<p>I am very clear about what is considered as a legacy appicant. I worked at Duke for about 2 years. If my S applies for Duke, is he a legacy?</p>
<p>No–a legacy applicant is usually the son or daughter of a graduate. Sometimes particular schools expand it to grandparents, brothers and sisters, but not former employees.</p>
<p>But S could incorporate a bit of family history into his application package so the admissions officer knows that Duke is well known to the family. S may not want to do this . . . but it could be easy to do, as in “I first learned about Duke from my father who worked in . . and his enthusiasm led me to choose Duke as my first choice” or some such.</p>
<p>I agree with Olymom. If there is a “Why Duke?” type of essay, it’s not a bad idea to mention the connection there. My son is not a legacy at Chicago, but aunt and uncle attended (one graduated the other didn’t), and grandmother and grandfather attended (and again one graduated and the other didn’t). He didn’t make a big deal of it, but it was part of explaining how he fit into the culture of Chicago.</p>
<p>^I thought grandparents did count as (lesser) legacies?</p>
<p>Legacy applicants usually infers “direct descendant” so your parents or grandparents (grandparents, not great-grandparents) should have attended if you plan to claim it. </p>
<p>Aunts and uncles and definitely cousins are in the “tenuous” area unless you know they are big donors it probably won’t sway things one way or the other. Still, there’s no harm in listing it.</p>
<p>Yeah, it definitely helps if your aunt, cousin, or uncle is the “Duke” who lent his or her name to the college. </p>
<p>“I first heard about your university from my cousin, John Duke, who I heard was quite a major player at your university in his day…”</p>
<p>No big donors here. Some schools only count parents (MIT for one) others will look at more tenuous connections.</p>
<p>Each school will tell you specifically how it classifies legacy. If you can’t find it on the website, call them. Mostly it’s just parents (Penn will consider grandparents), no siblings, uncles, aunts etc.</p>
<p>Donors are development cases, entirely different.</p>
<p>Stanford does consider the children of employees of Stanford under the legacy guidelines with the following unofficial rule
- Children of Stanford Academic Staff and Adminstrators
- Legacies
- Children of non academic staff includes Stanford Hospital.</p>
<p>The best legacy hook is to have a building on campus named for your family.</p>
<p>It all depends on the school. I’m a double - legacy at Scranton because my father and grandfather went there. And I’m a legacy at Lehigh, which my uncle attended.</p>
<p>Whatever they decide.</p>