Please settle a disagreement with a friend. Do you think legacy status matters if the parents haven’t been giving any money?
Schools are different. It will vary.
Depends on the school. Also…depends on the level of donations.
Family name on the library donations are a completely different animal. Those are development admissions rather than garden variety legacies.
It obviously varies from school to school. But at many schools, regular legacy admissions are typically more about enrolling full tuition payors than it is about donations. A typical alumni parent will spend way more on a kid’s tuition than they ever will in donations.
The legacy applicant pool at most fancy colleges is going to be pre-sorted into a pond that the school likes to fish in. Significantly above average SES characteristics. Which translates into solid or better academics. And above average yield.
Absolutely, but its a very small difference.
Most alumni don’t donate enough to be all that distinguished, even at Harvard, etc. If legacy admissions were based on donations, there’d be a lot fewer legacies at the top schools. Its based on the strength of the legacy applicant pool at the top schools. It probably has a cap on it, contrary to popular conception of the system being rigged.
“Its based on the strength of the legacy applicant pool at the top schools.”
The legacy applicant pools are strong for sure. But not as strong as the general pool, since then there wouldn’t be any legacy advantage.
At someplace like Harvard, the legacy advantage is considered just a little more than a tie-breaker among similar candidates. At a big-time legacy school like Notre Dame, it is is much bigger boost.
At both places, absolutely no dummies get in as legacies. But the nod will go to the legacy kid because the legacy kid is statistically way more likely to belong to a family that (i) will enroll and (ii) will pay the full $60k per year. Even with all of its billions, Harvard still needs to have about 40% of its students be full payors.
Legacy tuition is the cake, legacy donations are icing on the cake.
I think the discussion above sounds too cynical.
First, the candidate whose family can give a gymnasium or dorm would be attractive, whether a legacy or not. The development hook can be influential.
Second, for many schools, legacy can be a plus because legacy candidates are more likely to “yield,” that is, choose their parents’ school over other offers.
Third, I think it matters what the parents have done with their education. A life devoted to teaching or public service is not a negative, although teachers are not big donors.
I agree w @Periwinkle . Legacy is about yield. Donation is a totally separate issue handled by the Development Office which flags those mega-donor families by their records on past mega-donations to the school, or by stalking the families in the media.
But if legacy is about yield, why is the typical advice to legacy kids to apply ED?
And…wouldn’t the college know who is going to be full pay anyway, legacy or not?
As an example, at Duke, legacy admission rates are about 3x the overall admission rate, but not that much above ED admission rates. Duke will tell you that being a legacy gets you a guaranteed third read of your file vs two for the general pool. The stats of the legacy pool very closely correlate to the general admitted students stats.
Of course, development cases get separate treatment, but I would guess that true development files (like people who can do 7-figure kind of donations) make up a small portion of the legacy pool.
The 4 classmates I know of whose kids applied this year all applied ED and all got in. Not statistically significant or diverse as a sample set, and at least one is a development case, but it’s what I’ve got.
In addition to yield I’d bet legacy candidates are less likely to transfer or drop out. I think there likely is a small bump in parent donations as well.
@northwesty Do you feel that it might actually be detrimental to identify a parent as being a legacy for merit aid purposes? I had never considered your angle before, that the legacy is more likely to actually attend their parent’s school than a typical applicant. A legacy applying ED seems like it could be a double-whammy to the merit aid hopes. Not to be cynical or anything!
I guess in my case it doesn’t really matter, since I went to UMich, and they aren’t giving us any aid, being OOS…
Legacy admissions function much in the same way that early decision does. Give a slight break on admission in exchange for high yield from full payors. Many schools in fact tell kids that they have to apply ED in order to get considered as legacies.
I can think of several reasons it might be advantageous to a school to give legacies a preference in admissions:
- Although not all legacies are full-pays, at elite private schools legacies are more likely to be full-pays than the general applicant pool.
- Although not all legacies will enroll if offered admission, the school’s yield among legacies is probably higher than for the general applicant pool, and a higher yield means a lower admit rate. As someone pointed out, this may be negated if the school advises legacies to apply ED, because they probably get close to 100% yield from their ED admits, legacy or not. But pushing legacies into the ED applicant pool can expand the size and quality of the ED applicant pool, which is entirely to the school’s benefit for yield management and admit rate control purposes.
- Although the most selective schools can admit only a small fraction of legacies, alumni relations will be better if they admit more legacies rather than fewer. So, other things equal, a legacy will always have an advantage relative to a similarly-credentialed non-legacy, but this is no guarantee of admission at the most selective schools.
- Colleges like to maintain the conceit that faculty, staff, students, alums, donors, administrators, trustees, etc., are all part of one big happy family. Legacy preferences are a big part of maintaining that myth.
- In some cases legacy admissions might yield higher lifetime giving from both the parents of the legacy admit and the legacy admit herself, though it’s doubtful the average incremental dollar differences are very great.
- Enrolled legacies help provide some institutional continuity. They come in already familiar with the school's history, traditions, and culture, and can help transmit that to their peers. If their parents had a positive experience, they come in with positive expectations. If their parents encountered difficulties and figured out how to overcome them, that knowledge base is available to the legacies.
Some downsides to legacy admissions:
- It tends to privilege the already-privileged. In my view this is a very serious problem. Colleges and universities enjoy tremendous tax subsidies, as well as various direct government (i.e., taxpayer-funded) expenditures for their benefit, on grounds that they are performing a valuable public service and are promoting the public good. But if they serve primarily to advance the private interests of a self-perpetuating elite class, it calls into question the rationale for all those public benefits lavished upon them.
- It undercuts the public ideology of elite private education, that it is a meritocracy that identifies and trains and advances the best and brightest, regardless of background or socioeconomic status. This isn’t to say that legacy admits lack merit; only that there is merit, and then there is merit +, the + being an insider connection, and those with the + are much more likely to be admitted, other things equal. Those with mere merit are much more likely to be left standing on the outside, looking in.
- It operates as a drag on demographic change. The applicant pool of 25-40 years ago was demographically different from the applicant pool today. Legacy preferences reward the progeny of successful applicants a generation ago, who inter alia are likely to be whiter, on average, than today’s overall applicant pool. Nothing wrong with admitting qualified white applicants per se, but if they’re admitted on criteria that systematically favor white applicants because of the demographic lag inherent in legacy admissions, then I have a problem with it.
Penn is fully transparent- if you are a legacy and expect that to have any advantage whatsoever (even if only a moderate one) you need to apply ED. Otherwise, it isn’t considered.
I suspect that other colleges operate the same way- Penn is just more transparent about it. I know many kids who were not ready to apply to Penn ED, and did not get into Penn during the regular round even though they WERE admitted to peer colleges (so were not slouches in the application department). So I think Penn is sincere- apply early if we are your first choice.
The majority of legacies at the top schools get rejected. So that would be an iffy strategy if the college was primarily interested in normal-type donations.
The strategy makes much more sense if it is about yielding/enrolling well qualified (but not the most qualified) applicants who are very likely to full pay.
Schools would have a hard time advocating an admissions policy that gave an explicit break to kids solely because their parents are well off. So they get to that place instead by using legacy, ED and by being highly selective (which strongly correlates with SES).
I have no problem with that. The full payors are needed so that there’s money for URMs (who get a bigger admissions break and rightly so) and others. Harvard has 20% of its students go for free. And 40% who are full pay. Those two numbers are related.
So, Penn doesn’t want to mess around with your decisions. Makes sense. But what a legacy applicant offers is often plenty of fore-knowledge of what the school is about and experience with the parent’s (or parents’) satisfaction. They presumably have discussed the challenges, opps, and benefits. The kids aren’t guessing or going solely by media rankings. Their apps and supps can reflect this better understanding.
Not all legacies are rich, full-pay families. Especially not as the colleges’ doors have been opened wider for a generation or two. I think you can bet adcoms know that. And adcoms will sometimes know if a parent has been involved with donations or alum work, but really, you think they stop and check each legacy applicant to see if the family gave nothing or $5000? The application is the key, not some prediction of future giving.
You’ll never get the true information on this, because the schools have a vested interest in making alumni think that the legacy advantage is greater than it is, and in making non-legacy applicants think the legacy advantage is smaller than it is. My guess is there is a modest advantage to being a legacy at most highly selective schools. (One quote I like is that legacy status can cure the sick, but not raise the dead. It probably can only cure the slightly infirm.)
Not every Ivy legacy appplicant is full pay. But most are and the schools know how to work their funnel. Especially applicants who are legacy/ED. The pool that is being advantaged is, by definition, advantaged. For example, we know there’s not going to be one single first generation college applicant (who typically need a lot of aid) in that entire pool. Not one!!
At fancy schools without uber endowments like HYP (Columbia, Brown, Duke, WUSTL, Georgetown, etc.) the full pay percentage is over 50%. That’s $240k in cash over four years per kid. The only folks who can pay that tab are going to be one percenters.
Legacy is one way to get those highly desire-able smart/rich kids enrolled in your school. ED is another way.
Do we really know “most” Ivy applicants are full pay? I don’t think so. We do know the Ivies are need blind. They don’t see financial info. They can see parents’ educ and occupations. sure. But that’s no predictor of full pay or future giving. Or match. And of course there are first gens and poor kids in the ED pool.
I don’t think we can assume the fact that rich kis are attracted to tippy tops and plenty of poor kids aim more locally means the adcoms are looking to ED to set up a rich-kid class. Their financial aid target total amount and its reserves are already set.