Why Do Top Schools Still Take Legacy Applicants?

Parents Forum
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<p>“Based on what I’ve seen, that’s about as “low” as you’d have to go.”</p>

<p>Based on legacy, yes. If you have a parent who’s a tenured faculty member in the college, that’s where you see an advantage on the scale that some parents imagine. One of my dear friends falls into this group and was prepared to go to UMass if he hadn’t gotten into Harvard, though he would likely have gotten into schools like Johns Hopkins if he’d applied more strategically. (If you’re curious, he finished around the middle of his class in a moderately challenging major, but had minimal EC involvement compared to our classmates.)</p>

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<p>I wasn’t thinking of this scenario so much as the one in which there are two equally qualified candidates where one was a legacy but there had never been any money donated. Would they still get a boost? Is the connection alone valuable to schools?</p>

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<p>Yes. The legacy boost, however small it may be, is usually not conditioned on donations.</p>

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<p>The NYT article was quite badly written, I thought: was it about the pressure on legacies to get in, or about whether or not it was easier for them to get in? And when I looked at the Chronicle article, I was still left with questions about the assumptions that were made. </p>

<p>"Mr. Hurwitz’s research found that legacy students, on average, had slightly higher SAT scores than nonlegacies. But he was able to control for that factor, as well as athlete status, gender, race, and many less-quantifiable characteristics. He also controlled for differences in the selectivity of the colleges.</p>

<p>He was able to do so by focusing on the large number of high-school students (47 percent) who submitted applications to more than one of the colleges in the sample. A given applicant’s characteristics, like the wealth of their family or strength of their high school, wouldn’t vary from college to college. But their legacy status would, and so too might their admissions outcomes. (Mr. Hurwitz also ran an analysis that showed that students who applied to multiple colleges were representative of the overall pool.)"</p>

<p>If I understand it correctly, he is comparing students who have applied to similar colleges, and assuming that if they got into the school at which they are legacy, and not into other another school, they got into the legacy school because of their legacy, and not (for example) because it was a school for which they were a better fit, or simply because of the rather arbitrary nature of highly selective college admissions (many kids on CC get into one top-15 school but not into 3 others; it doesn’t mean they were legacies at the one they were accepted to, nor does it necessarily mean that they got in because they were legacies rather than because they were better candidates for that particular school). Similarly, later in the Chronicle article:</p>

<p>“Mr. Hurwitz also looked at how students within certain SAT ranges fared against one another. There wasn’t a clear-cut pattern, but generally the higher the SAT score, the more legacy status mattered. That finding, Mr. Hurwitz says, seems in line with colleges’ argument that legacy status matters the most in deciding between two highly-qualified candidates. “It’s easier to justify nudging the student if they’re really strong academically,” he says.”</p>

<p>So although at one point he claims that being a legacy is a huge boost for applicants, at another he says that it is most significant at the highest academic levels.</p>

<p>It would seem, then, that we’re not really talking about underqualified legacies getting in and taking spots from more qualified students; we’re talking about some hyperqualified students getting a slight edge over other hyperqualified students, due at least in part to the self-selection of the legacies. Which may be a legitimate concern, but it doesn’t seem to me to be the gross injustice some view it to be. The NYT article is actually more concerned with the burden of expectation legacy entails, rather than any evidence that legacies are being unfairly privileged in the admission process.</p>

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<p>Perhaps because they’re not?</p>

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<p>Perhaps because they do?</p>

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<p>Yes, there are lots of phenomena in this world that make no sense, aren’t there?</p>

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<p>They are taking fewer than they used to, just at the same time as more of the parents are likely to be women alums and minorities.</p>

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<p>Just think about it, because admissions officers at large schools don’t come into much contact with their applicants, legacy status provides them with extra info. The thinking behind it is possibly that if the parents were smart and hard working enough to get into the school most likely their children will have adopted the same ethic. Also, a legacy provides a sense of school spirit, proving to the school that they have a general appreciation for it, passed down from their parents. Also, in my opinion, it’s really gutsy because if you get rejected there is a sense of not living up and going past what your parents accomplished.</p>

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<p>Re: Athletics being an equal-opportunity hook:</p>

<p>Everyone, unless they are disabled, can play a sport. There are 22 different NCAA sports (almost double if you count mens and womens as separate), of which only two favor (but do not require) height: basketball and volleyball. </p>

<p>American colleges have been recruiting scholar athletes from before everyone on this thread was born, so it is not as though people didn’t have time to figure out that they need to play a sport if they want a shot at that (faux) 20% of seats.</p>

<p>Recruitable athletes do not really have the advantage that people complain about. (20%). If you are a recruitable pole vaulter and a college does not need any pole vaulters that year, your chances for admission are somewhere between zero and the non-athlete rate, and most likely less than the non-athlete rate. Most colleges only take one or a few athletes for any given position in any given sport. In other words, every recruitable athlete does NOT have the 20% advantage; at best, they are in a pool to compete for 1 to 3 spots out of the entire freshman class.</p>

<p>Division 1 athletes have higher average college GPAs than non-athletes.</p>

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I don’t really understand the implications of this statement. All the Ivies and most other selective schools are controlling their student bodies so they are 50/50 male-female, and they are all trying to get more qualified minorities. So why should cutting down on legacy admits have anything to do with it? Unless maybe you are talking about Asian legacies?</p>

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<p>“of which only two favor (but do not require) height”</p>

<p>What? Rowing, baseball/softball, track, lacrosse, etc. don’t favor height?</p>

<p>I don’t mean to derail the thread, but these kinds of statements come out of (forgive me) left field. </p>

<p>“Division 1 athletes have higher average college GPAs than non-athletes.”</p>

<p>The thread isn’t about DI, though, it’s about “top schools”…and I would be very, very surprised if this were true at the Ivies and their close peers. I’d certainly be open to seeing any data you have.</p>

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<p>Or “Those elite colleges admit the wrong, unqualified, undeserving kids. Boy, do I want my kid to rub elbows with them.”</p>

<p>As someone whose double legacy son got in and is attending, I will just submit that over the 20 years since H and I graduated, we have given less than $500 in total to the school, most years nothing at all, and have not participated in alumni clubs or volunteering for the school. So fully clean conscience over here.</p>

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<p>Hanna,</p>

<p>I meant to write: “Division 1 athletes have higher graduation rates than non-athletes.” Here is the source:[NCAA</a> grad rates hit all-time high - NCAA.com](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/news/ncaa/article/2011-10-25/ncaa-grad-rates-hit-all-time-high]NCAA”>http://www.ncaa.com/news/ncaa/article/2011-10-25/ncaa-grad-rates-hit-all-time-high)</p>

<p>None of the sports you mentioned require height in order to excel. Even in volleyball, the libero position does not require unusual height. Stanford has a womens libero at 5’7" and a mens libero at 5’9". But again, since there are only two libero spots on each team, if you are a libero, your chances of getting into Stanford are nearly zero, not 20%.</p>

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<p>A large part of that is because Div 1 schools have had a past demonstrated history of steering athletes to easier majors…sometimes even tailoring certain majors(a.k.a. Jock majors), generous extensions/waivers for assignments, and sometimes coaches/University Presidents have been known to strongarm Profs to provide unmerited passing/higher grades than was otherwise warranted for the sake of their Div 1 athletics programs. </p>

<p>Recalled reading from a dead tree source that a UCLA President said it was a travesty that some athletes before he came aboard were allowed to graduate with a UCLA degree despite being functionally illiterate because they were topflight athletes. </p>

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<p>As it should be. The legacies commonly criticized in popular culture are ones with marginal/sub-par candidates from wealthy/well-connected families who have/could potentially donate at least tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars/year as happy alum families.* </p>

<p>A situation which is not applicable even to the vast majority of upper middle-class CC families here. </p>

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<li>I.e. Children of Hollywood stars like Danny Devito, royalty, political families like the Bush family, etc.</li>
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<p>I don’t think donating tens of thousands a year cuts it at the elite school level. Possibly hundreds of thousands, if such hundreds of thousands are near the upper end and are accompanied by a few seven figure donations to cleanse the palate.</p>

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<p>Absolutely not. You haven’t met me. No physical disability or issue, and I couldn’t play any sport to save my life. That’s rather like saying everyone can get A’s on math tests or everyone can compose music. People have different skills and athletics is one of them.</p>

<p>Having said that, until legacies get to skirt the entire admissions process with “likely letters” and decisions made far before the regular decision cycle the way that athletes get that preference, I’m not going to worry too much about it. Let me be clear - colleges are “allowed” to set whatever criteria they like, and if they want to fill it with athletes, etc., that’s their prerogative. But I think whining about legacy preferences is ridiculous when legacies still go through the exact same admission process and review.</p>

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<p>“None of the sports you mentioned require height in order to excel.”</p>

<p>I agree. So I guess you are retracting your statement about how those sports FAVOR height…which they certainly do. They favor it so much that it’s hard to come up with a single exception. Muggsy Bogues’s NBA career was so remarkable we’re still talking about it 10+ years after he retired, and I suppose there may be similar 5’2" guys who relied on talent and hard work to get Division I scholarships in any of the sports I mentioned (or swimming, or ice hockey, or soccer, or…). But I’ve never seen them. Because they’re at a colossal, usually fatal, disadvantage.</p>

<p>Look, there are perfectly good arguments for the existing system. But “it’s your fault if you’re not a recruitable athlete, because anyone can do it” isn’t one of them.</p>

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<p>I think those are true, too. :)</p>

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<p>Hannah,
There are not that many 5’2" guys, athlete or not.</p>

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<p>Funny part is that there’s far less criticism of Legacy/Developmental admissions at elite LACs/Universities…which is effectively a form of Affirmative-Action for the highly wealthy/well-connected than that of Affirmative action on the basis of race or lower socio-economic class.</p>

<p>The ratio of criticism of legacy/developmental admits vs affirmative action on the basis of race or lower socio-economic class is so heavily weighed to the latter in popular discourse that it’s no contest…</p>

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<p>Agreed. Had an Ivy Prof for a class who recounted that this variety of legacy student was tied with the worst athletic scholarship students in terms of being her worst students academically and being overly entitled/rude to boot. </p>

<p>A classmate in that very course also mentioned his roommate managed to get into Brown with extremely sub-par SAT scores for the same reasons…and had no compunctions about bragging about it to him or anyone else. Not surprisingly…neither he nor most people in that dorm really cared for that kid.</p>

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<p>The other factor in becoming a recruitable athlete is money. I had No Idea, until my son started to play tennis, how much it costs to learn a sport and compete. Tennis may be more expensive than, say, track, but the cost of equipment, facilities and lessons for any serious sport, including maintaining during the off season (if there is one), has got to be out of the picture for many kids. Then there’s the opportunity cost, in not doing other things that enrich one’s life and coincidentally one’s chances at admission, not to mention the chance, as seems to happen more and more frequently, that the kid gets injured and can’t continue. </p>

<p>No, I don’t buy the argument that anyone can become an athlete, let alone a recruited one.</p>