<p>Wow, some of you take it like a… vendetta. The other day I saw a thread asking for “mature parents” to read some essay. A poster or two joking that we are immature parents. Apparently, that kid must have a point LOL</p>
<p>If we want to be excruciatingly fair, there should be no legacy “hook”; just treat all applicants the same, period. Eliminate the “handicap” given to alumni’s kids with grades or test scores slightly lower than the threshold for that year, especially in the ED application season. Giving to your alma mater should be predicated on your own experience at the school, not for what they can do for your kids in the future. But that’s not reality.</p>
<p>Our admission to a school, especially one with a great local or national brand transforms us, defines us now as a member of the team, the clan, the tribe, and we want to promote the future well-being of our tribe by showing support, buying school swag, rooting for the school team, giving money as alumni, and of course want our kids to be members of our tribe as well. If it’s a school perceived to make someone “set for life”, we especially want our kids in there all the more. We think (and we are not dissuaded by the alumni associations for that thinking because it funds their coffers) that if we give, better yet, if we give big, if we continue to show loyalty and support, the school will “owe” us by giving our kids an admissions leg up, and an awful lot of adcoms do do that. It’s a universally assumed unwritten contract. </p>
<p>The trouble comes when PC strictures or quotas, mismatched interests, dumb bad luck or whatever override this contract and our kid is rejected, deferred, wait-listed. To add insult to injury the adcom may say something heartless like “gee, we admitted a bunch of other people’s kids with the same qualifications but not yours, and it was THAT CLOSE, oops! oh well, hope your kid has a nice life.” The hurt is then exacerbated by the alumni folk continuing to jabber away cluelessly: “Keep those alumni donations coming in folks”. When your kid is rejected the message effectively turns into: “Keep those alumni donations coming in folks so we can support other people’s kids in the life to which you wanted yours to become accustomed”. </p>
<p>That’s what make it feel like a kick in the teeth. </p>
<p>I know this is wishful thinking, but I think it would behoove adcoms to notify alumni associations of legacy rejections so that they could send out soothing messages saying something like "we know you’ll have a lot of expenses with your kid’s education (no need to mention the circumstances) so we’ll understand if you’ll lay off donations for a while. In that way they could show that they understand that family loyalty comes before school tribal loyalty anyday.</p>
<p>I’m the one with the H who ripped the license plate holder off. We definitely did not expect that our donations would cause S to be accepted at his dream school, they were substantial from our personal financial situation but nothing that would cause any sort of attention from Stanford. Rather, they were given out of loyalty and affection for the school and as insurance that should we have a child someday with the stats to “get to the table” we did not want the fact that we were claiming legacy and had NOT donated to count against our qualified kid. Does that make sense? We weren’t sure it made a bit of difference but we loved the school and it was worth it regardless.<br>
I’m not anywhere as disappointed as H and S, I was more realistic about the difficulty of even very qualified applicants getting admitted (mainly thanks to here!). That being said, S really did have great stats and hooks, so our disappointment is, I think, understandable. We’ll save our money (and hopefully, football time) for another school, where I am sure S will thrive.</p>
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<p>Sample of one, I have NEVER received any communication which even implicitly suggests that there is any quid pro quo or that the school would “owe” our kids an admissions leg up. The only correspondence I ever received was something AFTER admissions decisions came out, which mentioned what the legacy acceptance rate was (36% vs total class of 18%), but anyone with any common sense can also figure out that 36% acceptance = 64% rejection, so anyone who thinks that “legacy means my kid is set” is a total idiot.</p>
<p>@WordWorld: My D got wait-listed from a competitive school that she had had her heart set on since she was a freshman in high school. She never did get off the waitlist and is currently at a fine school with as much prestige as the one that waitlisted her. She adores the place and since a parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child, we are consequently awash with happiness.</p>
<p>Luckily, she showed no interest in my own alma mater (which I hated) nor my husband’s (which he loved), so we ourselves carried no emotional baggage when D started the college application process. Nevertheless, I still feel your husband’s pain and understand why he had to do what he did, although he does seem to be on the tail end of the distribution of possible adverse reactions ;-)</p>
<p>Nobody is owed admissions, and these schools reject lots of qualified kids. But they sometimes reject legacy kids who seem to be perfectly well qualified. As an alumnus, you have received tons of mail urging you to support your alma mater, as part of the family, etc, to show loyalty, etc. And you are explicitly told that being a legacy is a plus in the admissions decision.
If your qualified kid gets rejected, I’m not surprised that a lot of people might suddenly feel that they’ve been led along with all the talk of loyalty. I’m sure it’s even more annoying if you’ve shown your loyalty by being involved in alumni affairs, etc.</p>