@Libby1901 Although she is a legacy, your D got in because she is highly qualified in her own right. It is important she knows that is the case. Congrats to your whole family – very exciting.
@mgcollegetalk99 start your own thread since you have a different question. Don’t hijack another person’s thread by asking a different, unrelated question.
Sorry didn’t know how to do that lol …new to this @happy1
While there may be a few “legacies” who get in it is my experience that the vast majority of legacies accepted are
very strong students. I am an alum and my daughter is currently a freshman. She was thrilled to be admitted, but she was also accepted at many other top schools. We are pretty sure she would have been accepted anyway, but it sure didn’t hurt her. (of course there are no buildings named after us and we have only modestly donated only modestly over the years.). And, yet we would not have been “shocked” if she did not get in.
My former ND roommate’s son was rejected (not even deferred) in REA last year and he had very strong grades and a 33 or 34 on the ACT. Unfortunately, the kids of a few other ND alum friends met with similar fates. Legacy applicants have to still stand out and present the story as to how they will be a force for good at Notre Dame and not simply talk about how they “grew up loving ND” or “they have been attending football games since they were little”.
“While there may be a few “legacies” who get in it is my experience that the vast majority of legacies accepted are very strong students.”
There’s more than a few.
ND is 20-25% legacy students, about double what you find at other top 20 schools and triple what Gtown does. It is how ND rolls – nothing wrong with it at all. Every school has its own way of doing things when it comes to admission. The XL legacy program at ND is very consistent with its brand and culture – there’s a reason the admit letters start out with “Welcome Home.” And the effects of ND’s big legacy program likely accomplish the same things (increased yield, decreased fin aid requirements) that other schools get by using binding ED (which ND doesn’t have) extensively.
All of the admitted legacy kids are strong students. Legacy policies (at ND and other top schools) generally don’t allow weak students to get admitted. ND admits 45% of legacy applicants (a very high % for the top 20), but that means they still deny 55%. Mostly, the legacy boost allows some smart legacy kids to get admitted over slightly smarter non-legacy kids. And not all of the legacy admitted students need the legacy boost (at ND and also at other top schools).
According to ND, half of the legacy enrolled students would get admitted even if they weren’t legacies. And the other half would not get admitted if they didn’t have the legacy boost (so about 1,000 kids out of the 8,000 total enrollment).
It is what it is, and ND (to its credit) is very transparent about how they do it.
@northwesty In the applicant pool of 2014 (i.e., the “Class of 2018”), the legacy admit rate was 43%. That’s a direct quote provided by Don Bishop in a video posted on Youtube entitled “Meet the Class of 2018.” (One online source cited “about 45%,” but the video has Don Bishop himself quoting the more specific 43% legacy acceptance rate.)
Since that time, the overall Notre Dame admission rate has dropped from 21.1% for the Class of 2018 to 18.9% for the Class of 2021, meaning the percent change in the admissions RATE is ~ 10% lower (i.e., 18.9% / 21.1% ).
If you apply the same ~ 10% change in the admissions rate to the 43% legacy rate as of 2014, that would suggest the legacy admit rate is probably in the neighborhood of 38-39% for the Class of 2021 admitted last year. And per Don Bishop, the legacy admit rate has fallen from “about 50%” (in '12) to 43% (in '14), indicating that the acceptance rate is actually declining for legacies slightly faster than the overall decline in acceptance rates at ND.
Now, having said that, a legacy acceptance rate of ~ 38-39% is still twice as good as the overall 18.7% acceptance rate at ND. In fact, the non-legacy acceptance is probably closer to 16%, since the overall acceptance rate is 18.9%. Although bear in mind that the upper half of legacy applicants have some of the strongest numerical statistics of any applicant at ND.
I also like the way @northwesty points out how ND uses legacy as one of its hedges to protect its yield rate, whereas many other schools use binding ED to engineer the same net result on yield.
Of the 6 or 7 ND legacies I know who got into ND, none of them got into other top 25 schools. All of the 10-12 non-ND legacy kids I know who got into ND got into at least one other top 25 school. Anecdotes are not evidence though.
Sail – so where did all those kids wind up enrolling?
On the facts you describe, you’d expect the yield on the legacy offers to be much higher than the non-legacy group. Which is one reason (among many others) why it makes sense for ND to do it the way they do.
This does really depend on which anecdata you use. You can’t spend much time at all around ND alums without hearing stories about great legacy kids getting turned down. And it is very difficult to compare applications and results with the current focus on ED at some many high end schools. If a legacy chooses to use their REA on Notre Dame and passes on ED at other top 20 schools, their odds for RD at most of those schools are dramatically reduced. In fact, with ED becoming so prevalent in the range of 6-20 or so, comparing between those schools with individual students is way, way harder than it used to be.
My personal anecdata is legacy is overblown, and the more remarkable thing is how the kids of just about every ND alum I know at least consider applying to ND, giving them an outsize legacy applicant pool. I just haven’t had that experience with any other school. As northwesty has said many times, this gives ND the family feel that works well for them.
NW – That is correct. All but one legacy is at ND. Something less than half of the non-legacies are at ND now. And I am not saying I disagree with what ND is doing. Was really a response to post #22.
I have also heard that a donation of $250k as an alum will get your kids in (though you will be full pay for each). That is unofficial and I have not heard anything about any kid no matter what gets in (such as kid with a 2.2 GPA and 20 ACT).
@turtle17 One family friend was told expressly by admissions office not to apply REA with their legacy kids. They actually were not told that until after first applied REA (was deferred). They were convinced an admission was not coming with RD. It did. Second child (who was a weaker applicant) applied RD and was admitted. Several of the kids I know did not use REA at ND.
“This does really depend on which anecdata you use.”
Unlike many schools on this point, ND is very very clear on how they operate. So I’d just go with what they say.
Which is that half the legacy students (roughly 1,000 kids) would get in anyway, and the other half (another 1,000 kids)wouldn’t be there if they weren’t legacies.
“the more remarkable thing is how the kids of just about every ND alum I know at least consider applying to ND, giving them an outsize legacy applicant pool.”
Another reason for the big legacy pool is the fact that the ND parents do tend to have more kids per family than average. That’s not a joke.
What is the point of this legacy thread? The University has chosen how to maintain its unique character and it seems to be working. Otherwise, why would so many people still be applying if it weren’t?
It is Notre Dame’s choice of whom to admit and not. All of this hypothesizing really seems irrelevant as it is really none of our business how they run their business.
@steveo87 I tend to agree with you. Some folks like to target the high legacy percentage at ND as “unfair,” but what folks don’t seem to realize is the important point that @northwesty has made time and time again on these boards but which many people still overlook. Every single school has a tool they use to manage their yield rate.
At a school like Vandy, the Early Decision program helps Vandy lock in a large percentile of its class with binding ED, thus protecting yield. At ND, I suspect the yield rate on legacy kids who get accepted is probably around 75%, there again, a way for ND to manage its yield… not to mention, a way to manage its yield with a large percentile of full-pay families. At other schools, merit aid becomes the tool to convince kids to enroll who otherwise might go to a “bigger name” school if money were not a concern
The key point is that demonizing legacy is silly in the context of what it really is – a yield rate protector. I don’t get the impression that ND is letting in unqualified students regardless of parental affiliation, so if people want to complain about legacy at ND, they might as well complain about ED at Penn, Cornell, Vandy, Emory, etc., etc. @northwesty states this phenomenon more eloquently than I can, but students need to recognize the motivation behind these specific programs from the institution’s point of view.
Many of the colleges that are discussed regularly on this board are private institutions. Its really none of our business how they run their business. And much discussion about state colleges is with people who do not live in the applicable state. What business is it how a state college in another state runs its colleges? This is a college discussion board. Discussions about various colleges and their various policies and how that impacts admissions, aid, attendance and post-graduate life are all part of that.
I think ND’s XL legacy policy is one of the very distinctive parts of the ND recipe. So it gets discussed for the same reason that people discuss parietals, football, the stay house system and milkshake Mass. It helps you understand the kind of institution it is.
Similarly, you’ll see a lot of people discussing ED over on the Duke and Penn boards. Since you really can’t understand Duke and Penn admissions if you don’t understand the huge influence of ED.
But you won’t see any of that discussed over on the MIT boards. Since MIT doesn’t do any legacy admissions at all and also eschews all of the ED/REA/SCEA stuff. Which very much fits with MIT’s brand. Since MIT is selling pure brain-iac meritocracy, not tradition, community, faith and family.
Or look at Gtown. It abstains from ED and uses REA like ND does, but only does one third the legacies. But at the end of the day, both Gtown and ND wind up with similar high yield and high academic selectivity. But you can see how Gtown’s method makes sense for its brand. Since Gtown is less Catholic and more urban/cosmopolitan than ND.
Georgetown only calls itself Catholic. It no longer is.
Policies of schools (at least the ones run well) are not random or by accident.
My son just got in an as a legacy but also got into Georgetown EA with no family ties. My husband and I both attended Notre Dame and none of our roommates/friends legacy kids have gotten in to date. A 4th generation legacy was rejected and ended up at Vanderbilt. Let’s give the kids that get in as legacies some credit. My son made a ton of sacrifices to get the grades/SATs, ACT he did - I think he would’ve gotten in without us.
My wife is a ND grad and has been a contributor – but not a large one – for 25 years. We were explicitly told by the Development Office that legacies should seek a ‘heads up’ about applying REA – and that many legacies are discouraged from doing so. So, the legacies who were admitted REA are supremely qualified. Also, no one on this thread has made the point that I’ve heard Don Bishop make many times: ND grads have twice the number of kids compared to the alums of peer institutions. Don is a heavy data guy so I am confident he has facts to back up his statement.
ND admits that half the legacy kids who get in would not have gotten in without the legacy preference. Easy to say you were one of the ones who would have gotten in without it. But again (per ND’s own statements – as noted in this thread) that isn’t true for half of the legacy admits.
And northwesty mentioned the ND grads having more kids.
Just letting you know that ND legacies do get into other top 25 schools. You stated that all the legacies you know didn’t.