<p>NYTimes has posted this question on its Room for Debate Forum . Interesting posts by Peter Sacks, author of Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education, and Michele Hernandez, college admissions consultant , who is familiar to many CC old timers. </p>
<p>A recent article in The Times about the pressure felt by Ivy League alumni to get their children into their alma maters and by those children to get into their parents colleges demonstrated that legacy preferences are still a big part of the admissions process at top schools.</p>
<p>Why do legacies still carry so much clout in the admissions process? With competition intense and with the oversupply of qualified applicants, why does giving preference to the children of graduates make sense anymore?</p>
<p>I don’t get the sense that the top schools accept legacies who are unqualified, but if all other things are equal, and you can continue a family’s loyalty/connection/donation, why not? That’s how I view it anyway.</p>
<p>If it turned out massive amounts of kids are getting in who have no business being accepted, then I’ll revise my opinion. But if they’re qualified, hard to argue with any system, legacy, lottery, whatever.</p>
<p>But the system seems to work even for those who have never given a dime to their college. Are those parent alum/child student photos and lists in the alumni magazine really worth so much even if there’s no money to back it up?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Kei-o-lei is right, although it’s not that simple. But as a matter of portfolio theory, some mix of applicant types including legacies is probably good financial planning.</p></li>
<li><p>For the vast majority of colleges, legacy admissions are a matter of marketing, not preference. Only a handful of colleges face any kind of trade-off between legacy admissions and the ideal demographics of the admitted class. Most colleges probably see marketing to legacies as improving their classes, not diluting them.</p></li>
<li><p>For the few others – like the ones mentioned in the article – it is questionable how much of a legacy boost there really is. They generally say that the average or median grades and SATs of legacy admittees are higher than the average or median numbers for the class as a whole (but that doesn’t address the effect of other preferences, like athletic recruiting, musicians, URM programs, that may lower the class average to some meaningful extent). Based on my own experience, and the chorus of complaints I hear in mid-December every year, my sense is that even very strong legacy candidates get rejected, and that the ones accepted would have been accepted anyway. For example, various people at Harvard have reported that, although the admission rate for legacy applicants there is about 15%, much higher than average, the admission rate for Yale or Princeton legacies (for which no preference is even cnsidered) is not meaningfully lower than that). In other words, at most a handful of students get accepted every year who would not have been accepted without a legacy preference.</p></li>
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<p>All of the foregoing may not be true of a very small number of “developmental” admissions each year. Those are pretty much entirely based on Kei-o-lei’s criterion, but the numbers have to be colossal.</p>
<ol>
<li> A big part of what makes these schools desirable is their connection to a long tradition of excellence, achievement, and leadership. Maintaining multi-generational ties to families has always been an important part of creating and maintaining those traditions. It would be stupid to stop thinking about that just because they are going through a period of high demand now. These institutions think in terms of generations and centuries, not this class and next year’s.</li>
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<p>And, again, this isn’t a consideration that overrides everything. It’s just part of the mix, and not such a major part.</p>
<p>The only legacies I know of who got into Harvard were more than qualified as shown by their other acceptances. And I know a handful of legacies that were rejected despite having great qualifications.</p>
<p>I don’t believe it’s just money. It’s also about class spirit and fostering a sense of history.</p>
<p>And staying in the club means your kid gets preferential treatment because, by gosh, you deserve it.</p>
<p>Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. They are private institutions (though heavily government subsidized, but then, what large institution isn’t there days?), and as long as they stay within the law, they have the right to admit anyone they d*mn well please. But it sure should destroy the mythos that these schools are places where quality of education is at the top of the priority pole - no matter what USNWR says.</p>
<p>There was a companion article in the NY Times which made more sense to me. The author said that 40% of the class at most top colleges are reserved for “hooked” kids. The largest group is generally recruited athletes (up to 20%). Legacies are typically 10%. Statistically many recruited athletes are less academically qualified than the legacies and anyone else admitted to the college. So it seems that the average “non-hooked” high schooler is hurt more by the admission of unqualified athletes than by legacies.</p>
<p>“So it seems that the average “non-hooked” high schooler is hurt more by the admission of unqualified athletes than by legacies.”</p>
<p>Amen. Whether you agree or disagree with the policy, the bump given to a great running back dwarfs what’s given to a double legacy (or a great violinist, for that matter). I have never seen a legacy or artist get in with scores a standard deviation below the college mean. Athletic recruits? Yes, I have.</p>
<p>Hardly equal opportunity. You have to be good enough at the sport to be able to play at the college level, at the level of competition at which the particular college participates.</p>
<p>The ability to do this requires natural talent as well as years of dedication to the sport. And personally, I would discourage people from using athletics as their principal means of getting into college. It’s too easy to get injured and not be able to play any more – or not be able to play at the necessary high level. </p>
<p>Getting back to legacies, an interesting thing about some colleges it that they only give legacies preference in the ED round. So you have to REALLY want to go to Mom’s or Dad’s alma mater.</p>
<p>I don’t see that at all, especially since the football hook is usually in a class by itself. I went to a no-football high school, and I’m a girl. Never mind the fact that we don’t all have an equal opportunity to be taller or faster than average. The part of playing a sport that’s really a free choice is not the part that gets someone recruited. (Four years on the basketball or field hockey team is just a nice EC, not a hook.)</p>
<p>No, but at least this inequality is somewhat related to one’s suitability for admission to a highly selective college.</p>
<p>And I’m going to leave this discussion now because I feel uncomfortable here. One of my kids attended my alma mater and was very aware of the legacy preference at the time of application. Given that her statistics were in the top quarter for the university she attended, she probably would have gotten admitted anyway, but you never know.</p>
<p>The apparent size of the legacy “tip” is quite different depending on whether your kid is a legacy or not. If your kid isn’t a legacy, it looks huge. If your kid is a legacy, not so much. In looking at results threads on CC, I’ve been more often suprised by legacy kids who didn’t get into the legacy school than legacy kids who did.</p>
<p>Each private college, highly selective or otherwise, defines what makes one suitable for admission. If having a winning football team is important to the college, then being a great defensive tackle makes one just as suitable as being a potential Nobelist.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to study legacy admits to the most selective schools and determine what is the next most selective school that selected those students. If a Harvard legacy was also admitted to Penn, for example, would that dampen the feeling that he got an unfair advantage at Harvard? What if his next best school was Vanderbilt? Based on what I’ve seen, that’s about as “low” as you’d have to go.</p>
<p>Sooner or later, every college-related CC thread ends up with folks suggesting that the elite schools aren’t all they’re cracked up to be for one reason or another, and/or that sports have too much importance in higher education and woefully underqualified athletes are admitted to the detriment of said institutions’ academic quality. It’s a wonder the alumni of Ivies and other top schools are interested in seeing their children also experience such an overrated, intellectually diluted education.</p>
<p>That’s contrary to what I’ve heard from friends and a relative who worked in elite university admissions…including some Ivies. From their experiences, the legacy/developmental* bump only works for a really marginal candidate if their families are donating huge sums of money(tens or hundreds of thousands/year at a minimum) and/or their families are famous well-connected people(i.e. Hollywood celebs, foreign royalty/aristocrats/politicians, etc). If the alum family donates a relatively nominal amount like $50-100/year to the alumni fund, that’s too little for the legacy preference to really come into play for a truly marginal/below-marginal candidate. </p>
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<li>Son/daughter of someone wealthy and/or famous without necessarily having alumni connections.</li>
</ul>
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<p>Not only wrong on casual examination…but IMHO disturbing considering how athletic preferences was implemented by the Ivies as a way to discriminate against certain “undesirable” candidates whom they feared would swamp the Ivies and thus…drive away “desirable” WASP/legacy students in the early 20th century.</p>