<p>Legacy is affirmative action in reverse. I’m against both, as university admissions should be based on academic merit only, as it is the case in other countries.</p>
<p>Most legacies are not necessarily undeserving, and I’m not surprised so many of them apply to their parents’ alma maters and turn out to be just the kinds of students that schools like. Legacy students tend to be the kinds of students who would get into the school anyway, regardless of their legacy status. Think about it: the student from Harvard goes on to be successful and comfortably upper-middle-class, marries someone with a similar educational and socio-economic background, and then raises their children to have a high respect for academics, higher education, and achievement. </p>
<p>If you think academic performance is largely hereditary, the (future) legacy applicant got the great genes from the parents who went to great schools. If (as is more likely) academic performance is related to upbringing and parental involvement, then the kid was sent to good schools, talked about their homework over dinner, got driven by their parents to their after-school activities, and went to SAT prep classes on the weekends. Academic performance isn’t a random lottery, as unfair as that fact is. The students who are legacies, in general, are those best prepared to apply to selective colleges. And when time comes to apply to those selective colleges, where do you think the parents are eager to have their child apply? And if you knew your parents went to what is now considered one of the best schools in the country, wouldn’t you be interested in applying (especially if you think you’ll have an advantage as a legacy)?</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the best schools get a TON of legacy applicants, both because parents are happy when their kids attend their alma maters and because they think their kids will have an advantage because they’re a legacy. So I’m not surprised that legacies make up 10-20% of admitted students. I’m also not terribly surprised that legacies have a high rate of admittance, given that they will generally have the social and cultural backgrounds that these schools select for with their “merit-based” admissions selection.</p>
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<p>True for a private school. Public schools however are legally obliged to comply with the 14th amendment (equal protection clause of the constitution) and federal statutes. In the past, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of affirmative action in a public university was illegal when it amounted to a “de facto” quota system. The Court also said though (and later reaffirmed) that race could be used as one out of many criteria for admission provided its use was “narrowly tailored” to meet a “compelling interest” (e.g. to promote the diversity of the student body without necessarily creating quotas). </p>
<p>I don’t think the legacy issue has ever been examined by the federal courts, not least because legacy admissions happen mostly in private institutions. However, I tend to think a similar reasoning would apply.</p>
<p>@pwoods</p>
<p>Studying at a top university and having a successful career does NOT translate to instilling the values of academia and learning in your children. I have no idea what you base this assumption on, apart from the laughable “good university=rich person > rich person + rich person=good parents > good parents=overachieving children”.</p>
<p>Case in point: my parents went to great schools and never once in my life have they put pressure on me to do well in school. And before you argue that I’ve done well in school regardless (because of my domestic environment), I haven’t. I consider myself a reasonably smart person, but I’m a worse student than my parents were at my age.</p>
<p>If you’re comparing the population of legacy applicants to that of applicants as a whole, then you have to consider the general trends. Do you really think legacy applicants are less wealthy, less likely to go to private school, and less likely to be well-prepared for college than that of the entire applicant population?</p>
<p>I don’t think EVERY child of parents who goes to a top university will be a great student who applies to that university, but I think that of those who do, they will generally be better prepared for college admissions than the applicant population as a whole. To put it another way, the kind of student who applies to a top college and is a legacy of that institution is more likely to be the kind of student that school wants (higher test scores, more leadership, whatever) than the average applicant to that school.</p>
<p>Everything that a school selects for is linked to an applicant’s social background, and legacy applicants, at least more so than the general applicant population, tend to have that social background and therefore those admissions “points.” I’m not saying it’s fair, but it’s terribly logical.</p>
<p>Ghostt: Anecdotal evidence doesn’t convince me; I’m really just looking at the overall trends. But, really, isn’t the fact you’re on CC evidence of the fact that you’re well-prepared for the college admissions process?</p>
<p>bruno: The schools aren’t actually giving students “points” because they’re legacies. As I’ve tried to point out, the correlation does not imply a causation. The “legacy = 240 SAT points boost” is a regressive statistic that the study author found when he looked at the data, not something admissions officers actually write on an applicant’s application. It’s just part of the holistic admissions process, so it’s fully in accordance with Michigan.</p>
<p>Not so.</p>
<p>You can just as easily assume that most legacies will be inclined to rely on their status and forgo studying for the SAT/whatever, and that admissions officers will be more lenient with them.</p>
<p>Do you really think that being from the upper middle class (because this is the ONLY assumption about the pool of legacy applicants at top universities you can make with any degree of certainty; there’s a much, much stronger correlation between Harvard graduates and successful careers, for example, than between Harvard grads and love for learning) gives you an intellectual/educational advantage over the unwashed masses that is big enough to warrant a 30% acceptance rate at schools where rates below 10% are the norm?</p>
<p>The adcoms at those schools know how to spot the difference between someone who has the privilege to go to a top private high school and benefits from private tutoring and professional counseling, and someone who’s naturally intelligent. If they choose to accept the former, it’s not because he/she is better qualified.</p>
<p>Edit:</p>
<p>To examine your argument, you need to find information about, say, the acceptance rate for Yale legacies at Princeton, or for Harvard legacies at Stanford. If, as I strongly suspect, it turns out to be much lower than the acceptance rate for that school’s own legacy admits, then your argument–that legacies at top universities tend to be superior to normal candidates–falls apart.</p>
<p>Seriously, do you really believe legacies are just really good students in general and this is why they get accepted to their parents’ alma maters?</p>
<p>Also. You seem to contend that legacies are not simply “better students” but better suited to going to a top university because of their social background. But don’t forget that top universities purport to want social diversity.</p>
<p>A book cited in the Chronicle legacy article is called Affirmative Action for the Rich. I’m sure that, statistically, it’s true that the majority of legacy acceptances come from affluent families, especially those that have been well-heeled for generations.</p>
<p>But on a more anecdotal level–what I find interesting is that, although legacy admission is largely a phenomenon of the 20th Century (particularly the second half of it), it is old enough now that some of the “legacy” preference is going to children (and perhaps even grandchildren) of those who were, themselves, accepted to elite schools not due to their legacy connections but due at least in part to their minority or first-generation status.</p>
<p>When I go to my husband’s Amherst College reunions and homecomings, I chat with his friends and classmates who went to Amherst during the 1960’s and early 1970’s as the result of the college’s efforts to significantly boost the African-American enrollment. Many of these alumni came from disadvantaged backgrounds but are now attending the Amherst events not just as alums but also as proud parents. </p>
<p>My husband–although he is Caucasian, not a member of a minority group (unless you count Albanian, which his mother does 
)–grew up in a single-parent household in a housing project, eating government-surplus food. He, too, was part of the college’s effort to diversify the student body by offering generous financial aid to first-generation applicants. I don’t know if our son, who is 13, will apply to Amherst–too soon to say. But if he does, any “legacy” consideration that he receives will not fully mesh with the prevailing conception that “legacy” means privilege passed down through generations.</p>
<p>So, when colleges like Amherst weigh legacy ties as part of a holistic admissions evaluation, they are now broadening the circle of privilege that “legacy admission” implies, and in what I believe is a positive way.</p>
<p>Yet, overall, I have mixed feelings about the role (if any) that legacy ties should play in admission decisions. But I have so many other complaints about this process :eek: that are ahead of the legacy issue on the list that this concern pales in comparison.</p>
<p>College admissions have always been fraught with strangeness. For decades, state colleges and flagships were basically an open door for applicants, devoid of some of the more egregious forms of ethnic and religious discrimination that was associated with the elitists in the northeast and some others. But then affirmative action took hold, based upon a notion that test scores dont tell the entire story and schools were responsible for holding minorities back (poor black neighborhoods and tax base etc). Then state schools got involved in heavy affirmative action and resulted in some nasty lawsuits that made it to the Supreme Court, notably at Michigan and Berkeley.</p>
<p>Colleges attempt to “craft an incoming class.” They could fill most of their classes, at the elite level, with kids with perfect 1600 SAT’s. But they don’t, and for a reason. To enhance the overall experience of all students, to provide opportunity, which has been borne out by students doing very well at those colleges despite having lower SAT scores. </p>
<p>Legacy, religious preference, affirmative action, athletes sliding in with low scores on scholarships, all sorts of quirky methods and results. Sometimes its just overt discrimination against anyone applying for financial aid, and favoring kids with lower scores whose parents can stroke a full price check. There is injustice throughout the admissions/financial aid/scholarship process. Doesn’t make it right, it only means its hard to clean it all up.</p>
<p>Using “pure merit” is a code word for elitist SAT scores. Neither the schools nor most reasonable people want that. SAT scores are a poor indicator of success in college anyway. If we did that, then all the kids with 1600 SAT scores would end up at a very few (and same) colleges, year after year. Not healthy for our country and society. </p>
<p>I am a proponent of total transparency and truth. Put the REAL story out there, the POLICIES, up front and in black and white for ALL to see, not buried in some statistical report to the Dept. of Education few can get a hold of. </p>
<p>Let people see: “We admit 10% with SAT scores above 1500, 10% with scores above 1400, 10% Legacy, 10% affirmative action-with a minimum score of 1100, 10% athletes, 10% full price tuitiion, etc.” </p>
<p>Whatever the formula (that they all have…its not random…its all by design), put it out there. But they won’t. Because they don’t want the TRUTH out there and they don’t want to be sued.</p>
<p>By the way, the Ivy League didnt just discriminate against Jews decades ago…many discriminated against Catholics, specifically Irish and Italians. Thankfully 99% of that is gone. But so did the elite Prep Schools that fed into the Ivy League. Now, the Ivy League is perhaps well known for reaching out to people in North Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, etc, as they are still well known for taking kids from those elite feeder prep schools.</p>
<p>I’d rather have an imperfect system than to try to regulate or legislate a perfect system that ends up creating a one-size-fits-all admissions structure. As soon as people attempt to make admissions “fair”, the person/group that gets to define “fair” wins the day. So who gets to decide what’s fair? A group with limited or casual acquaintance to the university, or the university community itself? The university is fully capable of reflecting societal trends while advancing their own interests as an institution. </p>
<p>What this means for legacy admission is that it is up to the school to decide. As long as the college-bound population is increasing faster the the number of seat at elite institutions–and they have been for the past decade–more applicants are going to feel snubbed. However, the applicant’s sense of what it is fair should not be shaped by their own admission results.</p>
<p>What if, theoretically, a highly selective / well regarded college did decide to give really strong preferences to legacies (beyond feather on the scale, or thumb on the scale)? The school would start tilting more white and upper-middle-class, most likely. More full-pays which benefits the school. Better yield as everyone wants to go to Ye Olde Alma Mater and the parents speak highly on it. The academics would probably still be fine. Honestly, I can see a college deciding (whether implicitly or explicitly) that this is a good strategy. And if other people don’t like it? They need not apply; the market will sort it all out.</p>
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<p>Not sure the market will sort it all out. Colleges keep this information very close to the vest. If the figures reported in the article are correct, and if it were widely known just how advantaged legacies are in the admissions process, there might well be a negative market reaction among those disadvantaged by that policy. Instead, elite colleges portray themselves (and allow others to portray them) as purely meritocratic institutions, impartially in pursuit of the “best” students, spiced up by “diversity” considerations of race, ethnicity, geography, extracurricular interests, etc. Well, hogwash. If the data in the article are right and legacies are ON AVERAGE getting the equivalent of a 160-point SAT boost, then IMO the colleges are really pulling the wool over people’s eyes. I’m all for market solutions so long as consumers have the information they need to make informed and intelligent choices. But when the information is hidden, you get market failure—in this case, thousands of gullible kids shelling out substantial money to apply to colleges where their real chances of admission are significantly lower than advertised, because up to 25% of the class is going to be filled with legacies, some fraction of whom might have made it on their own merits WITHOUT the legacy preference, but the rest there because the admissions office put a thumb on the scale in their favor while telling the rest of us not to worry, “Legacy is just a ‘tip’ factor that doesn’t really matter in the long run.” Nonsense. A 160-point SAT boost is not just a “tip factor,” that’s a double standard.</p>
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<p>Read my post:</p>
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<p>In what way is this kid’s case justified? Affirmative action for… what exactly? The guy came from a rich family, and was not descended from oppressed people like many other African-Americans. He was just a kid born into a fortunate family, who also happened to be African.
These cases are not the norm, but this is why I believe in financial affirmative action - there are no “exceptions” like this one.</p>
<p>I question this, “i knew a kid who…”
After all, these stories are often anecdotal. And sadly enough, people simply believe these stories without knowing everything. Even more, what were the stats of this applicant, did he write good essays? Are you seriously naive enough to believe you know everything about him? The anecdote does not give us enough info to judge or otherwise</p>
<p>“For example, I know an American businessman who made a killing and then moved to the Massachusetts and had a child. This rich kid grew up and got into Harvard with solidly unremarkable statistics all-round, probably just because he put “legacy” on his application”</p>
<p>Could be anyone.</p>
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<p>This is not a “story” someone told me. I actually do know this kid because he was a close family friend and my parents had known his dad since before either of us were born. I don’t see him much anymore but I definitely did see him a lot before he left for college as he and my older sister were pretty good friends and went to the same school, in the same year. They discussed college apps a lot, and he would often joke about how he was lucky to be of African descent so that he would get affirmative action.
Well, his jokes were apparently true… because my sister was a better applicant than him in about all categories (grades, ECs, service), but she got flatly rejected from Harvard while he got in.</p>
<p>I could list his statistics in detail, if you want.
And about that parody of my story… I’m sure it may well actually be true for some rich white legacy kid.</p>
<p>"This is not a “story” someone told me. I actually do know this kid because he was a close family friend and my parents had known his dad since before either of us were born. I don’t see him much anymore but I definitely did see him a lot before he left for college as he and my older sister were pretty good friends and went to the same school, in the same year. They discussed college apps a lot, and he would often joke about how he was lucky to be of African descent so that he would get affirmative action.
Well, his jokes were apparently true… because my sister was a better applicant than him in about all categories (grades, ECs, service), but she got flatly rejected from Harvard while he got in.</p>
<p>I could list his statistics in detail, if you want.
And about that parody of my story… I’m sure it may well actually be true for some rich white legacy kid."</p>
<p>Oh please do.After all, you definitely know every extracurricular this kid ever did. I’m sure you have inner knowledge of all the hardships he’s ever faced. You stood above him as he wrote his essay. Hey, you were probably even there when he was born. Naturally, knowing ALL the information you do, you are definitely in an excellent position to judge how competitive of an applicant he was for Harvard.
Now, since you are, indeed, a type of God, so to speak, could you please tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow?</p>
<p>I will admit, that my words are exceedingly bitter, but you must also concede that you operate on incomplete information.</p>
<p>I know that dental schools often give preference to candidates whose parents are dentists. They justify it by saying the kid will probably know what dentistry is really like; he won’t have idealized notions of life as a dentist. I suspect that dental schools also think that if the kid is a legacy he will prefer that school to any others he might be admitted to, and he is probably serious about wanting to be a dentist, which would boost the school’s yield and its graduation rate. Could colleges be thinking the same way, “more legacies, better yield, better graduation rate, better USNWR rankings?”</p>
<p>Well, I didn’t encourage my kids to apply to my / H’s Alma mater but I did say that if you’re going to do it, then go ED – sort of the go big or go home strategy. I don’t see the point of applying there RD.</p>
<p>Does anyone have Ivy League legacy applicants admission rates?
In addition does anyone have Ivy League legacy applications admission rates for ED and EA?</p>
<p>nil desp
I give more weight to your “knew a kid” college admittance legend: the student was a legacy, had wealthy, and for Harvard another thumb on the scale is being a Massachusetts resident (according to Harvard).</p>