Does anyone have any insight into the actual process admissions committees use when a legacy applicant comes up? I understand that different schools put different amounts of weight to legacy status. That’s not what I’m wondering about. What they actually DO with that information is what I’m asking about.
Do they type the names in to a graduated alumni/ae database & just confirm Yes/No said person graduated from our instititute (end of story)?
Do they pull out the alumni/ae’s actual records & review that person’s academic record to review to see how they ‘performed’ in undergrad? GPA, Majors, ethnicity, etc
Do they look at the alumni/ae’s current student loan repayment status?
There’s at least 1 school we are looking at that does allow aunts/uncles & another that allows cousins to qualify an applicant as a legacy. However, it’s a bit of an awkward thing to ask anyone questions like those above to ‘vet’ them out before listing them as a legacy connection.
So we’d really like to know if a ‘bad’ alumni/ae legacy connection can hurt an application or not.
FOR THE RECORD: Legacy connection is not being relied on as a hook! Lol. All other stats on the application puts my son in the top 25th percentile for SAT/ACT scores & GPA for these schools & ECs are solid. His application can stand on its own just fine without the legacy connection. But if it can only help further strengthen chances, why not list it?
However, if it can actually hurt an application, it’d be really good to know beforehand so that it can be omitted. I’d REALLY like to avoid those awkward conversations with family members if at all possible! “So, did you pull out of default on your school loans?” “We’re you ever sanctioned by the school for that crazy party you _____.” oO
Oh, & of course, I’d include parents in the legacy check too. Do they happen to look at a parent’s record more closely than an extended family member when listed?
I doubt that schools go to much effort “vetting” your legacies. The way I look at it is it lets them offer you some extra incentive IF THEY WANT YOU in the first place.
Our experience, with a grandmother who attended, but did not graduate - my daughter was offered a generous extra ‘legacy’ grant on top of her merit offer from that school. I believe they wanted to encourage her attendance, so the legacy was a way they could do that even though her grandma wasn’t a graduate.
Schools like legacies because of their relative’s loyalty and involvement. Involvement can be both monetary and volunteer work. Schools are not going to care about alumni’s GPA or student loans.
First, there’s nothing inherently shameful about having legacy as a hook. You seem to be backing away from that notion. It IS a hook.
Second, no. Unless your relative was a mass shooter at the school–or on the other end of the spectrum, a huge donor-- they don’t care what kind of student he/she was.
I know that at Brown, alumni relations gives admissions a “folder” that lists stuff like volunteer activities and donations. Since alumni relations knows nothing about the alumni’s grades or loan repayment data, that information is not given to admissions.
I don’t think you’ll get dinged if your cousins were deadbeats. We had an amusing case where Chicago asked if anyone in your family had gone. Well as it happened my husband’s parent had, and so had his brother and sister. But only the males actually graduated. In any event my son was accepted and it was quite a reach for him. (He did write a “Why Chicago” essay they thought was very funny though.)
A college with a well funded and highly functional alumni relations office will have a database where admissions can retrieve the relevant statistics on an alum (which is NOT the transcript, GPA, etc.) but will include what the alum has done since graduating- attending reunions, serving on committee’s, being a volunteer mentor for seniors who want to shadow people in different fields, plus the donation record. Depending on the school, the extent of involvement may or may not “count”- i.e. a very active alum vs. someone who just mails in a check to the annual fund now and again.
Mega donors- whether legacy or not- will trigger a different kind of “look-up” in the database. There will typically be a name of an actual person- a development officer, the university president if the donor has given or is currently being solicited for a significant capital gift or naming gift in an academic department, etc. and the protocol might be to drop that person a note or call before rejecting or accepting the kid. This lookup will also include the legacies “special interests”- athletics, the university art museum, an archaeological dig the university is supervising somewhere in the world, etc.
But not “this graduate was the dumbest kid to ever get a degree”.
My S’s grandfather went to the school he was applying to, dropped out halfway through, then came back to finish years later, after WW2 Army stint. S wasn’t going to include it in the app, because college said parents only. But the alumni interviewer thought it was mega-important and called me for deets. it didn’t seem to matter that my dad had had a checkered history of attendance.
S did indeed get in, and did indeed follow grandfather’s path of dropping out and going back. Which is funny in retrospect. though not at the time.
I haven’t a clue how admissions offices look upon legacies. I assume if there is overlap and someone remembers the family member, it’s better the memory is a good or indifferent one (e.g. charming kid) rather than a bad one (mass shooter). But aside from that, the fact that the person attended and has a connection should suffice.
What I want to gently suggest not to do. Do not email your relatives asking them where they attended, year graduated, level (undergrad/grad), school (engineering/law/etc), degree received and honors earned. I got such a request once (not a close relative in terms of college legacy). I answered it briefly but It was awkward and I found others felt the same way as I did. In defense of the young relative, the requester grew up in a high pressure, high academic stakes regions.
My understanding from my HS guidance counselor and from talking with relatives and friends who worked in elite admissions as staffers or work-study students that one gains a “legacy advantage” if one’s on the borderline or below in terms of academics/ECs only if the parent or other eligible older relatives were large donors(Not $50-100 per year) and/or are prominent scholars/celebrities of reasonably good repute/persons of accomplishment/influence.
If one’s elite college alum parents aren’t large donors and/or prominent scholars/celebrities/persons of accomplishment/influence, he/she will unlikely be looked upon differently from a non-legacy applicant all things being equal. There’s just too many other alum parents who are just as active or more importantly, more active in terms of donations or having gained prominence due to accomplishments/influence/fame in play.
Stanford sent us a letter when our daughter applied there a few years ago. They explained that legacy applications are given a more thorough read than those of other applicants, three times vs twice, I believe. There was no mention of how the ad comm looked at the parents’ records, but I’m sure they did. And for the purposes of legacy, only a parent or grandparent alum counts.
That sounds much like the letter I received when my son applied to Yale, given that my father and I both went there: all I was told is that they would give his application a extra-careful review. As it happens, he didn’t get in (and was actually kind of relieved, since the U. of Chicago had been his first choice since he was about 15, and I think he would have felt “obligated” to go to Yale had he gotten in).
@DonnaL, I agree. Our daughter didn’t get into Stanford (and even though she was pretty upset that they rejected her, didn’t actually want to go there and only applied because we encouraged it.) She would definitely have felt obligated to attend and it would not have been the right school for her for many reasons.
My mother attended Connecticut College – but did not graduate due to finances during the depression. My son mentioned his legacy status – and was accepted. His (female) cousin with better stats did not mention and was not accepted. My son did get a few mailings referencing his grandmother. AFAIK my parents were not big donors, if they even sent the occasional $25 check at all. (It’s possible that the male/female applicant carried more weight that legacy grandparent … which is why I mentioned the genders of the cousins …)
I was a legacy at Yale and didn’t get in. It was the first year they admitted women, and the only woman I knew that got in from my state was surnamed Pillsbury. Five years later, my brother got in–stats pretty much the same as mine.
I honestly think it is impossible to tell what the “tip” factor was that made them pick you versus someone just like you. Could be legacy. But it could be location, or better essay, or glowing recommendations. I do agree that legacy gets you extra consideration. Maybe that does the trick, maybe it doesn’t. But there is no reason to believe that if you get in, it was the legacy that did it. I get very tired about this kind of speculation.
That said, I cannot imagine why they would waste time looking at the legacy’s college record. There is absolutely no evidence to indicate that a parent or grandparent’s college record is at all indicative of what the child will do.
Could we set aside the idea that there is an “option” to fail to “declare” your legacy status. To my knowledge the common app and others all ask for your parents educational history. Its not optional. I think some schools do also ask supplementally if you have other relatives who’ve attended, but the basic idea of legacy arises from parents, and that is required.
I hadn’t given much thought to whether there was a checking process to learn more about the parents, but at the top schools its very easy to access the alumni giving records, as well as other involvements such as alumni interviewing. Whether that makes very much difference is highly doubtful, IMO. I can assure you that it makes nowhere near the difference that writers in places like the NYT wish to believe it does.
I am ambivalent about the power of legacy. They may give an application a second look, but in our experience it doesn’t count for much at all. H and I both graduated from UChicago, so our son was a DOUBLE legacy. He had a fantastic application, almost perfect test scores, highest possible grades, great ECs, rigorous AP schedule, in short everything he needed to be a strong contender there, but still didn’t get in! To me that lends a lot of credence to the idea that the schools are looking for that inexplicable “something else,” which certainly is not legacy status!
A friend recently told me about his brother, an admissions officer at a well known LAC in the northeast. The brother told him, that when a legacy application came in, it was first sent to a person who checked if/how much the legacy’s family had given the school. The implication was, if you haven’t been good to your alma mater, the fate of your progeny wasn’t going to be of much concern to said LAC. A second-hand, anecdotal account, but somehow it rings true to me.