<p>Interesting and helpful info, JC65. If possible, could you round out the current Prep Reveiw top ten list by naming the three schools tied for ninth? Thanks much.</p>
<p>Here it goes - Belmont Hill, Middlesex & St. Albans</p>
<p>Are college matriculation changes due to changes in the Admission personnel at the colleges or changes in the admission personnel at the Boarding Schools? Or both.
I presume the quality of the kids coming out of boarding schools has remained consistent throughout the past 5-10 years.
I presume what the top ten colleges have been looking for in a student over the past 10 years has remained constant.
Too many presumptions?
Obviously some of you posters are in the “biz”, and I would love to hear what you have to say about the new trends.</p>
<p>Belmont Hill? That’s a pretty big jump from last ranking. Interesting.</p>
<p>New college admin guy in the office?</p>
<p>As a highly regarded, day student oriented school located less than 5 miles from Harvard Square it should come as no surprise that Belmont Hill’s numbers are heavily influenced by matriculations to Harvard (think Hopkins School but replace Yale with Harvard and add a weeknight boarding program). It should also shock no one that BC and Tufts are way up on the list. In fact, the big surprise is the almost complete absence of MIT (1 matriculation in five years). I wonder where MIT faculty members send their kids.</p>
<p>Yeppers, out here Palo Alto HS’s send an unusually high number of kids to the local college - Stanford. I would guess a large percentage of them are Stanford faculty & support staff kids.</p>
<p>Are the faculty kids considered lagacy? I know they have tuition benifits. How much of an advantage do they have in admission? I’ve heard that one is only considered as legacy for the department (?) his/her parents or whoever attended, not the whole university. For example, if your father attended as a political science major then you are a legacy only when you apply to study political science. Is that true? Does the same rule apply to the faculty kids?</p>
<p>You are a legacy if your relative is a good graduate and wasn’t just “passing through”. I will have the admin pros on this link explain that one:)</p>
<p>A legacy child is one whose mother or father has an undergraduate degree from the institution. Grandparents, aunts and uncles and graduate degrees don’t count (dang it!) Faculty children are those whose parents are teaching faculty at the institution. If they meet admissions criteria, they are in. Then there’s a category that I’ve only ever seen mentioned once on this forum- faculty children from a brother institution with a reciprocal tuition agerement. In defense of faculty children- most of them are very nice, and very smart!</p>
<p>Actually Biohelpmom - grandparents do count as legacy and so do graduate degrees - however they are considered as smaller hooks than parents and undergraduate degrees</p>
<p>Well that’s good news! Because when we asked at a couple of key information sessions, they said no…Maybe it depends on the school.</p>
<p>So I gather the “legacy tied to the academic department one’s parents attended” theory is a myth then? And, do the faculty kids and legacy kids have the same advantages?</p>
<p>Legacy depends on the individual school. Some colleges use it as a factor while others don’t put any weight on it. How far up the connection goes and whether to count grad school differs. The majority of the schools I applied to were interested in where parents and sibling(s) attended. I think the legacy tied to the academic department is a myth. Many students change their major multiple times before they even take their first class. There are stories of how applicants used to apply under obscure majors to gain an edge in admissions, but change their major the moment they were admitted. I think that colleges have stopped admitting by major to stop this process.</p>
<p>Faculty children and legacies are different. From my personal experiences, faculty children only need to meet the average (if that) stats to be admitted. It’s important to keep faculty happy to get them to stay at a school. I feel legacy is more of a tipping factor if the admissions committee is on the fence.</p>
<p>According to Michele Hernandez in her 1997 book “A is for Admission: The Insider’s Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges”, legacies are accepted at twice the rate at Ivies as everyone else (but not as high of the rate for athletes). But not are legacies are equal. To get the tag, the applicant must have a parent or parents who give, according to Hernandez, not several thousand dollars a year but at least a cool $100K by the time junior slips in his app to Mum’s or Pup’s school.</p>
<p>Recent grads should donate at least $100+ a year from graduation on until they can give more so they are not considered grads who just “passed through”. Donation records of legacy parents are looked at aren’t they? - any admin/development pros out there care to comment?</p>
<p>I can’t comment about all ivy league schools, but ones that I am familiar with do not look at the donation record of legacy parents.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in this point, read The Price of Admission, by Daniel Golden. The author covers the relative weight certain schools assign to legacy candidates, faculty children, and development prospects.</p>
<p>When acceptance rates were around 20% at many Ivies many years ago, a long term investment by a grad of $100K in his alma mater may have been a good hedge for admissions by his kids into the old school. With acceptance rates now around 10% or less at the Ivies (7% at Harvard), why bother?</p>
<p>Googled out an article published on ABD News in 2008. </p>
<p>[Top</a> Colleges Mum on Legacy Admissions - ABC News](<a href=“Top Colleges Mum on Legacy Admissions - ABC News”>Top Colleges Mum on Legacy Admissions - ABC News)</p>