help - that’s why I referenced the quote about “healing a minor illness, not raising the dead”. All I was saying was that she worked hard and that she would have been competitive in her back up schools if not admitted by Yale.</p>

<p>The biggest irony is that she just finished her final exam a little while ago and is getting on the train to come home in a few hours. I told her what a difference a year makes.</p>

<p>That’s an interesting statistic that almost 85% of legacies don’t make it into Yale. I saw an article where the Stanford dean of admissions said legacies are admitted there at about 3x the baseline rate . . . sounds good at first but it amounts to the same situation as Yale (around 5% admitted overall at Stanford x 3 is still only 15%). It seems like legacy is potentially a tie-breaker for those who are highly qualified but for most won’t make any noticeable difference i.e. enough to turn no into yes.</p>

<p>^^^exactly @bluewater2015</p>

<p>Isn’t Yale legacy at 25 or 30%?</p>

<p>Does anyone know if Yale views law school/grad school alumni children or grandchildren as legacy? I’ve tried to research this online without success. </p>

<p>@daisychain I don’t know for sure but I think you could check pretty easily with a call to the admissions office. Some schools count only undergrad descendants as legacy for undergrad admissions and others include grad alums also.</p>

<p>I couldn’t find a study done online, but I think it helps! That’s a pretty cool letter to get. Best of luck!</p>

<p>Yale seems to be interested in finding out about all your relatives and their degrees based on their supplement…They don’t seem to require only undergrad descendents.</p>

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<p>Thanks @bluewater2015 and @texaspg, it seems based on that quote that they would take grad school legacy into account (I assume to a lesser degree). </p>

<p>@texaspg, Re 25-30% legacy acceptance rate at Yale - that could well be. I haven’t seen published numbers for Yale but the sources below indicate it is around 30% at both Princeton and Harvard and around 15-20% at Stanford. The Princeton and Stanford numbers are from the past year and the Harvard ones are from 2011.</p>

<p>The Princeton numbers also show yield and as I would expect it’s much higher for legacies (81% versus 66% for the class of 2018 overall).</p>

<p>Presumably the numbers at Yale would be somewhere in that 15-30% range of peer institutions - not sure if they’re at the low or high end.</p>

<p><a href=“Stanford Magazine - Article”>Stanford Magazine - Article;

<p><a href=“Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate/”>http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I thought legacy parents on the thread would volunteer but since they didn’t I asked my friend Google which says
20-25% circa 2011.</p>

<p><a href=“Legacy Kids Have an Admissions Advantage”>Legacy Kids Have an Admissions Advantage;

<p>Actually as I look again at the Harvard Crimson article above, it quotes ex Dean Brenzel as saying Yale accepts around 20% of legacies.</p>

<p>Harvard and Yale seem to have totally different definitions of legacy and the numbers are not comparable.</p>

<p>Harvard essentially says legacy is limited to parents or siblings attending harvard college while Yale is saying not only it is not limited but they want to know if your twice removed great grand uncle might have attended Yale which means they have opened the net wide and consider a lot more applicants to be legacy.</p>

<p>Yes it makes sense that Yale’s legacy acceptance rate is lower if the school has a broader definition. Stanford, which includes graduate alumni children as legacies for undergraduate admissions, also has a legacy acceptance rate that seems to be substantially below those of Harvard and Princeton.</p>

<p>It also makes sense to me that Harvard would use a narrower definition as graduate programs are significantly larger there - undergrads are only about 1/3 of total Harvard enrollment, versus around 45% at Yale and Stanford and around 2/3 at Princeton.</p>

<p>@texaspg I believe Harvard only considers children whose parents have attended Harvard or Radcliffe College as legacies. I have never seen siblings formally considered legacies although they do seem to have a lot of siblings at the school.</p>