Kate Burton was a few years behind me at Brown. The scuttlebutt was that she was cast in all the student productions because her dad was Richard Burton. After a long and prestigious career on Broadway, the West End, television and film I’m presuming that her classmates have finally conceded that she just might have some talent.
And Meryl Streep’s daughter is doing well in the theater industry too. No one is saying that these kids may not have or be talented, smart or worthy. I just think it’s odd that legacy discussions always devolve into development cases, because precious few legacies are at the level of development cases, and if one is a development case, it matters not one whit whether the parent-with-the-bucks-and-clout went there or not.
^ everthing PG just wrote. These discussions so often devolve into “Well, I think…”
I think people ARE saying that these kids aren’t talented, smart and worthy. Nobody gripes when a Sarah Hughes gets into Yale because A- it’s sports, so presumably there are some objective criteria for how talented she is (or at least nobody sniffs at an Olympic medal) and B- even though training an Olympian is a monumental task, both financially and in terms of parental oversight/helicoptering, etc. this is America where putting your kids sports training first is like a religion among some folks.
The idea that a legacy kid might be talented in his/her own right seems to bug people, hence the need to wail at the unfairness of little Joe Prep school taking away my kids spot.
But otherwise I agree with Pizza and Looking…
Development admits are different from legacies. Celebrity admits are different than legacies. So they should be discussed elsewhere.
I think the data is quite clear that the legacy boost is much bigger than typically thought and discussed (just a tie-breaker; feather on a scale; won’t raise the dead) because people don’t understand how it works in today’s hyper-competitive environment.
Some hooks will get a lesser-than-average-qualified kid admitted to an elite school. Athletes, URMs, development cases. In the 1950s and 1960s legacies were like this too (e.g. George W. Bush). But no longer.
Today, the legacy boost allows average-qualified kids to gain admission at much higher rates that their average qualifications would merit. The average applicant to Harvard these days is really smart. 1400+ SATs. So that’s the kind of SATs the legacies need to bring.
But in today’s 6% acceptance rate environment, 1400+ SATs are merely table stakes. Putting legacy next to your name gives you a hook that allows you to jump over a lot of other applicants with similar or slightly better credentials. 30% acceptance chance still means a 70% chance of rejection, but it also means you are maybe 4X more likely to get in than if you didn’t check the legacy box.
Statistically, that’s a huge boost. The legacy kids are qualified, but they are not (on the whole) so awesome that 4% of the pool produces 16% of the students year in year out. At Harvard, frankly, no pool of applicants is that awesome.
Its good business for colleges to do legacy admissions. So I’m fine with Harvard doing as much or as little of that as they want.
Since Dhani Harrison was mentioned, here’s a remark he made about being at Brown:
“I studied physics and design at Brown University, which surprises me at how that always surprises people,” he says with a laugh. “People naturally assume that the son of a rich, famous person spends his days hanging out and nights going to parties. I’ve always been a worker - like my dad.”
I disagree with this. The Harvard class survey shows that legacies have a higher SAT score than the average Harvard freshman. Legacy applicants these days have excellent credentials – and many who have excellent credentials are still not getting in. Just because they get in at a higher rate than other applicants doesn’t mean that they are “average qualified.”
We are saying the same thing. By “average qualifications” I mean average within the Harvard admissions pool.
Athletes and URMs (as a group) have strong credentials but are statistically below average at Harvard.
Legacies have excellent credentials, but they are pretty average as Harvard applicants go (once you back out the 25-35% of the class that are athletes and first generation). It is hard for any group to be significantly above average in the Harvard pool .
Legacies as a group are awesome (but still pretty average for Harvard). They are not so awesome to justify getting admitted at rates 3-4X what their credentials would otherwise predict. Which is what the academic studies say is what happens. There’s a lot of awesomeness in the pool that are not legacies too.
@northwesty , where did you find that statistic?
I still think it would be useful to know more about how legacies do in terms of admission to non-legacy peer schools.
"2015, legacy rate was 33% as compared to 8.5% overall. So 4X in raw numbers.
@northwesty , where did you find that statistic?"
Someplace on the internet – so of course it is true. Think that’s the data for the graduating class of 2015 rather than the 2015 appliers.
i’ve found this thread to be very instructive, but my impression (based on anecdotal evidence) is that if you’ve got a history of personal involvement with your alma mater, you’re on a favorable giving trajectory from a high-enough base (not necessarily all that high if it has the potential to rise significantly over time) and the development office chooses to flag this to the admissions office, the legacy status you confer on your kid could matter more than if you haven’t really been involved and give modestly or not at all.
I was reading Cornell’s ED thread, a legacy got in with 24 ACT and 3.5 GPA. Hmm
So somehow I had a vague notion that there would be 1,000s of legacies applying to a given school in a given year. After seeing the numbers posted a few pages back, I decided to add up what my college friends and acquaintances have actually done in terms of producing potential legacy applicants.
- I came up with 26 graduates from about 30 years ago (people I happen to know enough about)
- Of these 26, 10 have had no children (none married other grads, all were married at least once). Surprised.
- Of the 16 who did, 5 married other grads, producing 11 households
- The 11 households have produced 23 children total (mostly 2 kids/household)
- 26 grads produced 23 progeny (.88 kid/grad)
When I attended, there were about 500 grads/year (now more than double that). So generously extrapolating from my non scientific sample, I estimate about 600 kids from the 500 grads. Assuming about half the kids are academically qualified and apply to the school, and given 30,000+ applications/yr, about 1% of applicants would be legacy applicants. If they all applied early, it would make about 2.7% of the applicants.
So a lot fewer than I had thought… Hope DD gets that bump 
If I’m interpreting your calculations correctly, you’re also assuming all of the offspring are the same age / same year, which obviously isn’t true. The 600 kids from the 500 grads aren’t magically all current high school seniors getting ready to apply and evaluating their fitness and interest in the school. Your graduating class didn’t all procreate the exact same year.
Even among those of the “right” age, I think half applying is quite high. And I know a lot of legacies / parents, but even so, even with many of the families, one kid applies to alma mater and another simply isn’t interested. That describes at least 8 families I know, including my own.
(though of course there are people from classes other than yours who have high school seniors, so I suppose that all works out somehow)
I think that’s what @ihs76 is doing, @Pizzagirl - taking the view that it’s rough justice to equate the children of one year’s graduating class with one year’s applicants. As you say, many of the kids of his classmates won’t apply that year, and many of the kids of other alumni will.
Yes, it will all average out over how many years one takes into account.
@Pizzagirl, I agree that fewer than 1/2 the kids will likely apply. I was looking at what the upper boundary might look like. Bottom line, lot fewer legacy applicants out there than I thought, at least at my alma mater.
Seems to me you could donate money to a school you didn’t attend at all. If you donate several million to fund the library…I would think that matters more than your attndance status.