I have attended many reunions and am always struck by how few people I must have known “back in the day” (although it felt like I had a lot of friends, certainly compared to HS!) None of my “inner circle” from college are the famous folk… and although we’ve all made nice lives for ourselves (mostly) none of us are going to show up on someone’s development list any time soon if major bucks are involved.
And few of us have kids who got accepted to Brown (none of mine applied so I always recuse myself from these discussions.) Of course there are hundreds of classmates who don’t show up at reunion at all- I’m not sure whether their kids applied, accepted, etc.
One of my classmates whose kid was not accepted is still a very active alumnus- and I find that particularly impressive. It must really sting to be so heavily involved in so many ways when your kid ends up at Penn (a fine school so no knock on Penn). Kid deferred in the early round and then denied.
I had one kid accepted and one denied. The denial was no surprise - he applied mostly to prove to dh that there wasn’t a chance. He was a kid with a lot of promise, but he hadn’t bloomed yet. Of my two kids he’s the one is actually more likely to become known someday, but he’ll have to get his act together! It hasn’t stopped us from donating our little pittance, goodness knows Harvard doesn’t need the money, but I like participating.
It would be very easy for a school’s IT department to match up legacy applicants to their donor’s database. I think adcoms would want to know if a legacy applicant’s family has been a big or consistent donor.
My brother was not a big donor, but he was a very active alum. He hosted many events and did volunteered work. When his kids were applying, the alumni office flagged his kids’ files. His kids’ had competitive stats, but probably not a shoo-in without the legacy bump. Few posters on CC have also contacted me over the years about whether to ED at my kid’s school when they are legacies, a lot of them have gotten in during the ED round, even with subpar stats sometimes.
Harvard has a $32 billion endowment. Just from tax-free earnings on its endowment, it could afford to allow all undergrads to go for free and buy them a Ferrari on top of it. But it chooses not to do so.
So:
it’s incorrect to state that full payors are needed at Harvard, and
you are feeding the stereotype that URMs are all poor and needing rich white folk to be their patrons
Espenshade’s study of admission decision by elite colleges indicated that legacies receive a SAT bonus of 240 points. This bonus was for all legacies and did not look at donation amounts. I would think that based on these results that a legacy would still benefit even if the parents did not donate or only donated a modest amount.
I absolutely respect your d’s thinking. I guess I’m of the mindset that you play any card you’re handed. Whether that’s having a natural aptitude for x, having parents who can give you advantages, being a legacy, URM, being athletic, pretty, whatever. All those things are " unearned" because life doesn’t distribute privileges fairly. I also believe that everyone has burdens, so the "rich white legacy " people may be envying may have his or her own demons too.
When I attended an HYP-like school, there were two legacies on a team I was associated with. One’s father was a civil engineer, and the other’s was a businessman who’d started and ran an equipment manufacturing company. Both were white. Both kids followed in their parents’ footsteps in their careers. Although both were bright, only one was a dutiful student.
The team recently had two legacies on it, one of them a double legacy. In both cases, a legacy parent is a doctor. And in both cases, the legacies are black.
Legacy admissions and the “advantage” conferred are not remotely close to the popular “rigged” image.
The real issue is that at the most highly selective universities, admissions in general are rigged, but they’re rigged across the board in favor of the most highly competent students who can contribute to and benefit from four years at elite academic institutions. Its not at all unusual for that selected group to include children of people who previously attended, based on the fact that the schools have always been selective.
Possibly a history of donations or other contributions to the university could make a difference at the margin, but I would guess that this might occur in cases that you could count on your fingers.
Schools with large endowments typically spend more of their endowments to pay the investment managers of their endowments than they do on education. Yale’s manager did yield 36 percent annually so it’s arguably worth it. But are they hoarding the money? Here’s an argument that they should be required to spend about 8 percent–by law–on education. Private foundations are required to spend 5 percent of their principal annually. Only 14 percent of schools with endowments over $100 million failed to earn 8 percent.
“We’ve lost sight of the idea that students, not fund managers, should be the primary beneficiaries of a university’s endowment. The private-equity folks get cash; students take out loans.”
“Personally I never understood the appeal of wanting your children to go the same school you went to. Don’t you want them to create their own (new) experiences and live their own life? Why the need for them to follow in your footsteps?”
We explicitly told our kids not to look at our alma mater because it was in our (metaphorical) back yard and we wanted them to explore the country, not feel they had to follow our footsteps, yada yada. Both were familiar with the campus, having attended summer programs there ( plus the occasional football game). We schlepped them far and wide. S came back to us and said he really felt it was the right school for him, and he could articulate why. Our hearts were in our throats but S is a kid who is very feelings and intuition based, and we could tell he was serious. So we said fine - if you’re going to pledge your troth, use your double legacy card (alas no development card!) in ED, which he did.
That kid squeezed everything and more out of his experience there. Frankly more than H or I ever did. It was wonderful to see him in a place familiar to us, but forging his own path. Ironically he did do two things just like dear old dad - he joined the same fraternity and he was an RA his senior year. But he is his own person and he put his own spin on things. Zero regrets. He was absolutely right to make that choice and I couldn’t be prouder of him as a young man if I tried.
"really think that accepting legacies is more about tradition and also perpetuating the old boy’s networking club. If you don’t accept enough of them, Harvard would be less attractive because students wouldn’t be rubbing shoulders with the children of the powerful. "
Who are we kidding though? The bulk of the alums at elite schools aren’t “powerful.” They’re comfortable upper middle class, maybe one per centers, but that’s not “power.” When the powerful people come to town and want their kids admitted, it doesn’t matter if they themselves went there.
My D has always wanted to go to my alma mater, yet we are totally different people. I was a public school kid from a working class family. She went to a top independent private school. I had never been on a plane until I visited the school, she’s been flying forever. I came home to work summers, she galavanted around Europe. The one thing we had in common is wanting a top notch education. Other than that, totally different experiences. However, she saw my love for my school and that of my classmates. She didn’t really understand it before, she does now.
I know of a college that puts large numbers of kids of alums on the waiting list for admission. Most of these kids have no chance of really getting admitted, but the parents can say that their kid was “almost admitted” and it helps to keep the donations flowing.
Some well-staffed admissions offices make personal calls to rich alums to explain why they were not able to offer admission.
One major study found that many alums do increase their giving before their kids applies, and that many alums do stop donating if their kid is rejected.
There is a big difference: one college may choose the child of the alum when there are two equally qualified applicants, while another college may choose an applicant of lesser qualifications because of their parents.
There’s an interview with the recently retired admissions director at Amherst. He noted that legacies have a fifty percent admit rate, yet only constitute 10 percent of the study body. Over the years, it gets through the grapevine not to apply unless you’re otherwise competitive.
"The bulk of the alums at elite schools aren’t “powerful.” They’re comfortable upper middle class, maybe one per centers, but that’s not “power.”
Correct.
37.3 percent of Harvard legacies come from families with incomes of $500,000 or more. Which is the top 0.5% of U.S. incomes. Pretty safe guess that a majority (perhaps even a super majority) are at least one percenters ($395k).
$500k of annual income isn’t going to put your name on the library. But it will allow you to pay $60k a year for four years, plus a few grand in donations to the alma mater per year. Pretty much anyone $250k or above is a full payor at Harvard.
If you are seeking full pay tuition dollars plus high SAT scores, the legacy pond is where you want to be fishing.
I can’t speak for other schools, but my understanding is that at Brown the alumni office sends over to admissions a file with info on both donations and activity – how often the parents came to reunion, interviewed applicants, etc. That’s how it was done a few years ago, and I doubt it’s changed. I’ve known double legacy kids who were denied admission even though their parents gave money every year and were active volunteers.
Fire- I don’t believe it’s changed except that I suspect there is no more "file’ to send- it’s all on an easily checkable database. I have classmates who run events for kids who have been accepted-- and they go all -out for kids who are first Gen or who live in an area where applying to a college in Rhode Island that nobody has ever heard of is an uncommon thing. It’s a wonderful thing for alumni who can’t donate a library but can provide the personal touch for promising students who haven’t yet committed to attending.
Brown actually offers admissions counseling for alumni I think partly to set expectations around the legacy thing. We utilized it for our older D (who didn’t apply). It was a nice service.
“There’s an interview with the recently retired admissions director at Amherst. He noted that legacies have a fifty percent admit rate, yet only constitute 10 percent of the study body. Over the years, it gets through the grapevine not to apply unless you’re otherwise competitive.”
If legacies have a 50% admit rate and make up 10% of the class, then that means that legacies make up 20% of the applicant pool. (Assuming 100% yield for simplicity). That speaks highly to the positive experience their parents had.
You simply cannot evaluate if there are “too many” or “too few” legacies without knowing how “thick” they are in the applicant pool.
College A and College B could each have 10% legacies. College A could have few legacies applying, but show lots of love and “over favor” them. College B could actually under favor legacies, but they are so thick in the applicant pool that they still get a lot even if they consciously make an effort to turn them away.