The numbers were published somewhere and republished on the consulting companies blogs or website. But only for class of 2024, not 2025. And I found an article on cnbc https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-more-than-one-third-legacy.html
It says class of 2022, but it was fall of 2019.
Yes, sailing is a varsity sport, but no, it is not an Ivy League sport and it is not part of the process I outlined that governs Ivy League athletic recruiting using the Academic Index. Coaches of sports like sailing that are not part of this Ivy League process may do small “r” informal recruiting, and I doubt that Harvard athletic candidates recruited informally this way are counted in the recruited athlete numbers. In any case, their numbers are not comparatively significant even if so.
That CNBC “Make It” article is carelessly written by someone who might not understand college admissions very well, and is a good example of bad information. It is sourced from a Crimson poll of the Class of 2022, to which it links. In the narrative of that poll, it says, “Over a third — 36.3 percent — of students with one or more parent who attended Harvard said they come from a family with a combined income of $500,000 or more,” and erroneously runs with that 36% figure in its click-bait headline. If the author of the piece had simply read two more paragraphs in the same narrative, the author would have seen that the self-reported percentage of “legacy” students was 14%, not 36%.
14% is in line with the range of typical percentages year to year, and if applied to that class’s size of 1661, it yields 233 “legacies,” also in line with typical years.
I did find a place that only about 200 were legacy for class of 2025. For 2024, 895 were accepted early. I cannot find the statistics anymore so I cannot defend it. But historically they said the 30-35% were legacy admits prior to class of 2022.
No worries! 
Please don’t feel that you have to defend yourself, it’s not a serious matter.
Perhaps the following will help? In the recent infamous court case, one of the researchers for the plaintiffs reviewed six admission cycles comprising admissions year (not class year) 2014 to admissions year 2019. During those six annual cycles, there were 162,083 “Not Legacy” applicants and 4,644 “Legacy” applicants. These “legacy” applicants had an admit rate of 33.6% overall during those six years, that is, 1560 were admitted. 1560/6 = 260/year, or right about the range I shared earlier. Not all admits decide to attend, so the number enrolling would be less than the annual average of 260 admitted.
So, the share of Harvard lineage students in each class is far less “more than a third.” It is about half that, and swings up and down around 16%, and doesn’t diverge dramatically over time.
This makes complete sense if one thinks about it, since the count of alumni by year tends to remain about the same, and these alumni tend to have about the same number of kids as alumni who came before, meaning the annual supply of Harvard lineage candidates does not change in any big way year to year. If anything, the long term historical trend has been for fewer alumni children rather than more.
This is in stark contrast to the total applications, which has indeed skyrocketed, which we can speculate is caused by the current test-optional stance combined with the universal adoption of online applications that make it easier for an applicant to apply to ten, fifteen, even twenty schools in one cycle. There are many more applications going around among selective schools than ten or twenty years ago, but perhaps not many more actual applicants.
Hi! Anybody have experience how walk on works in Harvard? My son is a fencer top 40 in the juniors national points list and if he gets accepted he said he would like to walk on into the fencing team.
I don’t think thorough preparation is needed for interviews, or even helpful. The important thing is to relax, relate and be yourself, and studying as if it is an exam can be counterproductive. I also think it helps to go in with the attitude that you are also interviewing, to see if Harvard is a good fit, so ask questions too.
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Thanks for the stats. I had not seen those. I had heard it was 1500 legacies apply per annum, but those statistics show about 750 per annum.
You contact the coach after the first of the year, after getting accepted and let them know.
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More importantly, the Crimson data includes parents, grandparents, and siblings who attended Harvard College. Thankfully, they knew not to include graduate and professional schools.
Legacy, for Harvard admissions purposes, only includes parents who attended as undergrads, bringing the number down to 16-18%. Which is still significant, but not a third of the class.
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We will find out in about 2 weeks whether the statistics run in our favor or not.
Any idea whether a mid year report sent by 12/10 will help in decision-making on EA applicant or would the process be more or less over by then??
^^This
They can rescind offers if a report card is bad, right? So if they have to check offers against report cards, there is a chance for revision, I would assume. But someone would have to have a really bad report card to revise a decision, right?
A note on nomenclature: they review transcripts, not report cards.
If accepted REA, they will not rescind based on Mid-Year transcripts, although if bad, expect a warning letter.
They can, and likely will, rescind for a bad final transcript - meaning a D or more than one C.
our youngest is applying to colleges now and had a great 1st alum interview for Harvard. He then got a request for a second alum interview asap( to be done within 48 hours of the second alum’s email) which he did. but different personality and it wasn’t as fabulous as the first one although our son thought it went fine. Could anyone please shed some light on some reasons why a second alum interview was requested so quickly especially if the first one went well? thanks
The first one did not go as well as the applicant thought. Or at least raised / left unanswered concerns.
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My understanding is that the AI threshold pertains to recruited athletes as a whole with each coach having to hit their own minimum threshold. The team AI minimum for football may be much lower than for say fencing. In your tennis example, the coaches try to “protect” their balance of high vs lower AI recruits through REA (for HYP) and more effectively ED for the others. The risk for HYP is that by RD time, their recruits could decide to go elsewhere, but it is unlikely 1 (or a few high AI athletes) not attending will create a problem as the overall AI average of recruited athletes probably has substantial wiggle room. If the recruited athlete commits elsewhere as in your example, the coach has time to fill the spot with another high AI athlete that is on his/her backup list if he/she feels that is required to hit the team minimum threshold.
If the coach is accepting walk ons, your child can do it - but keep in mind each sport has roster limits and many walk-ons across various sports will likely be cut within the first few months - unless they are that 1-1000 diamond in the rough athlete. If your child is admitted to Harvard, they should contact the coach to let them know they would like to be part of the team and what can they do between this time and the start of school for training etc. Also, did your child have an contact with the coach prior to applying - if yes - what did the coach say ?