DH has provided internships over the years to many high school students (including prep school students)and college students. He tells me that he would rather have a kid from a rigorous prep school and a Midwest, Southern, or CA university than anyone from the Ivies. He looks for team players, responsible, not entitled, students who will not complain 
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Amherst, Johns Hopkins, MIT, and Cal Tech are the prominent schools that currently say they don’t consider legacy status in their admissions decision.
The last sentence is almost certainly true (and a big part of the movement from colleges), but while it might help society as a whole it is likely to negatively impact (however small) colleges individually. Admissions officers likely love being altruistic, but I would argue that they are moving further away from a meritocratic nature in most ways. I’m guessing here, but I would guess that legacy applicants are often as qualified as many who might get accepted in their stead.
Also, almost every college is a business first. The admissions office is sometimes allowed to move independently, but there’s not many schools that would continue that practice if it began to impact their ranking, finances, or outcomes.
Finally, with respect to anti-legacy…Agreed. But our GC has said that it’s more than a rumbling this year. They believe Penn is absolutely anti-legacy, to the point where the new admissions is focusing on making a statement. They suspect others as well.
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I don’t understand why some colleges need to go as far as anti legacy, as some people suggested. Maybe the anti legacy sentiment is relative to the past, but comparing with the unhooked applicants they are still favored, just less so?
It’s a slippery slope concept- how much preferential treatment is considered reasonable vs unreasonable. And that applies to all special populations: legacy, URM, athlete, donor.
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Yes. There is an amazing amount of hypocrisy (always has been) in college admissions. Certain pockets of said hypocrisy are often challenged by changing admissions offices and officers, but other are either left static or ramped up.
I’m not railing on the process, or complaining about the inherently unfair process that literally changes every year on whims or hiring schedules. Merely calling attention to it. The university admissions process has become an open wallet, holier-than-thou racket that is on steroids.
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No disagreement from me.
Universities are loathe to reveal how much preferential treatment they give people because the perception of being reasonable vs unreasonable varies from person to person.
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The world just isn’t in that place, regardless of whether it’d be some sort of ideal. Though there are some formal internship programs with “a front door” that you could find and apply to with some googling, many internships are totally or partially unofficial, done on the fly based on exactly the kind of relationship-based stuff being discussed here. Without the phone call, those “internships” just go unfilled because they don’t really exist as such*. Until/unless that changes, students stand to be shut out if the alumni won’t pick up the phone, or won’t do so as eagerly. No idea how big a thing that will be, but it won’t be zero as the anecdotes already indicate.
*we can of course debate the value of these kinds of “internships”
In the case of legacies, many schools do release the acceptance rate.
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Try to get a career job out of college without one. It is a massive uphill battle, and kids actually end up in internships after graduation because they are not yet qualified for jobs in their fields. In fact most of the internships my college junior is applying for are also asking for quite a bit of experience. Very few employers are willing to do proper training. I think this is the reason more and more schools are getting into some version of the co-op game, but again that often requires alumni support as well.
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Hmmm, I’m trying to wrap my head around a meritocracy argument in support of legacy admissions, and here is where I get stuck: While I agree that some legacy applicants may be “as qualified” as other applicants who are admitted, the other side of this coin is that there is a huge percentage of non-legacy applicants who are at least “as qualified” as admitted legacies.
If “merit” is your concern, why should 1590 Legacy Jane get preference over her classmate with a similarly strong application but no legacy status or other hook?
To give an idea of how this shakes out among highly qualified kids, the HW numbers may be helpful. [Unfortunately, I can’t use this year’s information because HW no longer provides admissions info. on kids hooked kids (the call it “with distinctions” which is defined as “legacy, recruited athletes, etc.”) That said, data from the three years covered the Class of 2021 Handbook is still illuminating. I’ll focus just on Penn, since you mentioned it.
- Unhooked HW applicants from approx. the top 25% of the class had an 18% of admission to Penn (9 of 50 over three years). Hooked applicants from approx. the top 25% of the class had a 100% chance of admission (6 of 6 over three years.)
- For the next grouping, unhooked applicants had an 11% chance of admission (4 of 37 over 3 years), while hooked kids had an 82% chance of admission (9 of 11).
- For the rest, unhooked kids have very little chance of admission (3%, 1 of 38) while hooked kids had an 36% chance (10 of 28).
All the way down, applying as a “legacy, recruited athletes, etc.” provides an extraordinary advantage. Of course this data isn’t perfect because it isn’t from this year and it doesn’t break it down by the different type of hooks, but I’d suggest it is still more indicative of how the process works among legacies versus unhooked students, despite an occasional anecdote to the contrary.
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Post deleted by User.
I’m not arguing the point you’re trying to prove.
Meritocracy, to me, is fluid across all. Legacy is merely one aspect of where schools prove to not be meritocratic. But I have yet to see a school state they will no longer recognize any of the other “hooks”. Athletes, URM, etc.- all will continue to receive boosts (some significant and all-encompassing like athletes).
My point on Legacy Jane is primarily because it’s good business- in just about every respect- to accept an applicant who clearly elevates stats-wise north of 75%. Is she more deserving than an identical applicant? No. Does the school arguably benefit more by accepting legacy? Yes, they do, unless you are considering solely scoring points with the twitter and forum crowd.
On Penn, this is 2021/22 what we’ve been told. It’s a new admissions head, and our GC (who is not prone to idle speculation) has been told by multiple sources that “anti-legacy” is an actual thing this year. Or at least was in the ED round. We’ll obviously see in RD. Otherwise quite strange that they didn’t announce legacy ED stats for the first time.
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This thread was split off from another because it was going off topic. Despite several prods to get back on-topic, it continues to devolve into personal anecdotes and continuing debates that have been held before. So it seems we have reached the end of usefulness