Just as qualified https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2017/08/21/data-provide-insights-advantages-and-qualifications-legacy-applicants
If they are equal, then they should have no issue competing for admission without an extra unearned boost from legacy status, right?
Schools like family ties. Does not have to be a free for all. Also much higher yield.
I’d like to see the data presented on a gradient of selectivity. They say they looked at 64 colleges. Some of those would be more selective than others. My guess would be that it’s at the less selective schools that you’d find the most legacy admits “more qualified” than the overall applicant pool. (I presume “most qualified” in this context is measured solely by GPAs and test scores). But at those schools you’d expect the best-credentialed applicants to be shoo-ins for admission anyway, so it just creates distracting noise in the data.
Everyone knows this already.
At high end colleges, legacy admissions is not about admitting lower qualified kids. It is about selecting legacy kids with good credentials at much higher rates over other non-legacy kids with very similar credentials.
High end colleges are drowning in applications from kids who are “well qualified” or “academic matches.” Tons of kids who look very similar. If you are playing a game where there are lots and lots of ties, having a tie-breaker (i.e. legacy status) is very powerful. So a legacy kid with a 34 ACT has a much better chance of being picked over another 34 ACT kid. Legacy kids are typically going to be average to above-average applicants. The stronger preferences (athlete, race) are more often the ones used for below average applicants.
As noted above, if the legacy kids don’t get any advantage then it should be easy to eliminate legacy admissions.
Legacy admissions provide a big boost to the applicants (just not as big a boost as race or athlete). In return, the schools get well qualified applicants (legacies are not dummies) who are likely (i) to have good yield (especially when legacy is bundled with ED) and (ii) to have lower than average financial aid needs (again, especially when bundled with ED).
On the other hand, use of legacy admissions for public schools (e.g. Florida, Penn State, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Stony Brook, etc.) sends a message that the public schools in those states exist to perpetuate the existing educational elite (whose scions already have substantial advantages in preparing for college anyway), rather than offer the opportunity for those from non-educational-elite backgrounds to join the educational elite.
This ^
At highly selective schools, legacies have the same or greater success on campus compared to non-legacies. It is yield and fit management. Really another version of demonstrated interest. The at least as good record both in application stats and on campus results of legacies relative to non-legacies never seems to permeate the whole argument. In my view it is way less problematic than ED.
UCB – in the case of UVA, the message to legacies is “please come here and pay our much higher out-of-state tuition prices!” Because legacy status is only used for OOS applicants.
VA residents don’t much care (why should they?) if Legacy Larry from Louisiana gets a spot in the OOS pool over Nancy from New Jersey. Especially since the chances are better that Legacy Larry will enroll and also pay the higher freight than Nancy.
One concern with legacy admissions is the degree to which it influences the racial and ethnic composition of the student body. It’s been argued that legacy operates as “affirmative action for white people” because 25 to 40 years ago non-Latino white students comprised a higher percentage of the student body at most highly selective schools than they do today. Since legacies replicate the race/ethnicity of their biological parents, it stands to reason that legacy admissions would tend to tilt toward non-Latino white applicants.
Of course, this is balanced to some extend by admissions preferences for certain racial/ethnic minorities (black, Latino, and Native American applicants). But these racial preferences coupled with affirmative action for legacy non-Latino whites would leave Asian applicants and non-legacy white applicants holding the short straw.
BC – Legacy is more often and I think better described as affirmative action for “rich people” than for “white people.”
URMs get their own preferences, and the studies say those preferences are stronger in operation than the legacy preferences. So the argument about race seems weaker to me than the argument about money.
The pool of white Penn legacies with 34 ACT scores is going to tend to be wealthier than the pool of white non-legacies with 34. And even more so when Penn tells you that you only get the legacy tip if you apply ED.
Legacy (and ED) are good ways for schools to enroll their target for full payors.
Since the lawsuit is against Harvard, it is useful to use Harvard’s own data for some speculation. According to its 2021 class profile: Int students: 12.4%, US URM 14.6%, 11.6% and 2.5% for AA, Hisp and NA respectively, assuming 16.9% for First gen (Stanford’s data, probably similar to H), 13% for legacy, 12% for recruited athletes, 2% for faculty kids, 3% for development admits, and for simplicity sake assuming no overlap for now, what you left with for the domestic unhooked kids are only 12% of the total admits. Of course, since there are overlap in those categories the number would be higher than 12%. But to measure the real legacy advantage you will have to compare it against the pool of US unhooked kids, which means probably only 20-30% of the admits not 87% of the total.
JZD – Here’s an example based on your numbers (which are probably pretty close to how it works).
Harvard has 100 apps where the kids are all pretty much equally qualified. 20 are Harvard legacies, 80 are unhooked.
Harvard takes 6 legacies and 6 unhooked.
You can argue the legacy tip is no big deal: (i) the legacy kids are just as qualified as the unhooked, (ii) Harvard rejected two thirds of the legacies; (iii) legacy is “just” a tie breaker. That would be true but very misleading imo.
But really the story is how powerful the tip is – 30% admit rate versus 7.5%. On equal qualifications. A small pool gets as many spots as a big pool does. The legacy kids with average (for Harvard) qualifications have outcomes that are way above average.
When you add up all the hooks cumulatively, it gets extra tough on those who are hook-less.
And I say a big so what?? Is life going to be so different going to Duke or Georgetown over Harvard?? LOL
“On the other hand, use of legacy admissions for public schools (e.g. Florida, Penn State, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Stony Brook, etc.) sends a message that the public schools in those states exist to perpetuate the existing educational elite (whose scions already have substantial advantages in preparing for college anyway), rather than offer the opportunity for those from non-educational-elite backgrounds to join the educational elite.”
Utter nonsense. Why would any state not want to keep its best and brightest close to home?? Not to mention the non-funding of nearly all of those so-called publics that now rely more on ALUMNI, TUITION, and other sources than the state for revenue. WI provides about 15% of UW’s income. VA less than 10% for UVA. Michigan even less. State schools–LOL.
For UW about 18% have legacy status and 17% are first gen. Hardly crowding out the non-elite.
I received a letter 30+ years ago from the U of Maryland-Balt. saying that it had overadmitted that year, but would not do so in the future. I made clear that it was a public schools and did not give legacy preference as it is a public school and had other priorities it needed to consider.
Now I don’t believe all applicants are created equal and do think the child of a mayor, governor, senator, big wheel would receive special consideration.
@northwesty - the thing is, in your example above, I think you’re using “qualified” as a proxy for stats. I bet in real life eight of the 20 legacy applicants (all with comparable stats) and four of the six legacies admitted would be children of wealthy, involved parents (and probably attended high-end prep schools that afforded them all the advantages, such as enrichment, fancy sports and test prep, that money can buy).
So, in this further elaboration of your example, the admit rate for legacies from wealthy, involved families would be 50% and that of legacies from less-well-off, less-involved families would be 16.7%, both relative to the 7.5% for unhooked - an enormous advantage for the wealthy, connected ones, but a much smaller one for the less-wealthy, less-connected ones than the headline numbers would suggest.