What percentage of the Duke class of 2020 (or any class) is legacy? I’m having trouble finding that data. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Data for the incoming class won’t be released until at least early September since the class makeup can change in the span of three months (courtesy of the “summer melt”). If you still can’t find that data, then you can try the Office of Institutional Equity at Duke, which probably will have some information on legacy students since they provided me information on the demographic makeup of Duke going back to the early 1980s.
I would like to know the same answer. If you find out let me know.
I attended a lecture by Dean Guttentag. He said that the % of the Duke class that was legacy was 10% for 2016. He also showed a slide which displayed the % of legacies for Duke classes for the last 10+ years. They were generally between 10-15% of each incoming class.
For the same 2016 application class, 23% of legacy kids were admitted vs 11% of the general population.
To get the benefit of legacy at Duke, you need to apply ED.
@gardenstategal You don’t think the admit rate for regular decision legacies is higher than the general population?
It may be because of factors such as family influence but not because of a legacy boost. Duke is upfront about how it will not be considered a factor except in ED. With that said, 7 figure donor/legacies are probably given some leniency.
Makes sense. Those with legacy status who don’t apply ED are using the legacy school as a safety which could lower the school’s yield if the student was admitted to their first choice. Usually offspring either really want the school their parent went to or they want to forge their own pathway and they really don’t want to go there unless the other strong schools reject them.
@gardenstategal: actually the % of legacy admits is higher in both the ED and RD rounds. I can’t remember off the top of my head, but Dean Guttentag clearly said this. I have it written down in my notes and I’ll dig it up later.
The legacy boost is definitely greater in the ED round, but also exists for RD.
"Officially ", legacy is only a hook in the RD round. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t right about the outcomes (and that from time to time, it’ll help in RD), but if OP wants to be certain that legacy will help, he/she should apply ED. That’s the party line. At least it was 8 months ago. If this point matters to OP, he/she should speak directly to admissions and the family’s contact in development. As it was explained (and now less elegantly repeated ), “why should we give you preference if you won’t give us preference.” I think ed1 and ed2 are both acceptable, but on that, I’m less certain. With that said, I would venture that many children of Duke alums are attractive candidates wherever they apply given that they are likely to be from families that value education and are not new to the road that leads to a top university.
While a can’t speak for Duke legacy applicants per se, at most academically elite universities and LACs the legacy applicant pool is more qualified than the overall applicant pool, so a higher admit rate for legacies is not simply because they are legacies, but, more importantly, predominantly because they are highly qualified applicants. Obviously, there are always some marginal candidates who benefit from association with one of the donors who make it possible for Duke to provide substantial amounts of financial aid, attract the best faculty and make improvements to the physical plant.
Here are some more details from the notes I took during Guttentag’s lecture:
ED admit rate (overall): 23%
ED admit rate (legacy): 35%
RD admit rate (overall): 10%
RD admit rate (legacy): 16%
He also said that Duke considers legacy status regardless of the school their parent attended (Trinity, Pratt, Medicine, Law, Fuqua, etc). But sibling legacy only helps when applying ED.
One question from the audience: does Duke offer legacy advantage as an institutional priority, or because Duke alumni are able to offer better opportunities for their children and hence are better qualified than the regular pool? ANSWER: we have made this a priority based upon institutional desire to admit more alumni children.
@sgopal2 thank you. My daughter has some decisions to make this fall. This data should help.
@sgopal2 I’d be curious to know the yield on legacy RD admits. And also, if a candidate applied ED & is deferred & then later accepted in the RD round, is s/he counted as as ED or RD admit? Because I would guess that many of those RD legacy admits originally applied ED. I think the yield on RD legacy admits is probably lower than the average yield. I observed that myself years ago when many of my friends applied to Stanford because their parents went there or were profs there & they all got in but most went elsewhere (7 out of 27 legacies admitted from my HS went to Stanford – most chose HYP & other Ivies instead.)
@steglitz90 sorry I don’t have the data on legacy yield. That wasn’t covered in Guttentag’s presentation. However the overall yield for Duke RD is fairly low (I think I read it was like 40-50%). The legacy yield in RD is probably not much higher.
Yes it looks like the yield is sub-50%:
http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2015/06/class-2019-potentially-largest-ever
The RD yield is close to one-third. To get an approximation using the link above, assume 100% of ED admittees enroll at Duke (815), subtract that number from the ultimate freshman class (1745) & divide by RD acceptances(2650).
1745-815=930 enrolled from RD; 930/2650 = 35%
(This doesn’t take into account wait lists, which would reduce RD yield further, but there was minimal wait list action that year.)
@wstrav: yes looks like your math is correct. The yield is indeed 35% if you take into account the ED admits.
I suspect that for legacy RD admits the yield will probably be a bit higher.