I think this is a potential danger but I think a visit and just doing other normal due diligence can be helpful. Also parents having an open attitude.
I also think many famous colleges, at least, are much more dealing with the problem of applicants having all sorts of popular misconceptions about their colleges. Such that even a somewhat out of date impression can at least be closer than whatever someone might think based on pop culture, a casual use of the US News rankings, or so on.
For that matter, I actually do think most NOT famous colleges are likely underrated by people relying on such pop culture sources. To the extent a legacy knows more about the real virtues of a college, and is not just picking it because it is in the applicants’ “safety” tier of the US News, I would think again that is valuable to the college even if that information is not perfect.
But why assume a legacy knows more about the real virtues of a school? I’ve spoken with a fair number of legacy kids who didn’t have the first clue about their parents colleges, certainly not a level deeper than a random applicant who identified the school organically instead of just knowing their parent(s) went there and glazing over old stories or attending the occasional game.
Most kids don’t have the any idea what their parents currently do for a living beyond maybe the company name and maybe title. Why would we assume their knowledge on the virtues of where they went to school decades ago would be meaningfully better?
I was actively involved with my alma mater and still felt very current about changes to campus, as were/are many of my friends. And I don’t understand your comment about kids not knowing their parents’ careers? What?
Well my daughter certainly did know from attending reunions , talking to fellow alumni, hearing a professor and seeing the facilities She walked in as a legacy FAR more informed about the place than I ever did. I think it showed up in her essays (“why x?”) and other application materials I did not encourage her to apply and suggested other schools That was what the admissions people liked to see
So the way I put it above is that legacies “plausibly skew better informed than non-legacy applicants”.
That concept of a skew makes room for some legacies knowing nothing at all, but the distribution nonetheless being more favorable from a college’s perspective.
There may be another factor at work here. The legacy applicant applying to what is ordinarily a reach college with legacy preference is more likely to be admitted to that college than other colleges that are similarly reachy and also use legacy preference that the applicant is unlikely to be eligible for. Since many students matriculate to the most selective affordable college they get admitted to, that may hint at a higher likelihood of yielding by the legacy admit.
We don’t have information on the degree of legacy boost at many colleges, but we do at Harvard. There were 3 separate regression analyses included in the lawsuit docs – one for the plaintiff, one for the defendant, and one Harvard internal review unrelated to the lawsuit. All 3 analyses found that the legacy boost was quite large. Some specific numbers are below from the plaintiff regression analyses. This analysis has controls for stats, reader ratings of academics/ECs/personal/overall…, hooks including athlete, race/gender, planned concentration, and dozens of other criteria. After all of these controls (applicant has similar hooks, stats, reader ratings on academics, overall, and other categories, …), the average degree of boost (odds ratio) for different types of hooks is listed below:
Special Interest List – 26x increased chance of admission
Double Legacy – 22x increased chance of admission
Children of Faculty – 14x increased chance of admission
Single Legacy – 10x increased chance of admission
Academic Rating Increases from 3 to 2* – 7x increased chance of admission
SES Disadvantaged – 5x increased chance of admission
*2 academic rating = Magna potential. Excellent student with top grades and SAT and SAT Subject tests: mid 700 scores and up, 33+ ACT, Possible local, regional or national level recognition in academic competitions
3 academic rating = Solid academic potential; Cum laude potential: Very good student with excellent grades and SAT and SAT Subject tests: mid-600 through low-700 scores, 29 to 32 ACT
The study at http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/divergent.pdf suggests this legacy boost is getting stronger over time, so boost may be larger today The study suggests the boost is getting stronger because the number of matriculants from legacy bucket is remaining relatively constant, in spite of increased admission selectivity. This results in admission selectivity for the non-legacy bucket increasing more rapidly than the legacy bucket, so the difference in admission strength and corresponding selectivity grows wider over time.
Other comments in the thread mention relatively little difference in SAT/ACT score between legacies and non-legacies. Harvard shows the same pattern. This is not a contradiction from the large boost noted above. SAT/ACT score tends to be an especially strong point of the application for legacies, as well as other groups associated with high income. Instead legacy admits tend to be weaker in other areas of the application at Harvard.
While the freshmen survey shows similar SAT/ACT scores among legacies and non-legacies, they do show more notable differences between legacies and non-legacies in other areas. For example, the inflation adjusted income distribution for the most recent year without a prefer not to say category is below:
Legacies
Over $620k income – 46% of legacy matriculants
Under $100k income – 1% of legacy matriculants
Non-Legacies
Over $620k income – 11% of non-legacy matriculants
Under $100k income – 34% of non-legacy matriculants
First Gen
Over $620k income – 1% of first gen matriculants
Under $100k income – 47% of first gen matriculants
If legacy preference was eliminated, I doubt that it would be replaced by a group of students for which ~half had >$620k income, like legacies. However, I also doubt that it would have a dramatic effect on the overall SES distribution. If eliminating legacies did have a dramatic effect on SES distribution, that could lead to some challenges with tuition revenue at non-Ivy+ type colleges, that don’t derive the bulk of their operating revenue from endowment investment returns. It could also impact alumni donations, particularly if legacies making notable donations are favored over legacies in general (some evidence of this at Harvard).
For the same reason anyone cares about what happens at any private institution: because they occupy space in society and people have opinions. That private institutions can do as they wish within legal limits goes without saying. That they have to live with any repercussions stemming from prevailing public opinions about what they do also goes without saying.
Your view on athletic preference is an interesting one, and I can’t say I fundamentally disagree with you and maintain any degree of intellectual honesty, even though one of my kids (arguably two) benefitted from it.
I guess I’ll confess to a preference for athletic admissions boosting because there is at least a kernel of merit in an accomplished athlete no different than one sees in a great musician or artist. Society obviously values athletics, they make for great employees, and they are good at managing competing demands. There’s much to recommend about the about the high-end athlete, at least as compared to randomly being born to someone who attended a given school.
I’ll just leave it like the Williams Prof. did in his rather limited Op Ed piece: I just like athletics more than I like legacy.