Congrats to your daughter on her acceptance to UCLA! And yes, we went through the legacy rejection (Stanford), too. We weren’t surprised but we did wonder who on earth gets in! It was super annoying having people (who didn’t know any better) tell us our daughter would almost certainly get in–we felt like we had to explain how different the process is today. Even 10 years ago, some of the kids who are rejected from HYPS today would have had a much better shot.
My only revenge is that Cal and Stanford lost their quarterbacks to NFL and graduation, Bruin’s QB is Heisman-level. Having both Stanford and Cal having competitive FB bends my brain, simply not believable in my universe. At my D’s HS, the kids that got into Stanford were a bright kids, a delightful Tibetan (or Nepalese) girl and another delightful girl who showed she could churn out the HP to power up crew boat.
Legacy status doesn’t cancel out the fact that the colleges that you and your wife attended are extraordinarily selective.
From what I’ve seen, legacy status is actually more useful at slightly less selective schools. But kids can’t choose where their parents went to college.
Fortunately, UCLA is a very good outcome by any standards.
I think OP is confused about a few things.
But separately, where legacy helps at tippy tops is when the parent had an excellent experience, conveyed that to the kid, who then has an edge in his knowledge of the school, it’s assets, can accurately see his own match- and spot-on shows it in the app and supp. And has the academics and the rest of what the school looks for. At a tippy top, you can’t expect to just walk through a legacy app and get rubber stamped.
Legacy families are not necessarily high SES or out there purchasing support for their kids.
And “intact” or non-intact families are no hook.
^I suppose that is usually true. My older son got into his double legacy school despite telling the interviewer it wasn’t his first choice and sending them the same essays he sent MIT. I have no idea if the legacy helped, but I am inclined to think other factors were more important.
Younger son didn’t get into the legacy school, but his grades and scores were not has impressive as his older brothers. Not out of the question low, but Naviance did not make it look likely. He wasn’t wedded to the place either, so no harm no foul.
H and I both went to “elite” schools. Although both of our kids had academic stats comparable to our HS stats, neither was close to being a viable candidate for our alma maters so we did not even have them apply. Neither one of us would have got into our colleges by today’s standards. But the good news is that both kids had absolutely fantastic experiences on every front at schools that THEY picked and THEY loved. And now they both say that they probably would not get into their undergraad school given how admission standards have changed in even the past few years. Well…there is something to good timing! And as it turns out my S went to my H’s alma mater for grad school and my D will be going to an Ivy for her grad school so you never know how things will end up.
My classmates and I have come to the conclusion that at our alma mater (Brown) legacy only matters if there is another tip factor or hook already in play. One parent is a US Senator- assume that if your kid has “the goods” academically and is a legacy, kid is in. And it’s not about money- Senator’s salaries are a matter of public record, and so absent a family fortune elsewhere, the Senator isn’t endowing a nanotechnology building anytime soon. Or kid is a phenomenal cellist- grades and scores are inline with where they should be, but not at the top of the pool. Kid is a legacy- likely to be admitted.
But legacy alone? Absent a compelling story in the rest of the package? yawn. Legacy admissions would be MUCH higher than they are if they really were that important in and of themselves. My classmates who have had kids get rejected and end up at Penn or Cornell have concluded that just being “in the mix” and being a legacy isn’t going to move the needle. ESPECIALLY if you are from an over-represented geographical area (New Trier HS, looking at you) where the college does not need to be bolstering its presence.
OP- I would be shocked if ANY of the graduate school colleges even considered your kid a legacy. H and I both have grad degrees from top 15 type universities- at the undergrad admissions presentations we attended, both colleges said that having a grad degree did not even get your kid flagged during the admissions process.
Take a look at UA’s campus, or for a shock, the number of buildings named after Robert C Byrd. Federal earmarks, crazy stuff… 
At some tippy top schools, the legacy advantage can double your admissions chances – from 10% to 20%. Depending on how you look at it, that’s HUGE or no big deal. Schools are also all over the place in how they do it.
Some schools only consider a parent undergrad degree a legacy. Other schools also consider parent grad degree a legacy. Some schools consider siblings and grandparent degrees. Some schools only give you legacy treatment if the kid applies binding ED. Some schools only count active legacy parents – attending reunions, volunteer involvement, consistent donations (even if modest). Others schools just look for a parent degree to check the legacy box. The legacy boost also tends to get a little bit bigger as you move down the prestigiosity ladder.
“Legacy families are not necessarily high SES or out there purchasing support for their kids.”
True. But on average, the legacy pool at very selective colleges is going to be a higher SES demographic. So it is a good pond for the schools to fish in. From the school’s perspective, the legacy program works similarly to how ED programs work. Not every ED kid is higher SES, but many are. When you bundle ED + legacy, the chances of higher SES increase even more.
“And now they both say that they probably would not get into their undergrad school given how admission standards have changed in even the past few years. Well…there is something to good timing!”
Are kids just smarter now? I ** know ** that kids are applying to double the amount of schools that they were 10 years ago, but they can only attend 1 school! So admit rate goes down, but corresponding yield also goes down, doesn’t it?
Did the OP have his children when he was especially young?
My wife and I both attended the same single-initial university. We had our children relatively young, but even then by the time they applied we were well aware from the experience of our friends that legacy meant a lot less than we had imagined when our children were born. A lot less. Some of our college friends had a child (or children) accepted, but most didn’t. Everyone dealt with it. Many of my cousins attended a historic rival of my university, as had their parents, and their third-generation legacy kids have had very spotty success, with no one being admitted after 2004.
Things worked out great for our kids at a different university (to which they will have trouble getting their own children accepted). Things generally have worked out fine for everyone’s kids, including the ones who got in to our alma mater.
Graduate-school legacies: Look, folks. Legacy is a marketing device, nothing more, nothing less. It’s a device to generate more applications from a relatively affluent, sophisticated population, and a device to inspire contributions of money and time from hopeful parents who think it will make a difference. There are a number of universities whose graduate programs and professional schools comparatively outshine their colleges, which are nonetheless seen as desirable. Why the heck wouldn’t they broaden the pool by awarding the children of graduate degree holders legacy status? So . . . lots do (or at least did, last time it mattered to me), including notably Stanford and Penn.
Your D got what is called a “courtesy waitlist”. Makes alums feel better (one of my kids got one at my alma mater, but it was for the best anyway, not her best fit).
@suzyQ7 Overall enrollment has increased significantly due to 1) more Americans going to college and 2) more international students coming to the US for college. You can see some stats on the link below (under degree granting post-secondary institutions)
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_105.20.asp?current=yes
Re post #30 - @JHS what is a single-initial university?
“Are kids just smarter now? I know that kids are applying to double the amount of schools that they were 10 years ago, but they can only attend 1 school! So admit rate goes down, but corresponding yield also goes down, doesn’t it?”
Mainly, the application pool has become much larger. Less regional than in the past and more national and international. Thanks to cheap plane travel, increased financial aid, Common App, USNWR rankings, the internet etc. etc. etc.
In the olden days, kids would apply to maybe four fancy colleges and get into one or two. Now they apply to ten fancy colleges and get into one or two. The odds of going to SOME fancy college have not changed all that much (because kids are not smarter today than before). But the odds of getting into ONE SPECIFIC fancy college are now lower and less predictable.
The yields at the tippy top schools have not really gone down much (or at all). HYPS still have extremely high yield rates, which are buoyed (in part) by their REA/SCEA programs. The next tier of schools (Duke, Penn, Northwestern, Brown, Vanderbilt etc.) are able to maintain high yield and low acceptance rates through extensive use of binding early decision. Those schools fill half their seats through ED, and the yield on ED is basically 100%.
JHS means Yale.
I think the fact that a school gets so many applications ED is precisely an indication of desirability. After all, no one is forced to apply early decision; you only do so if you are saying “I love you so much I will forsake all others for you.” I think it’s funny that we’re supposed to “scorn” schools who do that; they couldn’t do it if they weren’t popular and desirable.
It would be interesting to look at the ratio of ED-applicants to total spots available (ED+RD).
(Generally speaking, there are always exceptions, but…)You need double or triple hooks now to get into the two top elites, Harvard and Stanford. So URM and first generation maybe, or athletic recruit. Legacy is not much if any hook. It’s a lot more than top grades and SAT scores, EC’s and even national titles.
I think kids actually are getting smarter. Look at the amount of data and information they have at their literal fingertips from the time they can hold a tablet or a phone.
When I think back to being 5 or 6 and how bored I was-I’d read every book in the house, including the encyclopedias, and there was nothing on the non-cable tv to watch. I’d just go re-route the stream in the backyard because there was nothing else to do (we were rural and poor).
I think there are a lot of kids nowadays that can satisfy that hunger to learn via the internet instead of digging around in the backyard, and that’s producing a better pool of kids applying to college.
This is interesting. Our experience is that most of the kids we knew who got admitted to Stanford were legacy kids (and many are indeed double legacy). However, I think there seems to be a sure way to get in - teach there. I do not recall any kid whose parent is a faculty at S is ever rejected.
“I think the fact that a school gets so many applications ED is precisely an indication of desirability.”
Absolutely agree. You need a really strong brand to play the ED game. ED doesn’t work for Podunk U.
But if you have such a strong brand, ED definitely helps the school manage its process and numbers in a way favorable to the school. Without levers like ED to pull, the schools would have to accept lots more kids at a much lower yield in order to fill seats. In some ways (but not all ways) ED is a way for the schools to get back to something that sort of looks like the olden days before the application explosion.
Meaning a kid really focuses on and targets one top choice school and has a better chance of getting into that particular school.