Amherst to stop offering legacy preference in admissions

Data10
Thu, 28 Oct 2021 20:06:14 +0000

1NJParent:

I tend to look at academic qualifications of admitted students in terms of their distributions, rather than averages. If unhooked students form a typical bell-shaped distribution, the distribution of legacy students is likely to skew to the right (i.e. more qualified on average) but with a fatter tail on the left (meaning that there’re greater percentage of relatively less qualified students).

BKSquared:

The question I was addressing was whether the avg legacy admit had a lower academic qualification/rating than the general pool. Looking at the Arcidiacono ALDC report Table D2, it appears within the 4 race groups, there are a smaller percentage of LDC admits in the Academic 1-2 group vs non ALDC, with the exception of Hispanics where the LDC percentage is in fact higher:

The vast majority of legacies are White. A comparison of the AI stat distribution for White admits is below. The decile refers to the full applicant pool. For example, 27% of White non-ALDC admits were in the top decile of the full applicant pool compared to 14% of White LDC admits . The non-ALDC admits are clearly skewed towards having a very high Academic Index. In contrast LDC admits have a more varied Academic index.

Top Decile – 27% of non-ALDC admits, 14% of LDC admits
2nd Decile – 22% of non-ALDC admits, 18.5% of LDC admits
3rd Decile – 17% of non-ALDC admits, 16% of LDC admits
4th Decile – 12% of non-ALDC admits, 13% of LDC admits
5th Decile – 9% of non-ALDC admits, 12% of LDC admits
6th Decile – 7% of non-ALDC admits, 10% of LDC admits
7th Decile – 4% of non-ALDC admits, 8% of LDC admits
8th Decile – 1% of non-ALDC admits, 5% of LDC admits
9th Decile – ~0% of non-ALDC admits, 3% of LDC admits
Bottom Decile – 0% of non-ALDC admits, 1% of LDC admits

As BKSquared noted, Hispanic admits have a different pattern. This largely relates to there being a far larger difference between Hispanic non-ALDC applicants and LDC applicants in academic ratings than occurs for other races. So instead of a weaker academic rating, Hispanic LDC admits have weaker EC, personal, and teacher LOR on average compared to Hispanic non-ALDC admits. The blunting of multiple hooks also has an effect. The analysis suggests the combination of URM + legacy is stronger than either alone, but not as strong as average URM boost + average legacy boost in isolation. Rather than make URM + legacy + REA + … .a super hook , the effect gets blunted.

White LDC admits also tend to have weaker EC, personal, teacher LOR, …compared to non-ALDC admits. Scores are often a strong point of the application for legacies, which compose the bulk of the AI calculation, so the legacy boost often helps more with non-score portions of application for which a detailed decile distribution is not available.