Does it help at all or actually hurt you if you are a legacy but there have been no contributions made by your parents to the school?
I would think that neither helps nor hurts you. I would never think it would hurt you, rather if it means nothing to them they’ll just consider you a regular applicant as everybody else is.
It won’t hurt, but unless you applied ED, when it might be somewhat helpful, it will probably not give you an RD advantage.
Look at the school’s CDS to see if Legacy is considered and how much.
Legacy is legacy, at colleges that see it as a tip. It’s not about donating, though some parents are deeply involved.
OP, you’ve got to do some digging other than asking CC. You named some competitive colleges in the past and need to learn first hand how things work. Read the colleges’ websites and use the GC. Learn.
Depending on the school it will likely be a slight negative. Why haven’t your parents contributed? Did they have a negative experience at the school?
Although I have no statistics to support my opinion, I’d strongly suspect that being legacy––even without your parents donating––will help you. Sure, your admission rate may tick up if they donate (and go way up if they donate A LOT), but the admissions officers will assume that since your parents attended the chance you attend if admitted is higher.
This is an interesting question to me… I’ve heard that top schools look at involvement with the school through donations or volunteering, by checking with the alumni office. I was a First Gen student back in the 80s who received no help from my very low income parents, and took out more than $100k in student loans by the time I finished grad school (a lot for the early 90s). My husband was also low income and put himself through college and grad school with scholarships. We have been called on to provide help to our parents, and now make too much to expect financial aid for our children. In a word, while supporting three generations, it has never really been a financial priority for me to donate to a school with a huge endowment and which charged me kind of onerous interest rates for institutional loans (even though I loved the school). I would imagine that lots of First Geners who are now parents probably find themselves in the same situation, and now our kids may not benefit at all from Legacy status. I wonder how much you need to give to the Annual Fund to be “involved”.
What you get from being a legacy really depends on the school. Some are more transparent. For example, Stanford guarantees that your application will be read by two people but they don’t promise anything else for simple legacy status. At others, they’ll tell you it’ll be a tip but only in the ED round. Legacy means a parent attended, not that they have given money. I don’t know of a school that penalizes legacy children if their parents didn’t give!
There is often another category for those who are major donors (which is beyond the reach of most of us and is not annual fund giving!) and/or involved (trustees, work on reunions/annual fund, run alumni events, etc.) That category can provide a major tip, noting of course, that they don’t want to run the risk of having that kid flunk out – that would make the relationship worse than not admitting them in the first place.
The admissions office generally will check with the development office to see if an applicant falls into the second category. And then development often sends a letter that says how happy they are you that you value the school enough to encourage your kid to apply there and that admission is competitive, yada yada. I think they realize that even if YOU liked the school, if they turn down your kid, it may sour you and you may not want to keep writing those annual fund checks.