My S was rejected and we are shocked. 1540 SAT, 99 GPA, took every available AP course offered in HS, Captain Varsity Lacrosse, Co-Captain Varsity Football, President Robotics. Youth Ambulance Corps Volunteer, solid ECs, outstanding Letters of Rec, brother is sophomore at ND!!! HOW WAS HE REJECTED??? utterly disgusted I feel it’s a pure disgrace to let legacies in over students who have given blood, sweat & tears like my own did. ND was his dream since he was a toddler, and he did everything in his power to get accepted. We were there visiting my other son and it was during Early Decision Accepted students weekend so my high school senior son met many of the accepted students and his stats were well above theirs! I am blown away by the decision and he is devastated. ND has no idea the kind of kid they rejected.
Accepted to:
Clemson, Miami, Maryland, Penn State, Ohio State (all w honors and scholarships). Waiting on: Yale, Cornell, Michigan all of which he interviewed with and said went very well.
I totally understand your frustration and disappointment. I have a son who will apply in the fall and he will be a very competitive candidate, but we are being realistic in managing his expectations. My husband and I are both grads, and our daughter is a freshman who was accepted REA last year. She made the Dean’s List first semester and is well on her way to making it again this semester. I would argue that many (perhaps not all) legacy admits would be successful during the admissions cycle at ND even without that designation.
We are also schocked. 35 ACT, 4.6 GOA, 12 AP classes, 2 sport varsity athlete and attended IEP at ND last summer. I have no idea what this school is looking for!
Is it me or is ND trying to reduce the number of legacies? I agree with many who have stated that legacy students will understand the value of ND. My DS is not a legacy, but enjoying his first year.
@usma87 There are 2 things that I’ve thought Notre Dame really pays attention to… (1) The university understands all the benefits that come with a top-20 US News ranking and actively works to ensure its policies are in step with any rankings methodology tweaks. And (2), the university is determined to preserve its stellar yield rate.
On point (1), with the US News college rankings introducing factors last year that measure “Social Mobility” and “Economic Success,” ND’s Enrollment Division knows that it needs to enroll more socioeconomic diversity. Those new measures in the rankings are weighted at ~ 13% of the scaled score, and so a school like UCLA that has a high Pell Grant student population soared in the last rankings. ND needs to get more low income students to enroll if it wants to maintain its lofty ranking. Of the top-20 schools in the rankings, ND likely is the least diverse in terms of the racial profile of the student body (74% caucasian). Arguably, increasing the socioeconomic profile of the student body might also carry ancillary “diversity” benefits as well. I think ND’s laser-focused on remaining in the top-20, and they will adjust their admissions process if changes to the rankings methodology necessitate it.
On point (2), so far there is no indication that ND is actively working to reduce the number of legacies. For the past 20 years, and probably longer, ND’s incoming classes have ranged between 22-25% legacy, with last year’s incoming class at 23%. Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of well qualified legacy students in the RD round this year got rejected or waitlisted, the sort of students that you might normally have expected to get in. However, my own theory – based on nothing more than a hunch – is that the best bang for your buck as a legacy applicant is to apply REA. By doing so, you’re telling ND loudly and clearly that you did not apply Early Decision 1 anywhere else, and I’d wager that historical trending assures ND that the yield rate on legacy students applying REA is above 80% if they get accepted. Meanwhile a legacy student with great stats who applies RD is not only putting themselves into a much bigger pool, but they may also be signaling to ND that they wanted to “keep their options open.” People who want to keep their options open are not yield-friendly applicants for colleges. Given how yield conscious ND is, and given that ND hasn’t gone the ED1 route like Rice, Wash U, Emory, Vandy, etc., you’d better believe ND’s Enrollment Division wants to maximize the yield rate on qualified legacy students.
Even if the legacy admit rate remains at about 2x the non-legacy admit rate, we’re talking about an overall admit rate of, what, ~ 17% for this incoming class. That probably works out to a 14% acceptance rate for non-legacies and a 28-30% acceptance rate for legacies. Meaning that even legacy applicants have a 7 in 10 chance of walking away disappointed. Top-20 college admissions, by virtue of the numbers, is a formula for heartbreak.
@GeronimoAlpaca Excellent analysis of the fact matter, as always. You certainly would be an excellent fit and addition to the ND Class of 2023, hoping you still will be able to join this year. All the best!
Agreed. Excellent summary of the issues. If you have a kid who is a legacy with stats that fall in the mid-50 percent or higher, I would strongly recommend applying REA for all of the same reasons that @GeronimoAlpaca listed. If ND is your dream school, you certainly aren’t sending that message by waiting and applying RD.
My DD friend just got in. She had average 32 super scored, a very high GPA 4.5, average AP scores and nothing outside own high school honors or awards. She is latina with her mother a native of South America though both parents have always worked within a university, professor and diversity counselor. I was shocked she got in.
I definitely feel for the legacy candidates who had competitive stats and were not accepted. I agree that if you’re a legacy with high stats you need to let ND know it’s your top choice by applying REA.
@GeronimoAlpaca - I had no real evidence, just a sense that ND was de-emphasizing legacies. I agree that legacies really need to go REA to demonstrate intent. If it really means that much to you, why not REA? Not being a legacy family, I am an outsider on this one.
@GeronimoAlpaca @usma87 My daughter, who was rejected RD, would have been 4th generation at ND…She has a 4.5 gpa but only had a 1450 SAT…We had 4 people who work at ND tell her NOT to apply REA with her average SAT’s, that she would be much better off in the regular pile. So, she was not in any way keeping her options open by applying RD, but doing what we were told was the way to go by ND. Just wanted to share that.
@Lulu15 I think the 3.8 unweighted GPA was probably a bigger drag on the application than the SAT. Just my opinion. Anything below upper 3.8’s unweighted and you get into danger territory. Obviously some schools grade harder than others, but I’m assuming that the admissions staff are aware of schools that have that reputation.
@Lulu15 interesting that you were told that. Was it someone from the enrollment division that gave you that guidance? My DS who was accepted REA is not a legacy based on the typical definition (his grandfather is an alum), but we were given all sorts of advice from alums and people inside ND circles. Some said do NOT apply REA because it is a much more competitive pool, etc. I actually think I got the best advice here on College Confidential, from his guidance counselor, and directly from the regional admissions officer about REA vs RD…and that advice was to apply REA if your application is in tip top shape. If not, then wait. So we aimed for the REA and went for it. This advice, however, was based on his particular set of circumstances and stats (he had very high test scores). I echo the others in saying that I do think in an REA application (vs EA), you are signaling to the school that it is likely a top choice because of the restrictions that go along with that application route.
Excellent analysis, as always, @GeronimoAlpaca ! And I echo the wishes that you will join the ND Class of 2023! While I can’t speak to ND’s laser like focus on maintaining its top 20 USNEWS ranking, it certainly has for many years. Many universities are moving to more aggressively bring in URM, First Gen, and lower income students. Don Bishop has been very open about Notre Dame’s enrollment profile and his desire to bring in more of the above - but not at the cost of sacrificing the quality of admitted students. I respect that. So perhaps Notre Dame has been a bit slower than some other schools in this regard.
@blueher With the increasing competitiveness of the ND applicant pool, there are, unfortunately, many highly qualified candidates that do not get admitted. Last year, Don Bishop said 11% of the Class of 2021 would not have been admitted to the Class of 2022. Note that 11% is not a round number, obviously reflecting some serious analysis. The Class of 2023 may deliver similar results. This is not unique to Notre Dame. While at most schools, legacy applicants typically enjoy an admission rate twice the normal rate - this is a very deceiving statistic. I would argue that many legacies are very highly qualified, and that similarly qualified applicants from non-alumni families would enjoy close to these kind of admit rates. And as CC can readily attest to, there are no guarantees (statistically maybe 70% of legacies DO NOT get admitted) that even very highly qualified legacies will gain admission.
As to REA, ND clearly sends a message that you should only apply REA if you are at the top of the applicant pool in terms of GPA, test scores etc. Frankly, the much higher REA admit rate (and there are a lot of other factors going on here) compelled my son to apply REA to ND - and was accepted. Plus, his stats were not going to get any better, and I have a hard time believing that ND would actually reject an REA applicant who they might normally consider in RD. My son was in the top half of the ND enrolled students profile, but not off the charts. I absolutely believe that applying REA (clearly stating that there is no ED application out there) sends a message of interest and commitment to ND…which arguably (and does, in fact) translate to higher yields. Which Notre Dame values.
But, in closing, applications to top 20 schools are more likely to deliver disappointment than excitement - even for the very highest qualified candidates. One can make some overall guesses about admissions likelihood to a pool of top 20 schools, but divining which ones are likely to be the admit schools and which ones the deny schools is much much harder. My son was admitted to ND and a couple of other “peer” schools, but denied by a larger number of “peer” schools. From the start of the process, I told him not to fall in love with any school until the admissions results come in. It is just too heartbreaking. Having gotten in to ND REA, he spent time at the Early Admit week-end on campus, did a day (which ended up being two days) with a student and attended the local alumni club events. ND won his heart well before his RD results came in, which frankly, he couldn’t have cared less about by then. None of this could have been anticipated at the start of the process.
I guess it is impossible to generalize in terms of optimal application strategies for legacy or otherwise strongly hooked Notre Dame students. In our case, DD applied Restrictive Early Action at one of the HPYS’s, which prevented her from applying REA to Notre Dame. She then applied ND RD and was admitted, without having expressed above-mentioned REA top-choice ND designation. In fact, the additional time gave our daughter the opportunity to focus and further strengthen all aspects of her Notre Dame application, which most likely made all the difference. @Lulu15 is correct in that ND’s advice from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions for legacy applicants is a) only to submit your application when it is ready and in optimal shape and b) if you do consider REA, to make sure that legacy student’s grades and test scores are within the upper band for the expected REA applicant group. We also have been assured, and believe this to be the case based on extensive Naviance data points from our feeder HS with many ND legacy students, that there is no noticeable difference in admission outcomes between ND REA and RD for those applicants.
Ultimately, a student can only control those aspects of the ND application (s)he can influence, the rest is out of the student’s hands. The emphasis parents tend to put on REA vs. RD at Notre Dame therefore tends to be slightly exaggerated, we believe. This would change if and when Notre Dame were to change its REA admission program to ED, as Boston College for example recently decided to do, as this, unlike REA, would require a true ND commitment from students and their parents.
@Lulu 15~
As you know my son was also rejected from ND last year. All along we were planning on RD not REA because he was waiting on a research paper to be accepted (ultimately it was accepted and he presented his findings at an international sports engineering conference in Australia in April)…following the theory of applying when app was strongest.
Our local AO (who is no longer with ND), highly advised my son to apply REA. In retrospect he probably should have applied RD as planned.
I have my next son’s numbers in my mind at the moment but stat wise my son was very strong.
Hi — rejected legacy here. 3.9 UW/4.8 W. 1450 SAT. rank 20/600. International Baccalaureate canidate, extra classes at local college and online. (4 HLs, 2 SLs). Incredibly strong essays (written over months) and letters of rec. (includes one from a state judge).
founder of a club, charity, president of my class, captain of the #3 soccer team in the state and the school varsity tennis team, etc. have a job. Interned at prestigious law firm and very active in women’s rights movement.
This is the same story for my whole friend group.
So, no. There is obviously no preference to legacy’s. Because I worked insanely hard to get into ND, and it obviously didn’t pan out, even with the legacy hook. They still have to turn away plenty of overqualified legacies.
As for blood, sweat, and tears — it’s absolutly insulting to infer that legacy kids don’t work as hard and that they are only there because of their family.
Sorry bout it, but it had to be said.
@wreather The blood, sweat and tears comment got to me as well. My son basically gave everything he had to get into ND as a legacy. He was incredibly committed to making it come true. His stats were very high and he did apply early. As a legacy freshman at ND he’s made the dean’s list and been nominated to potentially be a Fulbright scholar. I don’t think it’s fair to assume legacy applicants somehow assume they don’t need to work as hard. I feel for you and am sure you have other great options.
@blueher I’m sure your son is amazing. My daughter is too and is a legacy and was deferred EA then rejected. We’ll all go crazy trying to understand the logic. Sounds like your son will forge his own way with lots of success. But these rejections for such qualified students definitely sting.
Thanks for your encouragement. We are hurting so badly since the decision, hard to think of anything else but must stay strong and move forward. It is just so disheartening how hard these kids have worked and honestly belong there as they have rightfully earned a spot, only to be turned down to kids who do not have even close to the credentials or scores but get admitted because of ethnicity. It is reverse discrimination. He had every odd stacked against him. Nonetheless he will be successful, but it will never be quite the same experience as Notre Dame. My other son is equally upset as he wanted his brother there with him. Thank you again for your consoling words and I wish your daughter the best as well.