<p>I've heard statistics tossed around, like 35-40% admission for applicants with legacy, and I am wondering, how much does legacy actually help? If you family donates thousands of dollars, I assume it helps a lot, but what if you have legacy with little or no donations?</p>
<p>[Legacy</a> Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/]Legacy”>Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>Keep in mind that a 30% legacy admit rate means a 70% legacy deny rate.</p>
<p>True, but statistically compared to the 5% general admit rate, legacies have a 500% better chance.
So, let’s remember what Mark Twain said about statistics (3 types of lies: Lies, damn lies, stats). Correlation is not causation. If your parents went to Harvard, they are probably pretty smart people who value education. They probably can also give advice in the application process that most people don’t get.</p>
<p>@maomao, What I’ve always wondered–and nobody is ever going to release the statistics for–is how students whose parents come from similar but non-legacy educational backgrounds stack up to legacies. How do Princeton or Amherst legacies do when they apply to Harvard? It would be a good point of data. Too bad they won’t ever release it.</p>
<p>A study was done at Yale analyzing legacy GPAs vs. non legacies. The legacies got higher GPAs than their classmates.</p>
<p>exultationsy – On a number of occasions Harvard admissions personnel have said that they track Yale and Princeton legacies, and that the admission rate for Yale and Princeton legacies is “not materially lower” than the admission rate for Harvard legacies. I take that to mean lower, but within a few percentage points. Yale and Princeton legacies, of course, receive no actual preference; they are just serving as a control group to measure how much advantage Harvard legacies are getting, and the answer is little or none.</p>
<p>Hanna (who worked with admissions when she was at Harvard, I believe) has posted about that several times, and a friend of mine heard that from a senior admissions staffer.</p>
<p>Oh really! OK, that’s good to know. I would have thought with lurking here long enough I’d have heard of that, but thanks! I learned something today.</p>
<p>Off to learn a few more things before this afternoon’s final, then.</p>
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<p>Of the legacies vs non-legacies I’ve known (roughly 10-15 people), the legacies were indeed materially lower. IF they apply ED, legacies tend to get a pretty big boost (especially at Princeton, Brown, and Yale (to a lesser extent).)</p>
<p>“A study was done at Yale analyzing legacy GPAs vs. non legacies. The legacies got higher GPAs than their classmates.”</p>
<p>This is really misleading. Unless the study analyzed Princeton students, I hope you realize that different departments have different average GPAs. I’m not sure how it is at Yale but I’m guessing STEM majors will have noticeably lower GPAs than Literature/Theatre majors. Legacies are weaker academically according to the stereotype so…they would gravitate to easier majors and thus end up with higher GPAs. This is all a hypothesis. I’ll eat my words if you show me that legacies all declare majors with low average GPAs and excel in them.</p>
<p>(Another note: athletes and URMs and first gen students [duh] are usually not legacies. They are objectively weaker academically so…that could skew the balance as well.)</p>
<p>well, it’s not actually true that athletes aren’t legacies, particularly in the country club and olympic sports.</p>
<p>But, there are a significant number of legacies who are denied admission to H and ARE admitted to the other initial schools, and this is because they tend to be strong students who have been groomed for this kind of education, have been pointed in the right direction, had the test prep, and the tutors and the extra coaching in their sports and on their musical instruments. they have the ECs and make compelling candidates.</p>
<p>Then, also, and this is an important point, not to be underestimated, students want to go to these schools partially for the connections they will make. The parents of legacies frequently ARE the connections they want to make. Just to put a fine point on it: without the legacy admits, Harvard loses power in a culture of “who you know.”</p>