Role of Legacy

This discussion was created from comments split from: Notre Dame Restrictive Early Action 2022.

Hi. I’m not sure you will see this but I remembered some of your comments back in December. My husband and I are both alum and our fathers, grandfathers. My son did get accepted back in December and will be attending. He was at the high end of test scores, #1 in his class, etc. so not sure how much of a role we played. My question concerns another son who just finished junior year. He is strong on stats but not like my first. He has 4.12/4.33 unweighted gpa and a 1480 (780M,700E, 22 essay) He will take SAT again in August to try to bring the English up. Do you mind sharing your sons stats? I’m worried son#2 might be very mid range as a legacy. Trying to put things in perspective. Any insight would be appreciated.

Aspen~ my son would have been third generation Domer…very similar stats to your second son. He applied early and did not get in. He was accepted to the new 5 year engineering program with Holy Cross when regulars admissions decisions were released. My son is not attending ND. Going STEM honors program at another school. I think there is preference for siblings. I attended ND with my 3 siblings, dh and his sister, my other two bils had siblings there too. Basically, our entire family by marriage went to ND and had siblings there too.

Thanks My5Kiddos. My brother and I attended together as well. Son #2 is at Notre Dame in the Summer Scholars Program right now. I wasn’t expecting him to like it this much - so now the pressure is on again. We know how competitive it is so we’re keeping things in perspective.

@aspen22 - my DS admitted RD for '22. Not a legacy, very involved in band, including leadership positions (drum major, etc.). His stats - 1550 SAT, 35 ACT, NMF, 4.0 unweighted, #12/525 class rank. I suggest your DS2 take the ACT along with another SAT attempt.

Thanks usma87. He is taking the SAT again in August. I’m mostly curious about what kind of stats it takes as a 4th generation legacy with a sibling (and uncle is a Holy Cross priest). He’s very well rounded with varsity sports, leadership, awards, community service, etc. My older son who was admitted REA had 1580 and was #1 in his class so not sure how/if legacy helped him. He was also accepted to USC, Georgetown, Dartmouth, UVA etc. Hoping if second son ends up with a 1500 he’ll have a chance. He also just attended ND Summer Scholars and made some strong connections with a couple of professors who he’ll probably reach out to for recs. We have no big expectations but he’s definitely interested - I was kind of hoping he’d come home and say “It’s not for me”

I think having a sibling there will help even more than legacy.

When my son did not get into ND, he got the “family rejection letter”. It basically stated that even though they value the ND family, they are looking to expand that family beyond legacy.

My son’s grandparents are such ND loyalists that they moved from CA to Holy Cross retirement community…in hopes of their grandchildren attending college there. Three for three so far not accepted. All parents of these kids also went to ND.

With that said, we have been on quite a few ND admissions tours and all our guides had siblings there.

I still love ND, but I think legacy means less than it used too in their new efforts to “expand the family”.

Go Irish!

“Ultimately, I think the requirements are the same for legacy kids as non legacy. However, I know at least 10 legacy kids that would have been 3-4 generation that did not get in.”

This is very misleading.

ND is more difficult to get into for everyone (legacy or not) than it used to be. That’s what an 18% overall admit rate means. Same thing has happened in every other top 25 school too.

But ND is still easier to get into as a legacy than as a non-legacy. In fact, ND is the single best school in the top 25 (by a lot) to use a legacy ticket if you are lucky enough to hold one.

About half the ND legacy applicants get rejected even with the legacy advantage.

About a quarter of the ND legacy applicants are strong enough that they would get into ND regardless. Those high stat kids are the ones you’ll also see getting into Gtown, BC and similar level schools as non-legacy applicants.

And then there’s about 25% of the legacy applicants that get into ND who wouldn’t get in as non-legacies. And that’s according to Don Bishop himself (circa 2015):

“Fortunately,” says Bishop, “our alumni produce pretty bright kids. The academic profile of that group is quite good.” The admit rate for these applicants is about 45 percent — as opposed to an admit rate of 19 to 20 percent for everybody else. This fulfills a University commitment made some years back to maintain a legacy presence of 20 to 25 percent of the student body, a percentage, he says, about twice that of other highly selective institutions, including the Ivies, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern and Vanderbilt."

"That means, he continues, “there are about 1,000 kids walking this campus today who are alumni kids who, if we did not have this commitment to the alumni, would not be here — about 250 per class.”

The 2017 entering enrolled class was 24% alumni kids, so things haven’t changed much from 2015.

“But ND is still easier to get into as a legacy than as a non-legacy. In fact, ND is the single best school in the top 25 (by a lot) to use a legacy ticket if you are lucky enough to hold one.”

Harvard’s legacy admit rate was 29% for the class of 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/harvards-incoming-class-is-one-third-legacy.html Penn and Yale were both 16%. So ND at 24% is right in that ballpark. Not the highest and not “twice that of other highly selective institutions, including the Ivies…”

Most top tier schools value legacy with high admit rates for the population (i.e.Harvard 30%, Penn over 40%). One exception seems to be MIT. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, I’m just saying ND at 45% is not alone in that regard.

Absolutely…the majority of ND legacy are qualified on their own merit.

ND is turning down qualified legacy kids though…they have too in order to have a balanced class.

I’m very familiar with the above quotes from Don Bishop.

I’m curious how many Gateway kids are legacy. It is a wonderful program. I met quite a few Gateway kids this April that were legacy.

ND is harder to get into now than it was 10 years ago. I think it is harder to get in as legacy now than it was 5-10 years ago.

In today’s uber competitive and outstanding applicant pool, I don’t see ND regularly taking students with 1250 SATs because they are legacy. There are probably thousands of qualified legacies to choose from…that is why I say I think the admission standards are the same for both legacy and non legacy students…as a legacy you still have to be a qualified applicant, have high gpa/test scores, and strong ECs and essays.

Go Irish!!

A lot of people like to cite dated Notre Dame legacy admit stats from, say, 5 or 7 years ago. For example, as recently as 2012, ND’s enrollment head Don Bishop said that the legacy admit rate was “about” 50% at a time when ND’s overall admit rate was 23.3%.

By 2014, just two years later, ND’s legacy admit rate had fallen to 43% as the university’s overall admit rate had declined to 21.2%.

For the incoming class that was just admitted, the overall acceptance rate at Notre Dame dropped to around 17.7% – the final acceptance rate won’t be known until ND updates its webpage. Based on historic trending, it would suggest a legacy admit rate of about 35-36% now. This would also be right in line with the recent article in the Wall Street Journal in which Notre Dame was listed as one of the selective schools where the legacy admit rate was “about double” the overall admit rate.

@northwesty wrote that “About half the ND legacy applicants get rejected even with the legacy advantage.” In all likelihood, my math suggests that at least 60% of legacy students are now getting rejected, and it may well be closer to 65% of legacy students getting rejected now (given the growth in the applicant pool). It used to be that a child of an ND alum had about a 1-in-2 shot to get in, but it’s creeping down to more like a 1-in-3 shot now. Yes, that’s still twice as good as the roughly 1-in-6 shot for the non-legacy applicant.

As far back as 4 years ago, Don Bishop is on record as saying that the difference in the average SAT score between the pool of legacy vs. non-legacy applicants was less than 10 points. This notion that legacy candidates are grossly less qualified is nonsense. ND uses legacy to protect its yield rate, much like schools such as Emory, Wash U, Vandy, and Rice use ED to accomplish the same yield protection.

I’m just bummed I can’t play the legacy card at ND, because it’s still a good card to hold. It’s not a golden ticket, but among reasonably equally qualified applicants, it can be the proverbial “feather on the scale” that tips things in favor of the legacy candidate.

@MomLA2018 – Why would you think Bishop is lying or uninformed in his public statements? Especially since his statements are confirmed by the data ND itself discloses? Kudos to Bishop for being very transparent on this stuff as compared to many other schools who hide the ball.

That 29% legacy stat for Harvard is bad data. Since it comes from a voluntary self-reporting survey of incoming Harvard students. The prior year that survey said 15% legacy, and the prior year it said 16%. No one thinks Harvard actually doubled its legacy spots in one year.

Most people think that Harvard’s number is somewhere between Yale’s and Princeton’s (see below) which makes sense. Harvard having double the legacies of Y and P does not make any sense at all.

At 24%, ND does run much higher on legacies than its peers. Not all legacies need the legacy boost, but that is true everywhere (not just at ND). Here’s a sampling of good recent data:

Princeton 14.4%.

Penn 16%.

Cornell 15%.

Yale 11.9%.

Stanford 10%.
Brown 10-12%.

Duke 10-15%.
Dartmouth 11-14%
Gtown 7.6%.
Chicago 5%.

Maybe there is another top 25 school with a legacy percentage as high as ND, but I’ve never seen a number like that. Not all legacies need the legacy boost, but that is true everywhere (not just at ND).

I see no reason to doubt Bishop – 200 kids a year (about 10% of enrolled students) would not be at ND if they were not legacies.

“It’s not a golden ticket, but among reasonably equally qualified applicants, it can be the proverbial “feather on the scale” that tips things in favor of the legacy candidate.”

Legacy status doesn’t let dumb kids get in. Those times are long gone at top 25 schools. But the legacy card is still very powerful.

A school like ND is drowning in applications from kids with 33-35 ACT scores. But a legacy kid in that range is WAY more likely to get in versus a non-legacy applicant.

Applying to a top 25 school is a game that results in thousands of ties. So having “just” a tie-breaker in your favor is actually huge in reality. The ND legacy ticket is one of the best (if not the best) to hold.

I’m not doubting Bishops comments. However, I think the data will soon be out dated.

The question may be how do they decide between qualified legacy? How do they decide which ND family continues on and which doesn’t?

I stand by my belief that qualifications for legacy and non legacy at this time is the same…within 10 SAT points as stated above.

Could legacy be the feather that tops the scale…for sure…but only if you bring everything else to the table.

I believe the question that started this discussion was about siblings. It is my understanding that having an enrolled sibling, assuming the applicant meets admission stats, may be as valuable as the legacy card. Has anyone found recent sibling data?

@My5Kiddos Don’t know if it was this thread or another I commented on, but having an enrolled sibling gives nowhere near the benefit that being a legacy does. There was an online admissions discussion from a few years ago where Don Bishop addressed this directly. (I believe it may have been from 4 years ago, but I’m not sure.) Also, I have been told within the last few years that having a sibling at the school is nothing more than a very soft benefit. I was told this specifically when our younger daughter was applying while her older sister was attending. That being said, younger daughter was eminently qualified and is entering her senior year at ND. Granted it is a very small sample, but between the two of them, my daughters knew just as many siblings who were denied as who were admitted.

Thank you for that clarification @ejcclc

@northwesty “Why would you think Bishop is lying or uninformed…?” - I don’t think he was lying and of course he knows the data for ND. For his references to other schools, I think it’s possible he was uninformed or was speaking off the cuff (not realizing he would be quoted ad infinitum on CC). And/or his 2015 comments are outdated.

“That 29% legacy stat for Harvard is bad data. Since it comes from a voluntary self-reporting survey of incoming Harvard students.” - point taken, it is imperfect. But “Most people think…” is opinion and I can’t comment on your data since it’s not sourced.

I never said I doubted Bishop’s word that, in 2015, @ 200 kids per class wouldn’t be there if they weren’t legacies. I was pointing out that ND is not the only top school with a high admit rate for that population. Harvard, Penn and ND all have legacy admit rates at/over 30%. (I’m not able to post the link I was looking at for reference, I think because it’s a banned site).

We agree that legacy kids are qualified to be there and that having legacy is a significant tie-breaker between otherwise qualified applicants

“I’m not doubting Bishops comments. However, I think the data will soon be out dated.”

There is zero evidence of that.

According to Bishop, the class that started fall 2015 was 24% legacies. Fall 2016 was 24% legacies. Fall 2017 was 24% legacies. Fall 2018 hasn’t been announced yet. But I’d bet $2 that the percentage will be 24% (give or take).

Like every other top 25 school, ND gets harder to get into with each year. For everyone (legacy or not). But the big allocation of seats (roughly double what you see at the peer schools cited above) is being maintained. And the relative admissions break (as compared to non-legacies) is being maintained too.

WSJ article from two days ago. ND has the most legacies (by far) as compared to Cornell, UVA, P, Duke, Y, Brown, Dartmouth, Colgate. No data for Harvard.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/legacy-preferences-complicate-colleges-diversity-push-1531128601

I have to give the credit for this to @northwesty , who has pointed out in several posts over the past year that different schools have different tools at their disposal to protect their yield.

Notre Dame has been able to remain a “Restrictive Early Action” school because it has surely done the historic modeling that suggests that somewhere between 75-80% of accepted legacy REA applicants will enroll. If you can count on an exceptional yield from early action legacies, that’s a sure-fire way to protect ND’s yield while not having to go the Early Decision route. And make no mistake: ND is extremely proud of the fact that about 56% of those they choose to admit ultimately enroll.

Other schools might only have 10-12% of their classes as legacy, but these schools care about protecting their yield too. Many of these schools have elected to implement Early Decision I and Early Decision II programs, thereby locking in those accepted applicants at close to a 100% yield. I would wager that for the academically-qualified applicant, ED I and ED II programs provide the very same “feather on the scale” benefit that legacy does at ND.

As @northwesty noted, just about all of these top-20 well known privates are flooded with thousands upon thousands of applications from students with 4.3 GPAs, 7-10 AP classes, and 33-35 on the ACT or 1480-1560 on the SAT. At ND, the kid with the 4.3, 8 APs, and 34 who’s a legacy is likelier to get in than a similarly-qualified non-legacy. At Emory, Rice, Wash U, or Vandy, the kid who’s a 4.3, 8 APs, and 34 is more likely to get in as an EDI or EDII than as a Regular Admissions candidate. It’s just different flavors of ice cream from the Admissions Office’s perspective: we want to admit those academically-qualified kids who we’re most confident will ultimately choose to accept our offer and enroll.

@GeronimoAlpaca is exactly right.

ED (and its cousin SCEA) and legacy admissions work in a very similar way. In fact at some schools (Penn for example) you only get the legacy tip if you apply ED.

Both increase yield and also tend to increase the number of well qualified (but not the most qualified) applicants who are more likely to be full payors. Since ND uses REA (which is weaker than SCEA or ED), they rely much more heavily than its peer schools on legacies. [ND can also stick with REA because that’s what Gtown and BC have too.]

In addition to the positive yield and full pay effects, an XL sized legacy program fits very well with ND’s brand and mission – community, family.

Bottom line, the ND legacy card is as good as it gets. But there’s still no guarantees.