<p>Tiger dad, “fairness” how? They can set their criteria however they want. If a school wants to say, if you are a legacy and you hit 1800 on your SATs, you’re in, don’t they have that right? you seem to think the schools owe you a slot. If a school did so, and became dominated by “less deserving” legacies, well, then, what’s the loss if your kid doesn’t get in? You’d be happy to dodge the bullet.</p>
<p>Yet another round of “they fill their classes with undeserving kids, and it’s not fair that my kid doesn’t get to rub shoulders with them.”</p>
<p>^ And by “undeserving”, some posters apparently mean a spoiled, entitled, “selfish, cowardly, prolonged adolescent whose income will have to cover three divorces” LOL.</p>
<p>YK, living as I do here in the midwest, Notre Dame is a school that has LOTS of legacies in it. I don’t know if it’s because there is a legacy bump or because so much ND grads love it so much they want to send their kids there, but it’s very “thick” with a lot of multigenerational ND families. That adds a special feel to the campus that you don’t find everywhere else. If that’s how ND wants to run things, then isn’t that their prerogative? Don’t like the feel that it generates - don’t apply there. Same thing for any aspect of a campus, whether it’s strong/weak sports culture, strong/weak Greek life, etc. There are more than enough colleges for everyone in this country, except for the pathetic wannabes who think there are only 8 or so.</p>
<p>Why is 2x the “right” boost? If you claim it’s unfair, then isn’t it unfair if there is any?</p>
<p>Does the absolute size / context of the boost matter any?
Does it matter if it pulls the acceptance rate from 5% to 10%, or from 25% to 50%?</p>
<p>And I don’t see why one wouldn’t take just as much advantage of a legacy boost (if student were interested) as one would any other thing you were born with - whether it’s musical talent, athletic talent, etc. You play the cards you’re dealt. I can say with a clean conscience that we dissuaded S from applying to his legacy school for a whole host of reasons … but when he came back around and said it was his first choice, then you’re darn right I had him play his legacy card in ED. I wouldn’t do a thing differently, even if he had wound up not getting in.</p>
<p>Unless you correct for the fact that legacies at elite schools tend to be disproportionately from upper middle class families who value education, the analysis of the “boost” doesn’t make any sense. What’s relevant is comparing (say) the acceptance rate at Harvard of Harvard legacies against the acceptance rate of kids at Harvard who are legacies at comparable elite schools. That’s how you’ll get any boost, by comparing like populations. Not comparing Harvard legacies to the general population of applicants.</p>
<p>^ Right. And (at least according to Harvard, from several sources) the difference between the acceptance rate of Harvard legacies at Harvard and that of Yale or Princeton legacies at Harvard is not significant. (I suspect there may be some dispute about that “not significant”, but I think it’s nowhere near 2x. Probably more like 1.2x.)</p>
<p>If a college believes legacies, as URMs, athletes, EC uberacheivers and high-stat kids, add to the mosaic of the freshman class, who are we to say they are mistaken?</p>
<p>People who think that elite schools “owe” their kids a spot, of course. And people who tend to be very stats-driven and think higher stats = a more deserving candidate.</p>
<p>^Yes (post #265) PG, this would be meaningful. I wonder if there are enough legacy applicants on CC who would volunteer to reveal this information. </p>
<p>Where they have legacy
Where else they applied
Where else were they accepted.</p>
<p>My older son is legacy at Princeton and is now a sophomore there. He was also admitted to MIT and UChicago (EA)…the only other schools he applied to.</p>
<p>My second son is applying EA to Princeton, but is also very interested in Stanford and will apply in the regular round no matter what his outcome at Princeton.</p>
<p>My double legacy son applied ED to Northwestern and was accepted. He was also applying to Tufts, Georgetown, Grinnell, Kenyon, Brandeis, Macalester, Denison and maybe 1 - 2 others that I am forgetting but obviously I don’t know how he would have fared. I don’t wish to reveal too much about his activities, but he was at the 75%+ percentile from a stats standpoint and had a unique EC plus seriously good essays. But, working against him was the fact that he was a Chicagoland applicant (IMO) since those are a dime a dozen.</p>
<p>My town divides into two different public hs districts. Funnily enough, I found out that there was another double-legacy kid (from the other high school) who also got in - his parents were the same year as me (though I didn’t know them) and he wound up being assigned to the same dorm as S. This family lives a mile away and we never knew them.</p>
<p>PG, It’s so obvious that you always arduously defend whatever policy that you and your kids benefited from.
I’m criticizing a policy that my grand children will benefit from. That’s the difference between us.</p>
<p>There’s also a third possibility. Namely that legacy admissions of the type most complained about* tend to overwhelmingly favor the truly wealthy classes…a status which already confers overwhelming financial, social, and presumably educational advantages over everyone else. To them, this is but a variant of the old European aristocratic privileges which not only undermines the American meritocratic ideal, but also is dangerous for a viable and vibrant democratically oriented Republic. </p>
<ul>
<li>Type inapplicable to vast majority of CC parents as most do not have the financial means to toss hundreds of thousands of dollars/year in donations along with a few multi-million dollar donations here and there and/or are highly connected/famous(i.e. Children of Hollywood stars, royalty/politicians. etc).<br></li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>This oversimplifies the situation into implying that schools without strong legacy boosts/presences are due to bad experiences or lack of “school spirit”. It also misses another possibility:</p>
<p>School C - Vast majority of alums really love their experience, but there’s a small legacy presence because admissions is wholly stats driven and extremely competitive. </p>
<p>That’s the situation at my NYC Specialized High School where there is arguably greater school spirit than I’ve seen at many colleges/universities and yet…have no legacy boosts in admission nor a palpable legacy presence. If anything…a large part of that school spirit is derived from the bonding that all students/alums passed a highly competitive examination<em>, survived a grueling 4 years</em>, and pride ourselves in not emulating the mainstream US high school environment**. </p>
<p>I think this is more dependent on a given school’s campus culture than presence or lack thereof of legacy students. </p>
<ul>
<li>In my year, less than 5% were admitted…and they mistakenly admitted a few dozen more than usual. There was also a 28% “voluntary” attrition rate within our first two years due to the rigorous curriculum, cutthroat levels of competition, and heavy workload.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** I.e. Math/Debate teams and academic achievers are the most “cool/popular” people while there was widespread disdain towards those who were below average academically and athletes…especially football players. Latter made no sense as we all took the exact same exam and met the same standards for admission.</p>
<p>How many people of the type you think are so obnoxious–the legacies whose parents have “the financial means to toss hundreds of thousands of dollars/year in donations along with a few multi-million dollar donations here and there and/or are highly connected/famous(i.e. Children of Hollywood stars, royalty/politicians. etc)”–do you think actually are on the campuses of highly selective schools? I wouldn’t think that there were more than a couple, tops, per school per year, so I find it hard to attribute the undermining of the American democratic ideal to this factor.* Do you have any actual evidence to show that the schools are being thronged by developmental or connected legacies? </p>
<p>*Plus, I think there are greater dangers to the commonwealth, in the form of money being spent to undermine our democracy, than giving it to colleges. Superpacs leap to mind.</p>
<p>I was mainly bringing out another argument against legacy admissions that Pizzagirl didn’t cover. </p>
<p>Personally, I’m with those who say private colleges have a right to implement admissions policies as they see fit so long as it doesn’t undermine their educational mission. </p>
<p>My main issue with legacy admissions is the fact there’s far less outcry in the popular media about it compared with the outrage over affirmative-action. IMHO…there’s not a whit of difference between them…except the demographic each policy favors respectively.</p>
<p>Thanks PG. I was waiting for someone to mention ND. I am not sure there is a school more legacy oriented than ND. Most anyone associated with the school is very aware of their emphasis on “family”. I was circumspect when S was accepted (he was not legacy), but whoa…they don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk.</p>
<p>They strive for 25% of each class to be legacy. They say, all else being equal, “it will tip the scales.” The legacy advantage there may be somewhat muted because a higher % of their applicants are also legacy. </p>
<p>It works, and it works very well, for ND. Legacy is an integral part of their identity and I don’t see their system changing. The number of multi-generational families and amount of loyalty is amazing.</p>
<p>There are two categories of legacy applicants, and I think they get conflated when people get upset over “the legacy advantage.” One, the developmental legacy, must be really pretty rare–there just aren’t that many buildings or endowed professorships on any campus. Those, it is presumed, are actually inferior to other applicants, so it’s merely the money that gets them in. The simple legacy, child of an alum, is a lot more common, but according to the studies gets only a tip, and only at the top of the already-statistically-qualified group. The first group’s admission represents an actual injustice to other, better-qualified kids, but the outrage over that injustice seems to be applied equally to the second group of kids, who don’t really deserve it. And as I said upthread, the whole group of legacies isn’t even that large, in proportion to the class. So while I would support the idea of eliminating legacy advantage, in whatever form it takes, I get more worked up about other aspects of admission policy, like early admission, that make the whole process so complicated and stressful and unpredictable–and unfair.</p>
<p>Agreed^^. I think ED is really unfair to any kid needing to compare financial aid offers and those are the kids who are presumably already more disadvantaged by many of the things typically listed–parental support/education/finances/culture, etc.</p>
<p>Yale:
In the same article it notes that Yale’s legacy admit rate is 20% or 2.7x compared to the regular admit rate. </p>
<p>Northwestern:
According to NU alum on this site, NU noted in their NU Club members letter that the admit rate for legacies is 36% or 2.0x multiple on the regular rate.</p>
<p>Penn:
Based on publically available data for the class of 2010 (last year they broke stats out for legacies), legacies were accepted at a rate of 31% or 1.8x multiple vs. the regular rate for that year. Assuming the same legacy admit rate for the latest class the multiple has improved to 2.5x.</p>
<p>I don’t think this an accurate characterization. PG has defended a college’s right to use AA admission practices from which her kids would derive no benefit at all.</p>
<p>I understand if one does not benefit from legacy preference or any other preferences for that matter, that the attributes those students bring might not be appreciated.
In my own family, a kid who was a 4th generation legacy with a reasonable shot at admission chose to not even apply to that Ivy, opting for a different experience entirely. However, I do think that families with long-standing ties to the school have something special to bring to campus.
I enjoyed having the parents of my classmates visit and talk about what the school was like “back in the day”, sharing pictures and memories. Not all of these older alumni came from backgrounds of privilege either. If “holistic” measures are used in “building a class” then I don’t see why having part of the class bringing tradition and a link to the past is such an undesirable thing. Presumably if the culture of the school is appealing, than there should be some value to the traditions and history of the place.</p>
</p>