<p>Also, Stanford counts students who have a parent with a graduate degree from Stanford as legacies. I do not think any of Harvard/Yale/Princeton do. That may well account for the 6% difference; a Yale College-Harvard Law parent wouldn’t count in the “Harvard legacy” pool here, but a Yale College-Stanford Law parent would be counted as a Stanford legacy there.</p>
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<p>As pointed out, part of it has to do with the difference in definition. For the record, Stanford has said that the acceptance rate for legacies hovers between 10 and 15%. While this is lower than Harvard’s, that doesn’t mean it’s harder (or easier) to get in as a legacy, since we don’t know how strong the legacy pool was.</p>
<p>Another point to consider is the size of the alumni pool. Stanford has nearly 190k alumni (75k of whom are undergraduate alumni), Harvard over 320k. Yale has nearly 170k, Princeton over 80k. Perhaps someone has statistics on how many living alumni of Harvard College there are.</p>
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<p>I was under the impression that Stanford included grandparents, but according to [url=<a href=“http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/blogs/post-view/?ciid=678]this[/url”>http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/blogs/post-view/?ciid=678]this[/url</a>], it’s only parents with either a graduate or undergraduate degree:</p>
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<p>Actually, that’s what’s been happening over the past few years. Socioeconomic status is now far more important. Admissions officers at Stanford have said that regardless of legacy status, legacies would get in at around the same rate (which I’m sure is the case at every other top university). Similarly, if you looked at well-to-do applicants, they get in at higher rates. An increasing emphasis on background has yielded higher proportions of disadvantaged students, but has also, oddly enough, given justification for why legacy students get in at such high rates.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/group/journal/2003/pdfs/LegacyAdmissions.pdf]Here[/url”>http://www.stanford.edu/group/journal/2003/pdfs/LegacyAdmissions.pdf]Here[/url</a>] is an interesting article from 2003 on legacy admissions, with a focus on Stanford. Notably, in the early 90s, Harvard’s legacy acceptance rate was 35%, and it’s been +/- 5% in the past few years. Dartmouth had a legacy acceptance rate of 57%, and if the above account is true, that’s changed drastically (to <10%). In 2003, Stanford’s general admit rate was around 15% and the legacy admit rate 2x that. Now Stanford’s general admit rate is less than half that and the legacy admit rate has followed the same trend (of being around 2x the general admit rate, although depending on the proportion of legacies at both times, this comparison could be different if you compared legacy admit rates to non-legacy admit rates rather than to general admit rates). The legacy admit rate at Harvard, on the other hand, hasn’t decreased by the same proportion as the general one. As before, the differences in definition and makeup of the legacy pools may explain the discrepancy.</p>