That upper bound is likely high, as all the adcom ratings of the applicants is biased by their knowledge of the applicant’s ALDC status.
Legacy is probably the most voluminous of these groups (and probably the one that most impacts unhooked applicants by consuming admit space), but may not be the biggest possible boost to an individual applicant – consider how much of a boost a relative of a super-size donor or a top priority recruited athlete will get compared to an “ordinary” legacy applicant.
When legacy status by itself is one of the things that the college looks for, yes it contributes to a stronger application package, while being unattainable by most applicants.
As far as any kid being able to do the digging, are you saying that a first-generation-to-college student from a poor family in a high school where hardly anyone goes to college beyond the local community college or non-flagship state university and whose counselors are overloaded with keeping students from flunking out has the same opportunity to dig up the information and fulfill what the college wants as a high SES legacy student attending a prep school with a dedicated college counseling staff that is well connected to highly selective colleges and whose parents can give additional information about what kind of students match the college’s wants?
At Harvard, the specific percentages were as follows. Legacy was the most voluminous ALDC hook group among admits, but not by much over athletes.
Recruited athlete appeared to be the strongest analyzed hook group by far, which is not a surprise.
At smaller “elite” colleges, I’d expect athletes will often be the largest hook group, such as my earlier post about Williams, with ~40% of the class being varsity athletes. However, I’d expect the strength of athletic preference at Williams and other NESCAC colleges is far weaker than the strength of athletic preference at HYPS… and various other Div I “elites”.
A=Athlete – 0.9% applicants, 11% admits
L=Legacy – 2.9% applicants, 15% admits
D=Special Interest – 1.6% applicants, 10% admits
C=Child of Faculty – 0.05% applicants, 0.6% admits
C=Child of Staff – 0.2% applicants, 0.9% admits
SES “Disadvantaged”* – 12% applicants, 18% admits
*“Disadvantaged” seems to correlate with than ~median income, rather than truly low income.
A question that I am sure have already been addressed elsewhere but I am asking anyway:
Do we have any way to know how much of the admissions of these specialty groups is also about protecting yield? They all (except perhaps SES) have a big impact on yield. Legacy and locked-in athletes, in particular.
If I am reading those numbers right @Data10, taking out SES, 5.65% are specialty applicants who make up 37.6% of admits. But we don’t really know for sure how many of these would get in based on academics and other opportunities (although I do understand that with athletes many wouldn’t qualify based on academics). Curious what people think is the right percentage of these admits is. I hear zero from some, and certainly 100%is too much. Intuitively, 37.6% seems high, but not offensively high to me.
Flipping it – 94.35% are the general population of applicants, making up 62.4% of the admitted. That is a lot of people and spots, way more than are being taken by athletes and legacies. Even if you were to take those out of the equation, there would still be a low acceptance rate. I don’t see how any individual rejected applicant can blame any single other applicant for the rejection, even if that other applicant is a legacy. 62.4% of the accepted students didn’t get that bump and still got in.
I still don’t understand why people think they can discern “fairness” with these kinds of numbers. Even if we had access to much more granular data, there is no way to make this objectively fair. Someone is always going to be on the losing end of this zero sum game.
Finally, don’t all of us dedicated CC readers know the fundamentals of how to maximize the chances of admission? There is only so much any of us can move the needle. Take rigorous classes, get great SAT/ACT scores, be authentic and dedicated in your ECs, be interesting, write great essays, have great LoRs, know with specificity why the school is a fit for you and you a fit for the school. Not that I wouldn’t want all data possible, but honestly, there is nothing I could learn from it that would change my kid’s application process. If he loves a school and we can afford it, whether his likelihood of success is 5% or 15% doesn’t change whether he applies.
^ That’s the broader view.
But if your child has his heart set on X, do look deeper than those factors.
Being authentic is good. (As long as it represents the sorts of traits they value and that relate to college life.) The sorts of ECs an elite can expect (eg, some including peers, not isolated, some related to the major, some dedicated comm service, etc,) is more than just “authentic.”
Data10, the OIR report seems to have lincluded up to 120k as lower income? So is a whopping 12% of applicants to Williams are not uber wealthy? And posters expect what mechanism to then raise the matriculating percentages? Accept more median and low income kids, based on something other than “qualifications?” (As it is, too many assume just being low SES is a final tip.) And hope more yield, regardless of whether they can later keep up? I think not. Yes, more recruiting of low SES kids. But they still need to be fully quaified, more than their SAT or ACT scores.
Look, it really doesn’t mater if our kids attend an elite. It’s far from the only sort of college available. The quality of education opportunities covers a much wider selection of colleges and can depend on what major interests. We all should know that the lower the admit rates, the lower your shot, in the first place.
It’s possible to make this more objectively fair. Look at how the rest of the world does college admissions.
Quoting (my own) post #83 with minor modifications:
In this regard, I’m perfectly happy to let the rest of the world enjoy their systems . I’ll take our college system (warts and all) over any other model, any day of the week. We are different - Vive la defference!
The Harvard “disadvantaged” tag is given by readers to applicants who they believe are SES disadvantaged based on information in the file. Harvard is need blind, so readers don’t know the actual income and instead make estimates. The estimates aren’t perfect. Sometimes a lower SES kid is not flagged as disadvantaged, and sometimes a $120k income kid might be incorrectly flagged as disadvantaged. Looking at the Harvard OIR report, we can see which incomes get the most benefit, as summarized below.
<$40k Income – Expected 6% admit rate, Actually had 11% admit rate
$40-$80k Income – Expected 8% admit rate, Actually had 11% admit rate
$80k-$120k Income – Expected 9% admit rate, Actually had 9% admit rate
Less than $40k income applicants appear to get a significant admissions benefit, as can be seen by the much higher admit rate than expected based on the Harvard OIR model, with income consideration removed. $40-$80k also appear get some benefit, but not as large as <$40k. Few above $80k appear to be flagged as “disadvantaged”, as suggested by little difference between expected and actual admit rate. The Harvard OIR report lists a regression coefficient of 1.0 for <$60k income. This $60k threshold seems like a reasonable estimation for the income range that gets the low SES admission advantage. This relates to why my post above said the “disadvantage” flag seems to correlate with less than ~median income (report was from earlier classes, without inflation adjustment). $120k is far too high.
I’m not sure what Williams has to do with this. I’m guessing you are referring to my earlier post in which I listed 12% of Harvard applicants get the SES “disadvantaged” flag? 12% of applicants flags “disadvantaged” might set a minimum of 12% of Harvard below $60k, but the actually number is probably somewhat higher due to a small portion of lower income applicants not being correctly flagged as “disadvantaged”.
In any case, I agree with you that there aren’t a lot of lower income students applying to Harvard (or most other elites). I’ve made similar statements many times throughout the thread.
I’ve listed a number of options earlier in the thread. I won’t repeat them in detail again, just list brief summaries of a few this time:
- Increase outreach to lower income high school students, in particular, emphasizing that Harvard can be affordable to many non-wealthy families, in spite of the $75k sticker price.
- Apply the relatively small SES "disadvantaged" admissions boost to all races of applicants. At the time of the lawsuit, it only appeared to be applied to some races.
- Reduce degree of preference for hook groups that favor SES advantaged applicants including athletes, legacy, dean/director's special interest list, Z-list, and to a lesser extent early applicants.
According to the data presented at the trial, legacy/list applicants had better distribution across the 10 academic deciles that Harvard uses. The legacy/list applicants have very few in the bottom three deciles. The bottom three deciles are interesting, since 31.1% of the regular applicants are in those deciles, while only 23.27% of the legacies/lists are. On the other hand, 29.89% of the regular applicants are in the top 3 deciles, which is almost identical to that of the legacy/lists which is 29.11%. A higher percent of legacy/list applicants are in the mid academic deciles than regular applicants.
This is pretty reasonable, since legacies and list applicants have better GCs and advice, and kids with weak academic are less likely to apply. For the “regular” applicants, the distribution is pretty much even, because the entire pool was divided into 10 groups of similar size.
However, what is really interesting is that, when you look at the distribution of the admitted applicants, the “regular” applicants have a much higher acceptance rate at for the top three deciles, and very low for the rest, while for the legacies/list applicants, the drop in acceptance rate is much more gradual.
As a result, 60% of the “regular” admits are in the top 3 academic deciles, while for the legacies/list group, it’s 47.5%. Among the “regular” admits, 4.3% are in the bottom 3 deciles while 7.8% of the legacies/lists admits are in the bottom 3 deciles. At the middle, 35.7% of the regular admits are in the four middle deciles, versus 55.3% of the legacies/lists.
So, first, this means that the admitted legacies/list applicants are, on average, not as academically accomplished as the regular admits.
Second, when Harvard selects from the legacies and lists, they’re not nearly as interested in selecting the best applicants academically as they are when selecting from “regular” applicants.
It’s all about the “buckets”.
Joey with the perfect GPA and SAT and great ECs isn’t being rejected so they can bring in double legacy Justin with the 3.9 GPA and the 1570 SAT, because Joey and Justin aren’t competing for the same places. Joey is competing with 35,000 non-hooked applicants for one of 1,000 places, while Justine is competing with 900 legacy and list applicants for 300 places.
That’s just how it is. I just wish that places like Harvard would stop pretending that every applicant was competing for the same places, and that every accepted student was one of the best 4.56% of the 43,000 applicants.
I understand the low odds of admission to Harvard. When I wrote about “borderline” applicants, comparing a legacy applicant and a non-legacy applicant, I meant the applicants who are right near the borderline for admission to Harvard, not “borderline” in terms of it being appropriate to even apply to Harvard.
So I put my borderline somewhere around the top 5.1% to 5.3% of Harvard applicants. That is where the action is, from my viewpoint. Perhaps top 4.9% to top 5.5%. Since 5.2% were admitted (2.2 K out of 42 K), that sets the center of the neighborhood that constitutes my borderline.
I realize that Harvard is not precisely categorizing the students in this way, of course. There is no one who is identified as being in the top 5.238095% and therefore in, and no one who is identified as being only in the top 5.238096% and therefore out. However, de facto, that is the way it works out.
I think athletes, legacies, and the other categories have their own primary reasons for admissions preference beyond yield. Instead I’d expect early admissions to more relate to yield than ALDC. During the final class listed in the OIR docs, early applicants had a 94% yield, while regular applicants had a 68% yield. That’s a tremendous difference.
IfHarvard wants to increase yield, admitting a larger portion of the class from the early pool seems like an easy way to do it. The lawsuit analysis found a benefit to applying early. I believe Harvard is unique in this respect, with a larger early admissions advantage than at other non-ED “elite” schools… The analysis found that the strength of advantage for applying early at Harvard was roughly the same strength as the admissions advantage for the SES “disadvantaged” flag – a significant boost, but far weaker than any of ALDC. Many lower SES students cannot apply early for financial reasons, so an early preference favors higher SES groups.
Note that it is possible to be in multiple categories. Some legacies are also athletes or also on the special interest list. Some are also in additional hook categories beyond ALDC that were not listed in my earlier post, such as URM. The Duke study suggests the following combined percentages:
5% of applicants are ALDC, 95% of applicants are non-ALDC
29% of admits are ALDC, 71% of admits are non-ALDC
^. Yup. And athletes make up a lot of the early admits, and I would guess a lot of legacies do, too. Take them out of the mix, EA (as opposed to ED) would have a more similar yield to RD. That said, Harvar’s yield is insanely high in ED, too, so probably not the best example.
Yeah, it is all about buckets, seems to me. Which is another reason why fairness is a incongruous concept to apply to the admissions process. Your bassoonist might be just what the orchestra needs this year. Last year it might have been oboe. That might be luck, but fair isn’t really part of it.
I would love for athletics not to matter so much, which would definitely move the American system more like other parts of the world. But (a) if a student doesn’t like the American emphasis on sports , maybe those non-American schools are a better fit for that student culturally, (b) there Isn’t a selective school on the planet that doesn’t have some sort of opportunity gap, because the wealthy will always be able to buy more educational opportunity for their children than the poor can, © there are American schools that don’t emphasize sports in admissions, so those American schools would be a better fit than an Ivy if the student doesn’t want sports to matter.
Sorry, Data, initially thought you were referring to Williams.
R, it’s not as simple as income to admits. Or deciles. Or buckets. All kids are responsible for their own apps and are read first in sequence. The bulk of the process, up to final balancing the class, they’re applicants, not labels.
The college I do know best is aligned with Harvard’s overall review style, though not the numbering system that came out. Each applicant competes for a place in the overall pool. By region, sure, and down, because GOP diversity is so important. But the goal is, across all regions, majors, SES, etc, able to fit and thrive, the best individuals.
Not Joey in his bucket and Justin in another. Sure, there may be obvious labels, eg, URM, or stem kid from the Bay Area. But not the degree of manipulation some think.
QM, call it tie breakers. Absolutely, a legacy might get the nod.
BUT so might that great stem gal, in a sea of male finalists. (Sorry, parents of boys.) Or that SE Asian kid. Or multiple other factors.
Is it fair that an applicant with legacy status has an advantage in admissions than another applicant without the hook, who is otherwise at least as qualified in every way? How difficult is it to discern this “unfairness”?
The vitality of our society depends on people having equal opportunities to succeed. We don’t want our leaders to be chosen based on heredity. Why do we want some of these elite schools use heredity as a factor to select their students, who, BTW, may become our leaders of tomorrow?
Do you realize that the college thinks that an applicant with legacy status is a better “fit” from its perspective, everything else being equal, regardless of what you think?
Yes.
The world is not a fair place. It is noble and right to strive for equal opportunity, especially on behalf of people who can’t fight the good fight themselves. But systems are imperfect, people take advantage of systems, and my kid, no matter how much I love him, isn’t entitled to a spot at a school, no matter how much he loves it.
And if Harvard wants legacies, even at the cost of not admitting my fabulous, “qualified” kid, their loss. Some other school will figure it out, and my kid, and that school will be better for it. My kid will get over the hurt of rejection, the “unfairness” of it all, and get on with living his best life.
Now, if it meant he was shut out of an education altogether because we aren’t legacies, that’s different.
One can acknowledge the world is unfair while still working towards, and advocating for, it becoming more fair, rather than merely accepting the inequities in life.
Yes to that too.
But the narrow issue of legacies at Harvard is not where the access to education fight is best fought, in my opinion. It needs to be fought in public K-12. Fight it there, and the gains are broader, longer lasting, and more profound.
One more thing: what does “fighting the inequities” of legacy admits even look like? What is your practical idea for real people to fix that problem?
Me, I’d rather go for the low hanging fruit - there is more to be done that can make more of a difference at the beginning of the pipeline than at the end.