@ClarinetDad16 - why a category for NJ? Is that because of local preference for surrounding high schools – or is that accounting for kids of administrators, faculty and staff?
^^ Both. Lawrenceville is a big feeder school. So is Princeton HS .
If that is true I consider it unethical. SCEA is nonbinding. The student simply agrees not to apply to other private schools early; that is the only commitment. My son applied SCEA to Princeton, and did end up attending, but it came down to the wire. It was never his “one and only.”
Sounds like Harvard is a little full of itself and perhaps it needs to switch to ED.
ClarinetDad: Asian is a hook?!?!?!?
And international admissions to Princeton is more competitive than domestic.
You are probably thinking of UIUC, not Princeton.
As for legacy, yes, that little gem keeps coming back.
Princeton indeed used to favor legacies, but no more, at least not significantly so. Around three decades ago, the Yale Alumni Magazine published a study on legacy admissions. It found, not surprisingly, that Yale legacies got into Yale at a higher rate than the average student. It also found, however, that Yale legacies got into HARVARD and PRINCETON at a higher rate than the average student there. Think about what that means.
@4thfloor, approximately when was that Yale study published? I’ve heard of such a study but was beginning to think it was apocryphal - thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
@GnocchiB, not it was not apocryphal. It was in an issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine that I held in my own hands. I don’t remember when it was published, but I’d put it between 1988 and 1994.
What it means is that a Yale (and similarly Princeton) education confers benefits, or signals advantages, that can often be passed on to offsprings – real benefits that are validated elsewhere, including college admissions. Makes sense, doesn’t it? A Yale education would be much less sought-after otherwise.
Since the study, the legacy hook has diminished even more in importance. These days, colleges compete globally on standardized test results of enrolled students, on student achievements in competitions like Putnam, Olympiads and hackathons, and on the financial return of the educational investment for their alums. On the other hand, donations have always been dominated by a very small number of alums (top 1%?) making huge donations; cultivating alumni loyalty broadly via legacy admissions was never useful. So non-meritocratic legacy admission as a hook just doesn’t make sense.
Yet people continue to exaggerate the significance of the so-called legacy hook, because it serves their political worldviews.
“Yet people continue to exaggerate the significance of the so-called legacy hook, because it serves their political worldviews.”
I am not sure this is entirely accurate. The overall admission rate at Princeton and other Ivys is significantly lower than for legacies. This article http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2015/05/legacy-status-remains-a-factor-in-admissions/ clearly indicates that the legacy admission rate at both Harvard and Princeton hovers around 30%, with Yale’s rate being between 20-25%.
This is not to say that those who are legacies and are admitted are undeserving of admission but I would suggest that the vast difference in admission rate between legacies and the overall population is statistically significant.
^^^ Nobody is saying that legacies do not get accepted at higher rates at their own universities, so the link to the Daily Princetonian article is irrelevant.
But these same (Yale) legacies also get accepted at higher rates to OTHER universities, where they are NOT legacies. Many people refuse to acknowledge the logical implication of this second fact, because it disproves the advantage they imagine legacies enjoy.
^^ If they are an extremely qualified legacy admit, they might also apply to other top schools and so it is not surprising that they are also accepted at some other top schools. However, if they were a marginal legacy admit they probably are not applying to other schools so you don’t see the possible/probable rejections. Nassim Taleb would call this the silent evidence.
^^^ Very good point re: selection bias At any rate, it is time to update that study, and also include other top universities (like Princeton). If anything, I suspect the legacy “advantage” has diminished even more since then.
I agree with this point. I am not a researcher but to design a study to tease this out, wouldn’t it need to take the extremely qualified legacies to, say Harvard, and see how they do in the early rounds admission for Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT, just to name a few top schools? That would eliminate the legacy bias and also give them the benefit of whatever “bump” they would get by using their EA/REA card, wouldn’t it?
@Falcon1 I’m not at all surprised at the “indirect connections;” I’m an “indirect legacy” myself, for all the good it did me (deferred). Everything else I’ve seen suggests that there’s very little benefit to it.
As for the more recent discussion, it all seems to follow nicely. Ivy alums obviously believe in academics and will likely raise children who perform higher as well. It also helps if having an Ivy League diploma makes it easier (in some fields, anyway) to get a higher-paying job, which also translates into better school districts, grades, and SAT scores. Some of it is likely due to intentional bias, and I don’t necessarily believe there’s anything wrong with that. But there’s also a socioeconomic snowball effect that can happen.
@CautiousOptimist how do you define “indirect legacy”?
For me, it’s just my uncle. Not really legacy, it just seemed the easiest way to describe it. A familial link but not a parental one. I don’t expect much out of it but they had a space on the Common App to mark it, so I did, and that implies nonzero weight, even if not significant.