<p>For schools that give a slight edge to legacies in admissions, do they typically count children of parents who earned graduate degrees at the school as legacies?</p>
<p>My son may be applying to an elite college where I earned a master's degree. Somehow I don't really think of him as a legacy of that school, although technically he is. On the other hand, I've heard of applicants presenting themselves as "legacies" because an uncle, cousin, brother-in-law, etc. attended the school, and my son is surely more of a legacy than that.</p>
<p>i wanted to know to, because i have a parent thats considered staff for an Ivie, but for graduate. i have aunts, uncles, and cousins that went to great schools. does that count?</p>
I think I remember many colleges that specifically asked if the applicant’s parents, uncles, cousins, siblings etc were at their school at some point, so in that case I don’t they were twisting things to present themselves as “legacies”, but rather just answering the college’s question. :)</p>
<p>For your question, I think you should look more carefully at the college application. Most apps say something like, “List family members that have attended our school and the degrees they earned”, meaning that graduate school would definitely qualify (as well as, of course, aunts, cousins, great-uncles etc). I don’t recall any schools that said “undergraduates only”, but I would check your school just in case.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. You can usually find out by looking at the application (they usually have additional paper work besides the common app) They will ask a lot about the student’s parents, and their education background. When I was applying to Tufts few years ago, 3 pages out of 5 on their app was asking whether my parents went there.</p>
<p>Schools typically specify that a parent must be a grad of the undergrad school or can be a grad of one of their grad programs. Yale and Stanford include grad students, Harvard and Dartmouth specify undergrad parent. Some schools include grandparents but I have never heard of a school including aunts, uncles and cousins.</p>
<p>If you are a legacy your folder gets a special sticker and is read differently. There are no maybes. This is not a small boost at most elite schools, it’s a big one. At Princeton, legacies are accepted at nearly four times the normal rate.</p>
<p>The way legacy works in the eye of an admissions officer is, since the parent was able to come to our school, and graduated, there should be a close likeliness that if the son or daughter is accepted, he or she will be able to graduate and complete the mandatory courses. This in the eyes of a admissions officer is a good investment so the chances of them being accepted increases. There are plenty of candidates who have been rejected from college where both the father and mother attended a particular school. The reason being their grades just wasn’t within range.</p>
<p>if your son or daughter is applying to undergraduate and you went to graduate, there isn’t suppose to be a legacy. However, most admissions officers will still take it into account and give you a slight edge.</p>