Why are legacies top priority?

I can understand athletes and minortity students, but what makes a legacy any more important than every other applicant?

At many schools they aren’t given much of a tip at all.

Harvard for example has long said that if you are a legacy, your application will be given a “second look” but you don’t get put at the front of the line.

Op, I can say with absolute certainty that legacies are not “top priority” at either Michigan or USC. Hopefully, for my kids’ sake, legacy status MIGHT give them a tiny bump, but such a bump would likely be a smaller bump than 1st generation college.

@snarlatron That’s what Harvard says. But the careful study by Michael Hurwitz of 30 highly selective colleges shows that legacy applicants have a 3 times greater chance of acceptance over other applicants with similar academic backgrounds. That is a conservative estimate. Using a conditional logistic regression model, which is based on students who apply to more than one selective school, the data suggests the odds ratio advantage for primary legacies is more than 7 times greater.

Legacys are not a “top priority” at most colleges but can provide a tip at some schools if an applicant is on par with other non-legacy applicants. IMO the reason legacy is valued by some colleges is that there is a sense that having a history at a college could lead to increased family donations. Legacy may play a bigger role if the parent/family has already donated tons of money to the school – to the point where they have buildings/scholarships etc. named for them – but those applicants are pretty few and far between.

Most people are not legacy applicants. Neither of my kids went for undergrad to the schools H and I attended (which both do value legacy) and both got into very appropriate colleges that they loved. I’d recommend you don’t worry about things not in your control.

@mdphd92 I agree that the Hurwitz study, which has been debated here and elsewhere before, is worth looking at. I don’t think it is the last word for a lot of reasons; it is almost 10 years old, the numbers varied greatly among schools yet he made averages for his conclusions, his numbers were not completely accurately reported in media, and I have never been clear if he was talking about students accepted to the legacy school yet rejected from all peer schools or students accepted to legacy school and accepted to one or more peer schools. That info would be very useful. It is probably time for a similar study to be redone.

Just one anecdote, and although anecdotes are not data, I think my experience may speak to the “why.” I am not a wealthy donor, but imagine a similar scenario with an alumnus/a who IS wealthy and generous.

I loved my college when I attended it. But for years, I never donated to my college. I politely and sometimes not-so-politely rebuffed annual solicitations. I saw my job as saving for my own son’s college education, not contributing to other people’s.

…Until my child was in 8th grade and I read on College Confidential that legacy admissions existed. Wow, I had never heard of such a thing, but if it could help my child, I would make a donation. I promptly wrote a check for twenty dollars to my college and another to my husband’s. We gave a small annual donation in each ensuing year. By the time my child was a junior, we gave $100 to both colleges. Okay, not that much money, but still something. And my husband became an alumni interviewer for his college.

When it was time for my child to pick a college for early decision, he knew he liked colleges including my college and similar small northeastern liberal arts colleges. He picked my alma mater for very many reasons, but one was legacy. He was accepted. He was a strong candidate even without legacy, statistically similar to other admitted students, so we will never know if it made the difference or not, and because it was early decision, we cannot know if he would have been admitted to similar colleges.

I am now loyal to my college and an active alumna as I had never been before. I recently represented them at a college fair.

(If they had rejected him, I would have hated them for disappointing my child and never again given a penny nor attended an event. I remember worrying beforehand that even my own memories of my college experience would have been tainted.)

For the next seven or so years (college, grad school), I will need to devote all my money to my son’s education, which will exhaust all our non-retirement savings. But afterwards, if he has had a happy experience there, am I likely to continuing donating to the college? Yes. Will we be donating to my husband’s college, where my son did not go? No.

So now imagine the same scenario playing out in all alumni households, including those of the type of people who can make large donations.

If you were a college trying to sustain an endowment that allows you to provide generous financial aid to needy students and keep small class sizes, top faculty, and well-maintained facilities, might you not try to cultivate this type of alumni loyalty? Hence, the legacy advantage.

Agree ^ . I’ve volunteered for my university for the past 20 years. Can’t begin to tally the number of hours. My husband does as well. SIL and her husband also do a ton of volunteering and sit on all kinds of committees. My fil was a big donor and also an active volunteer. We all went to the same school. As it turns out, our alma mater was not a good fit for our daughter so she didn’t apply but I can tell you that if she did and was rejected, it would have been emotionally difficult for us to continue the level of commitment. Note that she was absolutely academically qualified. That said, legacy status at our alma mater is just a nudge, not a hook and we know plenty of people whose kids were rejected and ended up at Yale or Princeton. So obviously those students had the chops academically…Those parents are not advocating or volunteering any longer.

There’s a difference between a legacy and a development candidate. The latter can have pull based on very high giving, well past any ordinary sums we think of. And at that level, they have a development contact who can help with a match assessment, in several ways, deflect less able kids. There are every few of them in any given year. Being a long time alum volunteer can certainly help.

The issue with Hurwitz is, by his own admission, he “eliminate(d) most sources of outcome bias by controlling for applicant characteristics that are constant across colleges and college characteristics that are constant across applicants.” Kids don’t get admitted based on those constants. The top holistic colleges are looking for a broader sense of match. And the understanding of a college that can come when a parent (or both) attended, spent their four years there and presumably has ongoing positives, can help.

Iirc (it’s been a while,) Hurwitz didn’t actually work with adcoms, see how decisions are made.

Legacy helps. But as said, only when all the other ducks line up right. And that’s not a given. Many top colleges quote rejecting far more than they admit.

Often they give courtesy waitlists to soften the blow to alum parents/ grandparents. They never intend to admit the student.

a school like to admit student who are certain to come. it is not likely but student with legacy status’s enrollment after acceptance is high. or at least some schools believes it. They must have decades of data to show

Yes about yield ^.

Even so, school uses legacy status does not admit 100% of legacy kids. But definitely higher than % of the school acceptance rate. Not only some private schools have legacy status policy, some public schools also have this policy. As long as this status has a checkbox in application, they are. And parents do not need to donate or volunteer to gain advantage. Legacy is legacy.

No checkbox.

Rather, space to include parent details.

It appears from reading these threads that if you want to make use of legacy status at a school with ED, you really need to apply ED. Otherwise, the school assumes you are not really interested. I don’t know how true this is but it makes sense.

One argument for a college’s consideration of an applicant’s legacy status could be that the applicant has a better grasp of whether they are a “fit” for that institution. If the applicant’s harder-to-define characteristics are more in line with those of that educational institution, their application was likely made with greater intention and, of course, they are more likely to enroll than the average applicant.

Such applicants are not just a “roll of the dice,” hoping to see how many of the 20 or 30 selective colleges bite on the bait in their applications. Better fit equals more likely to enroll and more likely to graduate.

No, they don’t assume that. It’s not all about forcing an early yield. A great legacy in RD will be seen as a great candidate.

^^^That depends on the school. My alma mater (Penn) makes it crystal clear that any legacy advantage is only for the ED round. Of course an outstanding legacy candidate can get in from the RD round, but he/she would not get any benefit for being a legacy.

While I get why colleges like legacies for all the reasons cited above, I still find it troubling how much of a role legacy status plays in acceptances to the super-elites. For example, Harvard’s class of 2021 is over 29% legacy: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/harvards-incoming-class-is-one-third-legacy.html
Really??