I am not sure where folks come up with the idea that all schools in the South are very conservative? Take the time to look around and you might be surprised. Re Davidson specifically, if you are concerned that your liberal-leaning son might get exposed to conservative ideas, read the following article that discusses the issues a conservative student faced there. It might give you comfort…
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article244739982.html
“My son read your 60% acceptance quote for Harvard and being the mathy kid that he is asked the source and or data set? Is that rate still applicable if you apply regular decision?”
It’s in the Aricadono report from the Harvard lawsuit, you have to find it from the logit tables (no idea what they were till I saw it a post by sgopal2). Anyway it actually could be 40-50% but SCEA would help. @sgopal2 and @Data10 would know more, trust me!
“He has definitely looked into Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech. With MIT, it’s kind of strange that he has a better chance of getting into that other school in Cambridge. One of the things he really likes about Williams is the option to spend a semester at MIT.”
Well you could just spend all four years at MIT! Anyway, are you/they looking for the same college or are ok with different colleges, prefer they be in the same city or state?
Slate provides a summary with respect to Harvard’s legacy admission rate:
@yearstogo My liberal son lives with me (liberal, he just told me I am moderate and I have voted for candidates in both parties) and his conservative leaning Dad, so I am not worried he will be exposed to conservative ideas. All ideas are frequently discussed at our dinner table. Including with his conservative leaning identical twin.
When I think of Davidson as conservative, I guess I mean more formal and more traditional. I enjoyed my 4 years at William and Mary and husband enjoyed med school at UNCCH.
In no way did I mean to imply that Davidson was as conservative as Furman, just that I didn’t see it as a fit for my son. Also. I would like my children to attend a school where all points of views can be heard and respectfully debate so I found the linked article discouraging. Unfortunately, in this current climate those places are hard to find. The world could be a very different place in 2 years when he is applying and son will obviously be more mature, maybe he will become interested in Davidson or another Southern school. If we were in-state, I would certainly be encouraging William and Mary.
@theloniusmonk Thank you for the source, son is digging into it know.
The twins currently think the best option would be 2 different schools in the same area/state. They are also open to either the same school or being in totally different locations. I am trying to treat them as individuals, if they go to the same school I wouldn’t want them living together. If they go to different schools, I would be concerned if one was on a trimester schedule and the other was on a semester schedule.
The twins helped me move their oldest brother back to Northeastern the summer before they started middle school (6th grade). We stayed in Cambridge, near MIT and walked around both Harvard and MIT. Mathy twin on the way home said he wanted to go to MIT and other twin said he wanted to go to Harvard. I spent the 9 hour drive home telling them how great it would be to go to UMDCP. Kind of ironic that their MS dreams are a possibility.
If you are a legacy at Harvard College, then yes, having your kids apply to Harvard confers an enormous advantage. This benefit does not apply to legacies of the other colleges/schools at Harvard. The magnitude of this effect has been quantified in the recent lawsuit.
Google Arcidiacono report (check spelling). I am not allowed to link it here unfortunately. Prof Arcidiacono did an analysis based on admissions data from Harvard admissions. He found that the odds of acceptance at Harvard was 7.83 (log odds of 2.058) for a legacy child. The odds is not the same thing as a probability. Your son will probably know that.
Have him find a copy of the report and read it. The relevant info regarding the logit model is on Table B.7.2. Good luck
I am glad you found the article a bit disturbing. I did when I read it initially.
Frequently on CC, parents are under the impression that most, if not all, colleges/unis in the South are very conservative and that is far from being accurate. I too think that the kids in college should get exposed and hear all sides of relevant issues. Good luck to your son!
By common calculation, the odds for a legacy admission to Harvard (based on the percentage rate from the Slate article), compute to .52 (.34/.66), which converts to 1 acceptance to 2 denials. With figures on this scale this result probably overlaps with intuition and conveys little new information, however.
@Eeyore123 What we can afford is fluid, and so much can change in 2 years. In past 2 college searches, we were eligible for very little need based aid so everything was focused on merit.
NPC for full need schools has us paying about 30K per year total for both boys. I don’t think that would be possible to match with merit unless both were NMF (mathy boy does like UTD if he is NMF). I would say fluid budget for merit school would be a total of 30-60K per year, so 15 to 30 per child.
This thread is making me think a lot of applications to schools that meet full need is not a bad idea in this case.
And Case Western has been discussed, but I thought they were cutting back on merit.
@Mom24boys I don’t think that you will get CWRU to $10k-$15k on merit. However, they are a meets full need school. You would have to run the NPC to see if they get you in range. If you decide to apply, make sure that you show them some love. They are on the list of possible yield protection schools.
Getting to that price point is difficult unless it is done at full need schools. That makes your safety/low match list difficult. I would have him prep for the PSAT to try to make NMSF. I know he doesn’t want a southern big school, but speaking from experience, having an acceptance in October from UAlabama with an all in cost ~6k/year takes a lot of stress out of the process.
@Eeyore123 He will prep for PSATs, my only worry is that NMF scholarships seem to be going away or getting skinnier every year. Oldest got full tuition at Northeastern from being a NMF and that is long gone.
An early admission does take the stress off, I don’t know if things have changed but when my older 2 graduated their HS would not start sending out transcripts until late October so no early decisions. That made the UPitt application more stressful, another great option that seems to be giving less and less merit. Not sure, but I think more schools are allowing you to self report transcripts on applications.
“Frequently on CC, parents are under the impression that most, if not all, colleges/unis in the South are very conservative and that is far from being accurate.”
The assumption is that the states are conservative but the colleges or college towns (Houston, Atlanta, Chapel Hill) may not be.
“By common calculation, the odds for a legacy admission to Harvard (based on the percentage rate from the Slate article), compute to .52 (.34/.66), which converts to 1 acceptance to 2 denials.”
I think it was legacy with academic rating of 1 or 2, iirc, had over 50 or 60% acceptance rate.
Re: Harvard
Yes, but do you know that the student in question will be rated academic 1 or 2, and get acceptable ratings in the other categories used in the Harvard admission process?
@ucbalumnus I can guarantee he won’t get a 1 in sports. He hikes and mountain bikes recreationally, but no organized sports or talent.
Your son may want to consider this Proust Questionnaire interview, which offers support for his current affinity for smaller, undergraduate-focused colleges: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/15/charlie-baker-takes-proust-questionnaire/p2B2GsYFIUnYnVLsZCiX3I/story.html.
Maybe I missed it but what is your budget exactly? Will you be eligible for FA? Having 2 in school might help. That said, you’re two years away. The merit landscape can change quickly. More schools are also moving towards need based aid than merit but some are lowering the income amounts to receive FA. I think Rice was on that list.
Our experience was it’s tought to get private school COA below $35-40k without FA unless you win full tuition scholarships which are very, very competitive.
Southern schools being conservative is falacy. Off-campus maybe. Even most of the Catholic schools are fairly liberal, especially the Jesuit schools. A few religious affiliated schools might still be conservative but they’re well-known.
My friend has two kids at Notre Dame. They’ve been very generous with FA. His son sounds similar to yours. He’s majoring in Engineering or Physics.
Another friend’s son is majoring in applied math at Rochester. He received a nice FA package and turned down CMU. Might be worth a look.
Maybe RPI or SUNY Bing? Lafayette. NC State has a solid math program. Larger than he’s looking for but nice campus, great area, and solid for math and CS. Might be a safety if affordable. They have an 18% OOS cap but said they never reach it.
In this case, we have another incorrect assumption in many, probably most cases…
@chmcnm Yes, we would qualify for financial aid, parent/student contribution if both are accepted to a full need school would be about 30K a year.
Since Dad went to medical school at UNC, I think they consider the kids legacies and helps with out of state admissions, of course doesn’t help with NC State.
While I agree all Southern schools are not conservative unfortunately the politics outside the school impacts the students. Hopefully, Covid will not be an issue in 2 years, but I would currently want my kids in a state with a mask requirement. Time will tell, what area of the country they focus on. First one excluded the South because “everyone of too nice” and ended up in Boston, second want only wanted nice and cold so he ended up in Iowa.
The Harvard lawsuit analysis implies that being a legacy is a strong hook. This analysis was done with dozens of regression controls, including controls for reader ratings of applicants. A legacy who has the same reader scores as a non-legacy in academic, EC, personal, athletic, LORs, alumni interview, … same REA/RD status, same …, was far more likely to be admitted.
In the study at http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf , the author’s model estimates than a White non-legacy with the following chance of admission would see the following increase in chance of admission, if the only change in application was switching from non-legacy to being a single-parent legacy. All reader ratings and other aspects of the application remain the same.
If applicant had 1% chance of admit, increases to 8% chance
If applicant had 5% chance of admit, increases to 31% chance
If applicant had 10% chance of admit, increases to 49% chance
If applicant had 15% chance of admit, increases to 60% chance
The legacy admit rate by for applicants with 1-2 academic rating is based on the Harvard internal report at http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-112-May-1-2013-Memorandum.pdf . Legacies with a 1-2 academic rating (by far the most common rating for legacies is 2) had a 55% admit rate compared to a 15% admit rate for non-legacies with same academic rating.
While 55% admit rate is certainly high, it also implies that just being a legacy and having good stats (academic rating of 2 is highly correlated with stats) is not enough for admission. One also has to be quite successful in other aspects of the application and/or have additional hooks. Some legacies meet the other criteria. Some do not.
One also should note that admit rate has decreased since the time of the study., 'However, as discussed in the report at http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/divergent.pdf , the legacy admit rate has remained largely unchanged over time. It’s the non-ALDC admit rate that has rapid decreases, not the hooked kids. This makes the ALDC hook increasingly powerful over time.
Regarding the OP’s kids, I have no idea what their chance of admission will be and certainly can not give a specific number like 50% or 60%. However, I think it is likely that the Harvard legacy status will make chances at Harvard better than other similarly selective colleges. For example, they might have a better chance at Harvard than many of the other highly selective colleges that have been mentioned in the thread. This is a moot point, if they don’t want to go to Harvard. One should apply to colleges based on desired personal criteria, not just because they may have a good hook.
@Data10 Thanks for your analysis, I don’t know about the mathy twin, but currently Harvard is by far 1st choice for Econ twin. This thread has caused mathy twin to dig into Harvard’s math department and not surprisingly he was more impressed then he expected.