<p>I keep finding references to legacy only helping during EA consideration at Stanford. But on this post one person seems to say it doesn’t happen that way, only coincidental. Does anyone have the straight scoop on whether legacy is more important for EA and overlooked for RD?</p>
<p>If you are a highly qualified legacy applicant you are in all probability more likely to be deferred (as a courtesy, presumably, to keep the alums somewhat loyal) rather than outright rejected in the EA round. However, if deferred, chance for admission in the RD pool is 10%. Go for it!</p>
<p>And if your parent is not a big donor…will that hurt?</p>
<p>Here’s a tricky scenario to chew on: </p>
<p>My son is the grandchild of a Stanford graduate (B.A. and Ph.D.) as my father was the Stanford alum. However, my son’s mother and I (who are divorced) attended college but never graduated. And we are both low income, although not destitute (to give you an idea, our son qualifies for Medicaid and reduced price school lunch–but not food stamps). We also live in a rural area of Missouri that is overall a poor region with below average median income.</p>
<p>So is he better off just presenting himself as an underrepresented rural “poor kid” of parents without college degrees, who has nevertheless managed to get good grades and high test scores? Or with Stanford, would he still be better off as a legacy? Or does he have no choice, really? That is, would it be considered fraud if he did not check any of the legacy boxes?</p>
<p>If this makes any difference in terms of their record keeping, I applied 25 years ago as a legacy and got rejected, thanks to my 2.6 high school GPA (although I did have very high SAT and ACT scores).</p>
<p>^ I don’t think it is tricky since the applicant should be honest when filling out the application.</p>