If my grandfather graduated from Yale does that count for legacy when applying? For the record it is from my father’s side so we share the same last name.
Hmmm… this is counter to what we receive in admissions reports from Yale. We get info on legacy admit rates divided into two sections. Kids and grandkids of Yale College grads and kids and grandkids of Yale grad and professional school grads. Since Yale admissions tracks and reports these figures, I have to assume that being a grand-kid matters.
I am kind of puzzled by this policy based on the questions Yale asks in their supplement. They are allowing one to respond with multiple levels of relatives without the degree having to be an undergrad. I believe what Gibby is stating is the correct response for Harvard though.
T26E4’s information certainly suggests that Yale factors parent graduate degrees into admissions in some way, though it might give more of an edge to those with undergraduate degree parents i.e. primary legacies.
Different schools have different definitions of legacy. As noted, at Harvard it’s only Harvard College graduate parents, which makes sense given that Harvard is primarily a graduate institution in terms of numbers of students (about 2/3 of Harvard students are in graduate programs).
At Stanford, legacy includes children of graduate school alums and it sounds like it’s the same at Yale.
Ok. My grandfather got an undergraduate degree at Yale and a masters at Cornell. So I guess Cornell would consider it more
@gibby, sorry, I didn’t mean to get you into debate on a weekend. Your quote seemed succinct and to the point so I offered it.
@T26E4 do you happen to have the link to that?
No link. Proprietary info sent to yale alumni volunteers
I will defer to T26E4, but according to this Yale Daily news article, the definition of legacy is: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2005/02/16/legacies-still-maintain-edge-in-admissions/
And, FWIW: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/legacy-2/
My post was from memory. I’ll try to confirm the grand-kid thing.
If I recall correctly, the application also asks about any relatives employed (current or past) at Yale. Beyond children of current tenured or tenure-track faculty, which from what I understand can be a factor in decisions, I’m not sure what impact (if any) this information has on decisions.
Here’s my $.02 cents, take it for what it’s worth:
Admissions officers at top college’s are keenly aware that a majority of their alumni donate large sums of money to their alma mater every year. I would imagine that a multi-million dollar alumni donation would be noted in an email or press release from the university. However, smallish donations – donations from say a hundred dollars to a million dollars – might not get the same attention.
The Admissions Office is walking a delicate line. They don’t want to offend any alumni who are currently giving money to the university by outright rejecting their son or daughter’s application. So I imagine that many legacy student’s or university employee’s children who are on the cusp, or below the cusp, are placed on the waitlist as a sense of protocol or obligation. (I realize HY Admissions says they absolutely don’t do this, but I’ve also witnessed many legacy C students with sub-2000 SAT put on the waitlist, only to be rejected – and it’s not been because those student’s are stellar scholars.)
Admissions wants to be sensitive to their alumni and employee’s, but at the same time they are not going to admit a a sub-par student just because they are a relative or an employee.
That makes sense to me gibby. Just like alums, it’s smart to be sensitive to employees especially if their kids aren’t going to make it in.
How about siblings? My son is starting at Yale this fall. Does it help his sisters?
There are lots of sibling sets at Yale–this is true now, and was true 35 years ago. Whether it actually helps or not is not clear.
I know at another Ivy, I and a friend applied, and both of us had siblings attending at the time we applied.
I got in, he didn’t. He had better grades etc. than me.
I must conclude that there are other things more important than having a sibling attending therefore.
^^ maybe the other sibling didn’t “represent” as well as you did 
I know that there is some kind of consideration for employee children because when we asked how many from CT were accepted we were told that the number was 30 but that included the children of professors.
When I attended a top Ivy, there were a fair number of siblings as well. However, a fair number of them were also legacies as well.