<p>I have been reading and pondering the latest discussions re: legacy preferences, and a question occurred to me. If my child records her parent's colleges on the Common App, I assume that all schools she applies to with the Common App will see where her parents went. In D's case, she is choosing not to apply to her parents' schools. She also has decided not to ED or EA anywhere, because she truly feels that she wants to make this decision in the spring when she has (hopefully) acceptances to choose from - she doesn't want to commit to a first choice now, knowing that her preferences may change in the spring. But, will the admissions departments of the schools she is applying to tend to reject or waitlist her based on an assumption that as a legacy of a top school, she will seek to use her legacy status as her first choice, and will therefore be less likely to attend schools where she is not a legacy? That is, will she be subject to any kind of subtle bias in admissions based on her parents colleges? I would hope not, but things I read about strategic admissions and lack of transparency in admissions practices begs this question. Any experience with this flip side of legacy status, either real or anecdotal? Anything to do about this, or just not worry about it?</p>
<p>Yes, that presumption is often there. Ask her counselor to make a point at the schools she’s most interested in that she has not applied to legacy school if the schools she wants are it’s peer.</p>
<p>Thanks much for confirming that, Redroses. So, how would her counselor make this point - by calling the admissions reps?</p>
<p>Redroses: could not my D simply put a comment somewhere on the Common App that she is NOT applying as a legacy to her parents colleges? Something along the lines of “I have decided not to use my legacy status by applying to colleges XX because I have visited them and do not believe they are a good fit for me”. In D’s case, that’s the truth! Why would the counselor need to confirm this - doesn’t the student sign a statement on the Common App avowing that the contents of the application are true and accurate?</p>
<p>I really don’t think that’s necessary. There are -so- many fine colleges out there that it is difficult to assume that someone will more likely than not attend their parents’ alma mater.</p>
<p>DwightEisenhower: I’m confused - you appear to be a Harvard sophomore. How is it that you have informed opinion on this issue? Do you work in the admissions office for your work study job? Do you know something that Redroses doesn’t? Having read the literature that suggests that colleges who practice strategic admissions avoid cross admits in order to boost their yields, I suspect that Redroses has it right.</p>
<p>Does anyone know whether it is possible to leave blank the Common App field which asks for the parent’s college? According to my D, who is currently working on her Common App, this is a required field. Is she mistaken, or if not, is there a way to override this requirement? It seems to me that this would be a simple way to address the potential problem of negative bias against legacies. A student could fill in the parent’s degrees earned without specifying the college, thus being honest about not being “first gen” without revealing parent info that in my mind should be irrelevant to the student’s application. Why, other than signaling legacy status, should it matter at all where the parents went to college? If, as Tokenadult has pointed out frequently, it is optional to self-identify race or ethnicity on the Common App, why should it not be optional to identify parent’s alma maters? Or, would it be dishonest not to say where your parents went to college? Why? What does the parent’s college have to do with the student’s merit as a college applicant?</p>
<p>I wrote in a previous post, a while back: “I hope that my daughter gets to be a chosen student because she shows promising abilities to be a thoughtful, caring contributor to the betterment of her school and her society.” It is so frustrating to think that there may be other factors in her admissions to college that have nothing to do with evaluating her on her own merits and abilities. Sigh.</p>
<p>I don’t claim to have any insider knowledge or expertise in the subject, but my sense is that you are reading way too much into the importance of the names of the parents’ alma maters. They want that information because it indicates the level of education of the parents, which IS a consideration, but not the specific college they went to. Of course, it is also used as a way to reveal legacy status because a lot of schools don’t directly ask that question on their supplement. </p>
<p>Schools admit the legacies of rival schools all the time, because they know kids often have different preferences from their parents. What’s more, unless your D’s stats and profile are in the at the top of the range of the school’s admitted students, there is no reason for admission officers to think that their school is being used as a safety, in which case you might have to worry a little. You could counter that by having your D show particular interest in her top choices through essays and such. I think it would be far more damaging if she tried to hide her parents background.</p>
<p>I would not have her make the statement with “use my legacy status” because, to me, that comes off with a sense of legacy entitlement and the assumption she would be admitted to that school, which as you must know, is far from guaranteed.</p>
<p>Ladybug, I was a college counselor and faced this often. I chatted with adcom at many colleges about applicants. It’s common for a counselor to confirm that a school is the candidate’s first choice.</p>
<p>This is from a somewhat different era, but when my father was applying to college Stanford University refused to even consider his application. His older brother had attended Harvard, and they assumed that he would pick Harvard over Stanford. To be fair, they were correct. </p>
<p>I think legacy might have some slight effect on admissions if the admissions officers are very concerned about yield. I don’t think that it is so huge anymore, but it might come into play at very competitive schools.</p>
<p>Redroses, are you actually suggesting that some schools will not admit an otherwise qualified applicant just because they are a legacy at a peer school?</p>
<p>Banjo - how did your father come to know this? Did they actually say “hey Banjodad, we don’t think you’ll come here because your brother went somewhere else, so we threw your application in the trash?”</p>
<p>
If your daughter was accepted by a school via EA, she still wouldn’t have to make her decision until May 1st, just like if she had been admitted through RD. ED is the only one that’s binding.</p>
<p>Wildwood: There is a discussion on the NYT Choice Blog about legacy admissions - one poster there comments about “rumors of reverse legacy preferences … a perception that an alumni child will prefer to attend his or her parents alma mater.” So, Redroses isn’t the only one that has heard this, apparently.</p>
<p>Redroses: Thanks for the info and advice - it is greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Okay. Well, then it’s just a rumor until it is backed up with some statistics. My D would not have gotten in to half the schools she was accepted to if my alma mater’s closest peers had shied away from her like that. The same must be true for the vast majority of alumni of selective schools or their kids would end up with no options. Anecdotally, I have seen various references by kids on CC going to the top schools which were their parents’ direct rivals. Of course, showing an interest in a school is very important, with or without being legacy or a rival’s legacy. If an applicant doesn’t show a basic knowledge and enthusiasm about a school, their chances will go down regardless of where their parents went and they will go up if you get a counselor to make a point of indicating it is their top choice.</p>
<p>Wildwood, it’s very simple, yield matters to good colleges. They know they they are far less likely to yield a student who is a legacy at a peer school. So yes, they will absolutely not admit qualified students they believe they will not yield. Unfair, but true.</p>
<p>Less competitive schools can’t afford to do this, so it’s primarily a selective school issue.</p>
<p>Redroses, I appreciate your experience but I still do not quite understand how it can be possible given that selective school legacies, including at the very top–HYPSM, are often admitted to and attend rival schools as evidenced anecdotally on CC. </p>
<p>In any case, I am going to start a new thread in the Parents’ Forum, to get further perspective because this question has piqued my curiosity on behalf of future family applicants.</p>
<p>^#14 Wildwood wrote: “Okay. Well, then it’s just a rumor until it is backed up with some statistics.”</p>
<p>True, and how is anyone going to get these statistics? Anecdotes are not evidence, no matter how many anecdotes you think you have to prove or disprove a point. Ya think all the most selective college’s admissions deans will just fork over to the media/public a list of all the people waitlisted or denied for reverse legacy reasons? </p>
<p>^#14 Wildwood wrote: “If an applicant doesn’t show a basic knowledge and enthusiasm about a school, their chances will go down regardless of where their parents went and they will go up if you get a counselor to make a point of indicating it is their top choice.”</p>
<p>So what I’m hearing is that this is the way things work - “reverse legacy” students chances are increased if they have a counselor communicate with admissions reps on their behalf. What bothers me about this is the lack of transparency here. You can go on any college’s CDS and see how important “applicant level of interest” is to a given college. You cannot get specific information about what applicant interest exactly means from any college website. If a college XX true practice is to not admit students from legacy college YY unless a counselor calls the admission office with an assurance that college XX is indeed the student’s first choice, why not put that out there on the web for all to see? Why should a parent like myself, who doesn’t have resources to hire a private counselor “in the know” have to dig around on a public forum to get this kind of information?</p>
<p>I’m thinking that what is far more likely to happen, assuming reverse legacy is real (a big assumption) is that your D will be waitlisted at the peer school.</p>
<p>At that point, if the college really is her first choice, then your school GC should call and advocate for her. However, be aware that GCs have a reputation to uphold when they do this sort of thing, and she’s going to need to really mean it when she says it’s her first choice.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1004610-being-legacy-rival-school-hurts-chances.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1004610-being-legacy-rival-school-hurts-chances.html</a></p>
<p>Here are more opinions on the topic.</p>
<p>Quilah, bingo, I think this is what schools formerly did. But we’re living in an age where even the enrollment managers are guessing low and top schools have not been going to wait lists in many cases, so the risk has increased.</p>