"Legacy" Question

[danas]

In order to establish that legacy admissions have been deemphasized, we need figures that the percentage of the class at elite colleges that are legacies have declined. From what I have seen this has not been the case. The political pressures for presidents and admissions directors not to reduce the percentage are very strong.
I know plenty of URM legacies living here on the Southside of Chicago who have been admitted to their parent's schools. These students have not otherwise been competitive academically, and seem to me to be a win/win situation for any admissions committee, meeting implicit legacy and minority goals at the same time.
As an aside, less reported, many of the international students at my daughter's elite (and I am assuming at other schools) are legacies.
For most legacy applicants, students are facing the same numerical admissions crunch as almost everyone else. Admissions to a particular elite is just harder than it was 10 years ago for students in about every category. I'm sure the bar for development cases (money, not brains!) has increased as well.

[Hunt]

Danas suggests an interesting possibility, that legacy admission might be deemphasized EXCEPT for URM legacies. It would be entirely rational for schools to do this.

[JHS]

All I can say is that danas seems to have seen very different admissions results than I have. I happen to know lots of people who went to HYPS and had kids around the same time, and all those kids have been applying to college over the past 5-6 years. And my kids had a fair number of classmates with legacy status at those and other highly selective colleges. And I can honestly say that -- ED aside -- I have not seen a single legacy kid accepted at one of those colleges who was not accepted at other colleges of comparable selectivity where the kid had no legacy connection. You just can't whine too much about a Harvard legacy accepted at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT. Furthermore, I have seen lots of legacies rejected by their legacy schools and accepted by other comparable institutions (e.g., legacy deferred ED/rejected at Princeton, accepted at Harvard; legacy deferred/rejected at Yale, accepted at Oxford and Harvard). And lots of nonlegacies accepted over legacies with comparable or better "objective" qualifications.

I can confirm that lifetime giving approaching $1 million, and lots of alumni involvement, is apparently not enough to get a child with 2300+ SATs and a top 1% class rank with a "most challenging" curriculum into Stanford or Harvard. (Although I'm sure many kids like that are accepted, too.) In the Harvard case, an admissions officer told the anguished parent that Harvard's admission rate for Yale and Princeton legacies is the same as for Harvard legacies, and if anything they are under some pressure to cap legacy admissions. And Yale's President claimed in an interview that legacy students enrolled outperform non-legacy students with comparable grades and test scores. I don't know whether any of that is true, but I do know it's plausible based on what I have seen.

On the URM front, one set of friends (Harvard AB + Harvard AB/MD) have been VERY successful getting their children into Harvard. However, one of my kids had a very talented, smart URM classmate who was a legacy at Dartmouth rejected there ED.

[CBBBlinker]

"And I can honestly say that -- ED aside -- I have not seen a single legacy kid accepted at one of those colleges who was not accepted at other colleges of comparable selectivity where the kid had no legacy connection."

I know first-hand of a H legacy who was NOT accepted by any school of comparable selectivity/reputation, but after dad gave several million $$, she was accepted at H for the following year, i.e. delayed admission. No matter what, money talks.

[JHS]

I should have made clear that I wasn't talking about true developmental admits (for whom the starting bid seems to be around $4-5 million).

On the other hand, one very close, very reliable source told me a story about a friend of hers who (with his parents) had given that much or more to his HYPS alma mater over the past decade (including endowing a professorship), and who was told -- very, very politely -- that his OK-not-awful student child should not bother applying.

[JaneyPT]

yup, money talks.