<p>Sorry for yet another thread on legacies but...</p>
<p>At elite schools, students of alumni probably won’t need to use need-based financial aid, so legacy admissions is an easy way to enroll rich people over poor people without being obvious about it.</p>
<p>I liked this op-ed piece. Here-here. I wondered which ivy my son would have gotten into if only his parents hadn’t gone to tier-82 colleges. He was certainly a smart kid, great stats/scores/grades/awards, but lacking the legacy.</p>
<p>Well, my son is very happy at his Ivy League college where is not a legacy. And he was wait-listed at the one Ivy League college where he was a legacy (grandfather). BTW, no parents or other grandparents attended an Ivy League college. This article, like so many others, is just sour grapes for those who did not get in.</p>
<p>Schools insist that legacy status has little (if any) effect on the quality of the student body … so why retain it as part of the admissions decision?</p>
<p>Well imagine that you’ve been making steady annual contributions for 30 years to your alma mater and your seemingly well qualified kid DIDN’T get in. Would you still “feel” the same love to your alma mater? I believe that legacy admissions does have a positive effect on contributions despite what the writer claims. I also believe that the legacy kids as a group are often as qualified as other hooked kids, but perhaps as a group slightly weaker than the unhooked kids. </p>
<p>Based on what I’ve read (A is for admissions and others), schools compute and academic metric and a EC metric and place students in bins on a 2-D grid. Then from each bin, a certain percentage gets admitted. It seems to me that in the weaker piles, it takes more of a hook to get admitted. Legacy is just one of many hooks. </p>
<p>And lets face it, for most people, there are much more needy places to donate your hard earned money to than your alma mater. I think that there needs to be this emotional component to keep the funds flowing. I think alumni donations are more driven by gratitude than other charitable contributions. </p>
<p>Not defending it ethically, but from a financial perspective, it’s hard to see colleges eliminating it short of by law. Few lawmakers have a personal interest in eliminating this though.</p>
<p>Some legacies may get the 160 point break, but I sure haven’t seen it. The only legacies from our high school who get accepted at the uber-selective schools have SATs over 2200 and are in the top 2% of the class. Most of them get cross admitted at equally selective schools.</p>
<p>Legacy matters less and less. Usually it will get you another ‘read’ on your application. If you have been put on the wait list, all stats equal with another student, you are more likely to get the spot. This varies from school to school and can be seen on their Common Data Set. Even at a school where their CDS lists legacy as highly important, if you clarify with admissions you may be told, it allows your application an additional ‘read’ prior to moving on (or not). Not what I would consider a high degree of weight.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t see the big deal. Admissions is a subjective process that gives preference to all kinds of things for various reasons. If, and until, admissions are based solely on a well oiled system of GPA leveling and SAT/ACT scores (or subject tests preferably), then you can not ignore outside factors. I think it would be a shame to abolish a holistic admissions policy at all universities. If you don’t like what that university considers in it’s admissions process, choose another one. It will not make a school change it’s policy because your student did not apply. There will always be students willing to accepts the terms. However, you can certainly choose a program that you fundamentally agree with their admissions policy.</p>
<p>Just my two cents. I respect that others have a different opinion, often based on their own experiences where their students have ‘lost’ spots to legacy students when they were potentially more qualified, or when their legacy students have been ‘passed over’ and they feel they did not get a proper consideration based on legacy status.</p>
<p>Interesting chapter on the legacy subject:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tcf.org/publications/education/Legacy_ch4.pdf[/url]”>http://www.tcf.org/publications/education/Legacy_ch4.pdf</a></p>
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<p>Based on what do you believe this? [10</a> Myths About Legacy Preferences in College Admissions - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/10-Myths-About-Legacy/124561/]10”>http://chronicle.com/article/10-Myths-About-Legacy/124561/) :</p>
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<p>I cannot imagine that my contributions to my alma mater were in any way a payment to get my child preferred treatment. </p>
<p>We contribute to our alma maters so that others may enjoy the same educational opprotunities that we did. If an alum believes it’s an investment/bribe that should pay off, then they are simply mistaken.</p>
<p>Personally I don’t believe that 160 points margin, at the more competitive colleges, in this day and age.</p>
<p>"cannot imagine that my contributions to my alma mater were in any way a payment to get my child preferred treatment. "</p>
<p>Agreed, that’s not why many were giving, primarlily. However, from the converse perspective, I can well imagine some people’s contributions being curtailed after their alma mater rejected a child of theirs who they considered well qualified. It could leave a bad taste in their mouths that wasn’t there before.</p>
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<p>Which makes those students who are not legacies with SAT scores over 2300 and in the top 1% of their class who were not admitted wonder why legacy matters.</p>
<p>I can see the arguement for all kinds of diversity, even for athletes up to a certain point. But the arguement for legacies is always tied to money. And now that research is putting that in doubt, what does a legacy kid bring to the college that another student would not?</p>
<p>I do want to say that the fact is that no one knows why some students are admitted and some are not at the upper tier schools. Well, except for the admissions committee and they are not talking aside from reminding everyone that they are shaping a class.</p>
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<p>That could be true but it also may not be true. I’m guessing that schools are not willing to find out.</p>
<p>If the legacy hook is going to live on, then it should be more transparent. If a child wants preference based on athletics, then they have show that they perform at the top of their sport. Schools should do the same. Want your kid given the legacy hook? You’ve got from the day you graduate until the day your kid’s application arrives on campus to contribute X amount of dollars. Or they could make it a blind bid for extra excitement! “Should we contribute 1 million?” “But what if the Smith’s contribute 2 million?” “Oh, the horror! Let’s throw in another million and a polo pony.”</p>
<p>First of all I’ll say I have no problem with legacy admits as long as they’re at least sniffing around the 50th%-tile academically. We all have places where we are repeat customers, hair salons, dry cleaners, restaurants etc. Sometimes we go there because of convenience but often times, after we’ve been there a few times, we go because we’re recognized, because the owner remembers our “usual” order. On that level what’s wrong with colleges having repeat customers? </p>
<p>Contrary to what many on CC think, it’s not as though there are only 5 schools worth going to in this country. College admissions is not a strict meritocracy; if you want that go to Japan or England where your choices are made for you based on a few tests taken in high school. The system here is sort of meritocratic, you get to make a list of schools, they get to decide if they want you; if they give Farnsworth von Buglethorpe IV a bump because he’ll be the twelfth Buglethorpe at dear old Whatsamatta U, who cares? And if grandpa Buglethorpe donated a $100 million, I’ll drive over and pick up chubby little Farnsworth myself.</p>
<p>In all these threads no one has been able to come up with even a rough guess as to how many legacies in any given year are applying to their given school. Even the so-called learned studies don’t seem to have that much available hard data on the actual numeric effects on admissions. Are we talking about 50 or 500 a year at Harvard? 10 or 1,000 a year at Penn? Until I see that, it’s just too hard to get too worked up about this issue.</p>
<p>If you’re really upset about it, send your kid to your in-state flagship, have them become billionaires and start a new legacy there.</p>
<p>P.S. The only thing I find vaguely bizarre about the legacy discussion is that in some way my own child’s chances at a particular school are being affected by a decision that I made as a callow, wet-behind-the-ears teenager decades ago. But if my alma mater wants to factor that in, that’s their business decision.</p>
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<p>Exactly. One could donate for 30 years out of gratitude to the school that educated them, but after rejecting their well qualified child, one could be just as grateful to the school that their child attends. It’s not like changing the target of their donations takes food from the mouths of babes or that a cancer stricken child doesn’t get treatment because their donation went elsewhere. I think one could truly believe that the new target of their donations is now more worthy than their alma mater, and I truly believe its driven by an emotional component.</p>
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Very interesting indeed! I recently finished reading the author’s book The Price of Admission. Perhaps most interesting to me was the linking of Affirmative Action to legacy preference, and the fear that to dismantling AA might also dismantle legacy preference. The Supreme Court’s decisions on UMichigan probably reflected this fear.</p>
<p>I find it amazing that folks want government to get involed here. There are probably 25 schools in the Country where legacy preference ****es people off.</p>
<p>Colleges will get around this the same way they’ve handled things from keeping out Jews in the 50s, Asians in recent years and using AA at public colleges since it was outlawed-through “holistic” review as defined by them.</p>
<p>A different perspective, D2, who was well qualified but so are many others, was admitted to alma mater, thank goodness she was accepted to another highly selective college as well,or she wouldn’t have been confident that she “deserved” to be there, based on her own merits.</p>
<p>And if she’d been rejected, she would have felt that much worse.</p>
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<p>I don’t want the government involved. I just want it to be more transparent…and fun. Let’s forget the blind bid and go with live auctions limited to alum. </p>
<p>“Lot number 23! Number 23! We have a legacy hook at College X. Starting bid is one million dollars, one prime summer week at an ocean front home in the Hamptons for the President. That’s ocean front, folks, not ocean view. Let’s not have a repeat of last year. Okay, here we go…”</p>
<p>Imagine how much money and time the development department could save in terms of mailings and a-double-s kissing. Talk about win-win!</p>
<p>monydad, It’s too bad your daughter felt that way, she really shouldn’t. No student ever knows why they really got in. Was it legacy? Needs of the football team? The symphony needs an oboe player? Or was the student well-rounded? Well-lopsided? </p>
<p>The problem of feeling doubt about acceptance is driven primarily by parents who will swear on a stack of bibles that they know for sure that their student was not accepted because a legacy/hockey player/Native American student “took my child’s slot.” No child is guarenteed acceptance, it’s that simple and that random and that maddening for those of us used to logic and reason.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, that’s how she felt about it at the time, she told us so.</p>