<p>FWIW, most of the applicant pool is qualified. I don’t have to dig to find students who are perfectly capable of doing the work. There are far more qualified students than we can take. That’s what makes this job hard sometimes. If all I had to do was admit every qualified applicant, that would be awesome! :)</p>
<p>Dean J – with 30k (or whatever it is) applications, you no doubt have tons of well qualified applicants to pick from. </p>
<p>But I’m guessing that the yield on your OOS legacy admits (who get some help for admissions) is a good bit higher than the yield on the OOS admit pool generally. And as compared to the overall pool, probably more full pay-ish. So it would make a lot of sense for UVA to have its policy of giving some admissions help to OOS legacies.</p>
<p>North: admission help to OOS legacies just gets them a bit ahead of non-legacy OOS. UVa must retain 66%-IS 33%-OOS regardless of who is/isn’t legacy</p>
<p>Shoe – that’s right. </p>
<p>But since it is tougher to get in OOS, being considered on a basis that is closer to an IS candidate is, in Dean Roberts words, “a significant advantage.”</p>
<p>Since I’ve got one more kid in the pipeline, I hope/assume UVA isn’t lying to me as an OOS alumni. That would not be honorable…</p>
<p>Ahh, comparing against OOS. Gotcha. Yes, agreed</p>
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<p>Just curious…what is the breakdown of IS students who receive FA vs. OOS students?</p>
<p>I would imagine a higher percent of OOS US students receive UVa aid than in-state because the sticker price is $27,000 a year more. Therefore an in-state family with an income of X would not receive AccessUVa aid, but an out-of-state family with that same income of X would be eligible. </p>
<p>The important stat from the viewpoint of University finances would be the average net price paid to UVa for OOS vs. in-state students. That stat would include loans and outside grants.</p>
<p>The international students are not eligible for AccessUVa aid, and they make up a large percentage of OOS students today. If UVa was only concerned about finances, they would fill up the entire OOS quota with international students.</p>
<p>In staters, as Charlie correctly points out, have a much lower price point and so therefore might not need/get as much aid.</p>
<p>Having said that, it is as obvious as the nose on your face that UVA gives an admissions bump to OOS legacies in significant part to attract/enroll fuller payors of the higher OOS tuition.</p>
<p>UVA constantly and publicly complains (with good reason) about how little money it has. What to do about that cash crunch was pretty much the root cause of the whole President Sullivan debacle.</p>
<p>UVA’s finances depend on getting 2/3rds of its tution revenue from 1/3 of its students. As a demographic group, UVA alumni families are going to be MUCH more likely than the average OOS applicant family to be able to pay higher tuition without much/any aid. If UVA didn’t get higher net revenue per student from the OOS legacy crowd, why would UVA give them an advantage? UVA would be better off trying to get the non-legacy OOS applicants with higher GPAs and SATs.</p>
<p>As Charlie also correctly points out, the int’l student demographic is an even better pond to fish in for full payors. Which is why UVA (and all other schools) are chasing those int’l students so hard these days.</p>
<p>In addition to their fuller pay characteristics, my guess is the OOS legacy pool has favorable yield characteristics (i.e. those kids are more likely than average to accept an acceptance). The full payor from India or China that UVA covets is also coveted by lots and lots of other schools around the U.S. (like UCLA, Cal Berkeley and plenty of privates). It may be a lot easier to get the legacy kid from Chicago to enroll.</p>
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<p>Hardly.</p>
<p>Only about six to eight percent of U-Va’s budget comes from state taxes.</p>
<p>U-Va gets its largest chunk of money from revenue at its own hospital.</p>
<p>Eh. I don’t consider legacy admission to be that important of an issue either way, but I do think it should be stopped. I understand the reasoning behind it–get more money from alums, use that to fund school/subsidize poor students, etc.–but I still think it’s rather unfair to give an advantage to students for stuff their parents did.</p>
<p>Renover – you realize, right, that in-state kids get a big break on admissions and tuition based on their parents? The kids didn’t choose to live in VA. The kids don’t pay VA taxes.</p>
<p>Golf – while state support is way way down, it is still big money to UVA. Each in-stater currently brings along $8,600 to UVA from the state. To replace that cash flow, UVA would probably need an additional $1.5 billion or so added to its endowment. But the support level is a lot less than it used to be, and also less than what peers like UNC and UM and UT get.</p>
<p>For them to get more dollars out of OOS legacies, they’d have to filter for full pay vs FA. Dean J said," Ability to pay is not a factor in our review." I takes a lot to make an assumption OOS legacy families are automatically more likely to not need FA.</p>
<p>“For them to get more dollars out of OOS legacies, they’d have to filter for full pay vs FA. Dean J said,” Ability to pay is not a factor in our review." I takes a lot to make an assumption OOS legacy families are automatically more likely to not need FA."</p>
<p>It is hugely and obviously going to be the case that UVA grads of a certain age (as a group) are going to be more well-to-do than a random sample of applicants. That’s why legacy preferences at schools like UVA and the Ivies are typically criticized as “affirmative action for the rich.” </p>
<p>[Affirmative</a> Action for the Rich | Brookings Institution](<a href=“http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2010/affirmativeactionfortherich]Affirmative”>http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2010/affirmativeactionfortherich)</p>
<p>Dean J doesn’t need to consider ability to pay in reading applications. Once the file is tagged as a legacy, the upscale SES demographics (not for each file but on average for the group over thousands of applications year after year) are going to be there. You’d get significant upscale demographics just by culling out applicants whose parents graduated from any college; even more upscale if the parent college is UVA.</p>
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<p>I certainly realize that. However, weren’t state schools created particularly to service the people who reside in that state? Athletes have athletic merit; URMs add much needed cultural and social diversity; low-income/disadvantaged students faced great challenges.</p>
<p>Certainly, it’s not ‘fair’, since no one can pick whether they’re born a URM/in-state/disadvantaged. However, I still think legacy admissions is ‘worse’ than other types of affirmative action, because the point of it is almost wholly to raise money (rather than to add more diversity, choose students who’ve faced obstacles, students with great skills, etc.); I’d rather even out the playing field as much as possible than give preferential treatment to some just to try to get more alumni donations (also, it’s still debated whether legacy admissions increases a school’s donations that significantly anyway). </p>
<p>Obviously, universities are perfectly within their rights to admit students based on legacy admissions, or any other factor they want. Like I said, I don’t think this is huge, super important problem; I personally disagree with the practice, and if I had children, I wouldn’t want my school to give them preferential treatment due to who their parent is.</p>
<p>“I’d rather even out the playing field as much as possible than give preferential treatment to some just to try to get more alumni donations (also, it’s still debated whether legacy admissions increases a school’s donations that significantly anyway).” </p>
<p>As I noted above, I think the business model around legacy admissions is less about alumni donations and more about getting tuition dollars and higher net revenue per student. My alumni contributions to UVA are peanuts compared to the OOS tuition bills. </p>
<p>Only 30% of folks currently in their 40s and 50s have a 4 year college degree, and we all know college grads on average have more money than non college grads. Only a small subset of that 30% have a degree from a highly selective college. So the legacy pool at UVA or another selective school is an upscale demographic.</p>
<p>The legacy program at UVA has an interesting financial twist to it than those at the private schools since it only targets those applicants who would be charged the higher tier of tuition.</p>
<p>From a net revenue perspective, UVA would do even better if it gave a legacy preference to in-staters. But that presumably would not be politically feasible.</p>
<p>North, how much you really know about admissions? There are many institutional needs managed in the admissions process. I know plenty of UVA grads in the right age group, for whom zip can be predicted. Many assumptions in your reasoning.</p>
<p>LF – if you want to believe that the demographic of families with a UVA grad parent is downscale, go right ahead. Maybe you are right that the reason that UVA favors alumni kids has nothing to do with money. Perhaps they just want to bring in kids who already know the words to the Good Old song? </p>
<p>The financial reasons behind such an admissions policy are obvious. So obvious that legacy admissions get criticized as “affirmative action for rich people.” Which is exactly what the original poster was objecting to. </p>
<p>That’s not a criticism that is specific to UVA. That charge is leveled at any/all schools that do legacy admissions.</p>
<p>Guess there is no discussion, you say they favor, that’s that.<br>
But I didn’t say downscale. I said no predicting. You say it’s obvious. And so does a book. Where I work, a single-digit, we note legacy. But it is not at all as slam bang as you say. And you’ve got an OOS legacy kid? Best of luck. The end.</p>
<p>Northwesty,</p>
<p>Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean by “Each in-stater currently brings along $8,600to UVA from the state.”
What did you mean by that?</p>
<p>What I was referring to was your comment that “The parents of VA residents pay state taxes, so their kids get a break,” implying that because Virginia resident state income tax goes to support U-Va, Virginia residents should get some kind of benefit such as increased admission rate, or lower tuition etc.</p>
<p>So, I was pointing out that U-Va gets practically bupkis from state taxes. Therefore, there is no financial (or moral) obligation or quid pro quo.</p>
<p>Here is the actual rundown of where U-Va gets its income. Money from the commonwealth is dead last:</p>
<p>Patient revenues 45.3%
Tuition and fees 17.0%
Research grants and cost recoveries 11.7%
Gifts and endowment support 10.1%
Sales and services and other 8.5%
State appropriation 5.8%</p>
<p>Golf – the number that Prez Sullivan quotes all the time in $8600 state spending per in state student. Small percentage of budget, but still big dollars. </p>
<p>So UVA gets that amount of cash for each in stater in addition to the IS tuition that IS families pay. That’s real money. Although not as much as is spent at peer state flagships. Which is why you hear the rumblings about privatization (which will never happen imho). </p>
<p>State Funding per In-State Student</p>
<p>2009-10 General Fund
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill $26,034
University of Maryland $17,620
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor $15,595
University of Virginia $8,601</p>
<p>Source: U.Va. 2010-2011 Budget Summary</p>