<p>@GR3: I don’t have a link because I didn’t read this - I heard it from the Dean of Admissions at a small alumni gathering (and I have no reason not to believe him). That said, Harvard gets a huge number of applicants with very high SAT scores and GPAs. The fact that the average SAT scores and GPAs of legacy admits are at least equal to the average of the admitted class as a whole doesn’t mean that these legacy admits aren’t still getting an advantage over other applicants who have similarly high SAT scores and GPAs but who are not admitted. What it does mean is that Harvard is not admitting legacies who are not competitive candidates in their own right. And anecdotally, I know of a number of incredibly impressive legacies who were rejected at Harvard.</p>
<p>What I am tired of hearing is the assumption that legacy applicants have no other worthwhile characteristics that wd make them desirable as students at the place.</p>
<p>My dau was a legacy applic at an Ivy; she also graduated 2nd in her highly competitive h.s. class & her SATs were 1590 (no 2400 at the time); she had a Natl Merit Schol., etc etc. She was a candidate for that or any other school on her own merits and did not need the legacy thing to be admitted. </p>
<p>She was admitted to all schools to which she had applied and she chose to attend her parents’ alma mat. She had to endure years, and I still have to hear, remarks from people about how she got in because she was a legacy. </p>
<p>We’ll never know whether this or that kid received a “boost” bec of legacy, or whether something else in their application gave them that boost, or what. It is very unfair to the students involved to claim they would not have been attractive to X school unless they had been legacies. And I very much doubt that, these days, HYP et al are accepting kids who are woefully underqualified to attend, just because of legacy status. All of these schools could easily construct an ideal freshman class 4-5 times over from the applicant pool they are receiving.</p>
<p>One reason it may be hard to judge how much of a legacy boost there really is: a lot of legacy kids (including my S) apply early to the legacy school, get in, and then withdraw the other applications.</p>
<p>I am surprised how many people are confusing preferential treatment to a certain group of candidates with accepting them “woefully underqualified”. A great many of the applicants are academically acceptable and that’s why the “boost” of all sorts of hooks matters. That being said, as said earlier, I have heard that legacy admits (if legacy is the major if not the only hook) tend to be academically strong compared with the general pool. So except for the rare “rich and powerful” alums, the boost is more likely to be a preference to the legacy kid when he/she is equally qualified as the non-hooked candidates. Competition among the legacy kids can be intense too, as the college can’t accept all of them while they potentially can form a class with legacy kids only.</p>
<p>Colleges like HYP can easily provide statistics of SAT, GPA etc for the legacy pool and the rest of the pool. Unfornately they choose not to. I understand that they do not have to. </p>
<p>There are many many well qualified legacy students. That is for sure. Some people just wonder whether they as a group receive special treatment in admission.</p>
<p>I have an obvious bias since my son is a legacy candidate for admission, but neither he nor I see his status as being determinative. Candidates’ state or country of origin, special skills in athletics, the arts, and community service are factors that are possibly even more important, in addition to the statistical factors of GPA, class rank and SAT/ACT scores, as well as teacher and counselor recommendations and the inevitable student essays. As far as I know, all of the most highly selective colleges and universities approach freshman admissions from a holistic approach. On top of that, if you read what admissions deans at these most selective schools themselves say, they set out to “create a class” each year, much as a chef would create a meal–a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Furthermore, there are institutional strategies of promoting, accenting or developing new academic programs and admissions committees must be cognizant of that in making their decisions. Finally, one must also make the distinction between a “legacy” candidate–a student who is simply related to an alumnus–and a “development” candidate–one whose family has made an important donation to the school. These are important distinctions, and simply comparing the percentage of legacy students admitted does not clarify the unique role that legacy may play. I suspect that legacy is not so important after all.</p>
<p>Problem with that hypothesis is that the limited statistics that are available simply don’t bear it out. The Penn Alumni Council on Admissions publishes statistics that show Penn legacies are admitted at approximately DOUBLE the rate of the overall applicant pool—a 25-34% admit rate for legacies, v. 14-18% overall. And considering that the “overall” rate is a blended rate that includes both legacies and non-legacies, the only reasonable inference is that the admit rate for non-legacies is even lower. In a highly competitive admissions process, a 2-to-1 advantage is enormous. That’s not to say that legacies are guaranteed admits, nor that underqualified legacies are admitted in large numbers, nor even that all highly qualified legacies are admitted. It does mean, however, that if you are NOT a legacy, the dice are heavily loaded against you, other things being equal. And to many of us, that just seems deeply unfair. </p>
<p>I know a young man, both parents graduated from Yale, didn’t get in and Harvard student who had parents nervous because they thought their alumni status wouldn’t matter (seemed to help him, he’s a senior now).
I don’t get the “fair” references really. Nothing in life is completely fair. What the private colleges want to do with their admittance is up to them, favoring an alum that gave to them, who might have a daughter or son who will, wanting diversity in race or region, whatever it is, nothing will seem “fair” to everyone.
When you apply for jobs, you’ll see it isn’t fair again, when a more qualified person doesn’t get the job, when promotions come and go, the list is long.
As many admission officers have said, this gentleman not long ago at Wesleyan, “We take the students we want, they aren’t taking another’s place”</p>
<p>Maybe a legacy preference wouldn’t seem as unfair if you think of it like the discount you get from an “affinity card” for shopping at the same grocery store all the time.</p>
<p>bclintock: The stats you cite do not necessarily mean that the “dice are heavily loaded against” non-legacy students. It could mean that the GPAs, SATs, ECs, teacher recs and essays of the legacies are much better than the non-legacies.</p>
<p>In what context do remarks like this get made, and in what context couldn’t they easily be dismissed as coming from rude people? I just don’t get a conversation in which people are talking and one person says to the other, “Oh, you just got in bc you’re a legacy” and in which the two people then still remain talking to one another. Whether true or not, it seems a boorish thing to say. I’ve always been of the belief that if boorish people say something, you look at them as though they have two heads and continue on with your day - not let what they have to say resonate within you.</p>
<p>Uh . . . right. Except that I can get the grocery store affinity card simply by walking into the store and signing up for it. Not so college admissions. A better analogy would be that the store gives out only so many discount cards, and your chances of getting one are twice as good if your parents had one 3 or 4 decades ago. And I’d say that seems kind of unfair.</p>
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<p>Well, yes, I suppose in principle that’s possible. But it seems a bit unlikely, don’t you think, that the GPAs, SATs, ECs, teacher recs and essays of the legacies are so consistently better that they’d be admitted at TWICE the rate on the basis of those factors alone? Besides, if that WERE the case, colleges wouldn’t need to give any legacy preference at all. Yet they say they do, and groups like the Penn Alumni Council on Admissions loudly trumpet to alums that their kids have a much enhanced chance of admission if they check that legacy box and submit their apps in the ED round when the legacy advantage is greatest. That sure sounds like preferential treatment to me.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, too, that the admit rate for “all applicants” also includes non-legacy applicants admitted with other “hooks” like URM or recruited athlete status. Since colleges are quite candid in acknowledging that admit rates for these groups are higher than for un-hooked applicants, the only reasonable inference is that the admit rate for non-legacy, non-URM, non-recruited-athlete applicants falls well below the blended “all applicant rate.” It would be not unreasonable, then, to think the actual legacy advantage at Penn is something closer to 3-to-1 over the unhooked. As I said before, this does NOT mean that unqualified or less-qualified legacies are being admitted. But colleges at Penn’s level of selectivity uniformly tell us they reject far more well-qualified candidates than they accept. My only point is that if you are a well-qualified legacy, your chances of admission at a school like Penn are much greater—possibly double, perhaps even triple—the chances of a similarly credentialed non-legacy. And to me, that seems like playing the admissions game with loaded dice. (I say this, by the way, not as a matter of sour grapes; I was admitted to two Ivies without any legacy advantage, and my D1 was accepted ED to the only school she ever applied to, a highly selective LAC where she had no legacy advantage, having declined to pursue any legacy advantage at either of the two Ivies I attended. She was actually horrified at the idea of claiming legacy status at those schools, insisting she wanted to be admitted, if at all, purely on her own merits and not because she was getting a leg up based on what I had done).</p>
What’s unfair about it? It puts you at a disadvantage, but that’s not the same as being unfair. A private business is choosing to give an advantage to some people, and not others, for reasons that the business thinks are beneficial to the business’s bottom line.</p>
<p>I see your point, but it’s also “unfair” that your daughter had you as a father (a highly educated person, who valued learning, created that environment) compared to Joe-Sixpack. Life isn’t fully fair. Personally, I think that athletic recruiting / full-rides is far worse than legacy points, as I don’t see athletic performance as having anything whatsoever to do with the core purpose of a university.</p>
<p>People are, of course, free to choose not to apply to colleges that are known for giving substantial legacy points (or athletic scholarships, or URM bonus points, or what-have-you). No one is forced to apply to Penn if one doesn’t like Penn’s legacy policies.</p>
<p>"I see your point, but it’s also “unfair” that your daughter had you as a father (a highly educated person, who valued learning, created that environment) compared to Joe-Sixpack. Life isn’t fully fair. Personally, I think that athletic recruiting / full-rides is far worse than legacy points, as I don’t see athletic performance as having anything whatsoever to do with the core purpose of a university. "</p>
<p>I agree that life is unfair, which is why I support progressive taxation.</p>
<p>However I would like to think universities add criteria that at least make sense for their own purposes. They like bright, learning oriented kids for a variety of reasons. They like athletes, cause winning athletic programs bring in lots of publicity, and maybe even are net cash generators. Legacies are SUPPOSED to goose alumni donations, and maybe even broader alumni loyalty - but mainly donations. If the statistics show they DON’T goose donations, compared to colleges with no legacy preference, it would seem to make sense for the schools that do offer the preference to at least reexamine it.</p>
<p>Of course we all have choices to avoid schools with legacy preferences if we are morally opposed to it. I certainly am not marching through the streets with banners against it, but I think theres nothing wrong with discussing it. </p>
<p>Oh, and while many legacy admits are otherwise qualified, its clearly a boost, or why would the schools ask about it on apps?</p>
<p>An alum gives money on and off, over the years, thinking legacy.</p>
<p>Their kid’s interests, numbers, etc, end up meaning the Alma mater is not a fit.</p>
<p>Dear old parent, decides, frustrated at the uselessness of the legacy status (and the inability to check yes for all those other schools kiddie DID apply to) says - well frig them, I’m not giving them another penny. </p>
<p>maybe the universities would be better off encouraging alumni loyalty based on real love for the school, rather than a possible legacy advantage? ;)</p>
<p>Well, it doesn’t put ME at a disadvantage. As I said, my daughters would be legacies at two Ivies if they elected to pursue that advantage. D1 rejected that idea out of hand because she thought it would be unfair to OTHER people; and besides, it would undercut her own sense of accomplishment if she felt she had been swept in on my coattails, or if that were even a factor in the decision. After initially thinking that idea silly, I’m now inclined to agree with her. I really don’t like to play games with loaded dice, even if the dice are loaded in my favor. Something unsavory about it.</p>
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<p>Except that they’re not exactly a “private business,” are they? They hold themselves out as not-for-profit eleemosynary institutions that exist to advance the public good, and on that basis they are lavishly supported by direct and indirect public subsidies like tax-exempt/tax-deductible status, exemptions from local property taxes in most jurisdictions, and on and on. If they prefer instead to behave like a self-perpetuating bastion of private privilege, fine, that’s their right; but it’s also the right of the public to say sorry, no more tax breaks, as those are something to which these institutions are not entitled as a matter of right, but instead a discretionary public subsidy that they’ve been awarded because they’ve persuaded us they exist essentially to serve a public-regarding, not a private-regarding, function. They can’t have it both ways. </p>
<p>Bill Gates is perfectly entitled to use his billions to advance the private interests of his own family; but if he does, he doesn’t get special tax breaks, nor should he. Or he may set aside some of his fortune for charitable purposes, in which case the IRS will award him favored tax exempt/tax deductible status for the funds he’s committed to that cause; and that’s a sound public policy choice. But if he (or the people working for him) try to use the charitable fund to advance his own private interests or the private interests of his family members or any favored class of private interests, the IRS will have no qualms about stripping his “charity” of its tax exempt/tax deductible status, as it should. So, too, I would argue, with educational institutions.</p>
<p>We have another 14 days or so to find out if our double legacy daughter did get admitted. If she did and she decides to attend there (absolutely nothing certain about that since I am not convinced it is the right fit for her), yes, they will get more money from us. Why? Not because we are alumni but rather because we tend to support our kid’s school while they attend.</p>
I doubt if that happens too much, except when the kid actually applies and is rejected. I wouldn’t blame my alma mater if my kid clearly had no chance at admission; I might feel differently if I thought my kid had the qualifications and was rejected.</p>
<p>How about this suggestion–the top schools could simply do away with legacy preference and financial aid at the same time. That might even result in more legacies going there…and it would be entirely fair, right?</p>
<p>Edited for a more serious question: could legacy preference be a secret way for a need-blind school to increase the number of full pay students?</p>