<p>I agree with Lorem Ipsum.<br>
I know someone who is on the board of trustees at Duke - she did her undergrad there, has been quite successful in her career. She has 2 children, boy and a girl. The boy went elsewhere - what I might charitably call a less impressive school – and then transferred to Duke midway through. The girl went straight to Duke. Did their mother’s influence help? Yeah, I’m sure. And how much fundraising and benefit did she give to Duke? I’m sure quite a lot. I don’t have a problem if they put the finger on the scale for a trustee’s child or someone else who has donated significant time and / or money, to be really honest. What the person has facilitated through their effort (e.g. enabling financial aid for a student like Lorem Ipsum’s son) is worth it.</p>
Exactly. My son had an 800 in CR, and 800s on 3 subject tests and was one off the top 1% of the class. The kid who was a legacy at Yale in his class also got into Harvard, and the kid who was a legacy in my younger son’s class at Harvard also got into Yale. Most of the legacies at our high school have multiple admits like this.</p>
<p>To mathmom’s post #902, there have been posts from many people on CC who have heard Harvard admissions personnel say that the admission rate at Harvard for Yale and Princeton legacies is not meaningfully lower than the rate for Harvard’s own legacies, notwithstanding that Harvard does not give any preference to Yale or Princeton legacies and at least claims to give a preference to Harvard legacies.</p>
<p>In my son’s cohort, across a few schools, we knew three legacies who were accepted at Yale and nine or ten who weren’t. All of the accepted legacies were accepted at every college to which they applied, and indeed one of them actually went to Harvard. Harvard also accepted several of the legacies rejected by Yale. In this unscientific small group, Harvard’s admission rate for Yale legacies was almost twice that of Yale.</p>
<p>Coach K (highly successful basketball coach at Duke) has three daughters, two of whom graduated from Duke. They all attended during the 90’s when Coach K was offered multiple jobs coaching in the NBA for salaries far exceeding (by an order of magnitude or more) what Duke paid.</p>
<p>I know nothing about the academic qualifications of the daughters, but even if they were terrible students, I cannot imagine many Dukies begrudging their acceptances if it meant that Coach K stuck around the Duke basketball program. His impact on the school includes huge sums (hundreds of millions?) as well as creating a center of excellence that the entire school shares.</p>
<p>Coach K is a visible contributor to Duke but I would guess that there are dozens of others in comparable positions that merit special admissions consideration for their family. Without them, Duke would not be the institution that it is today.</p>
<p>And, “While NCAA regulations prohibit collegiate athletic programs from contacting an athlete by telephone, in-person, or by off-campus visits prior to July 1 before the recruit’s senior year, coaches are allowed to mail information about the school and the team before that date.”</p>
<p>So call that a 12% acceptance rate, rounding off here. What’s Yale’s overall acceptance rate? Not interested in looking it up, but I’m guessing in the 6% range. Moving from a 6% to a 12% strikes me as a big yawn. People who want to act as though this is just the Great Unfair Shoo-In Travesty come across as silly when we’re moving from a 6% to 12% - which, of course, means that 88% of legacy applicants – who are likely a more qualified pool in the first place – are denied. But, it’s so much more fun to get all riled up at the Yale legacy across town whom you’re convinced “stole” your kid’s spot, eh?</p>
To me a more logical explanation is that it is just sloppily worded, and what it meant was 33% of the class at Princeton is legacies, 30% at Harvard is legacies, and 20-25% at Yale is legacies.</p>
<p>It makes no sense to compare a %age of the class and an admissions percentage in the same class.</p>
<p>And I could easily believe Harvard could fill 30% of the class with legacies at an admission rate that matches the same 6 or 8% admission rate as the regular class.</p>
<p>I can’t find the link to the original article to read it for myself though.</p>
<p>The outrage at not receiving a perceived “entitlement,” it seems to me, is just a way of deflecting blame for poor strategic planning. Every student should apply to a laddered selection of schools with varying admission rates and should only pick schools he or she would be happy to attend. </p>
<p>My son would have been perfectly happy attending our state flagship, UIUC, which is well-known for its computer science program (his intended major); but, given its size (35,000 students) it would never have been an ideal choice for a kid more inclined to a small school or LAC. He feels lucky to have had multiple choices. </p>
<p>Why is it people don’t feel the same sense of outraged entitlement when they interview for a job and don’t get it? Or ask someone out on a date and get turned down?</p>
<p>I have seen stats posted by Yale alums whose kids got in. Personally, I dont think they were good enough. They seem to have missed a couple of questions on their SATs. :p</p>
<p>xiggi - i am also disappointed that Stanford gets the director’s cup without ice hockey. How is that even possible.</p>
<p>No. That has ZERO face validity, that 1 out of every 3 (H, P) or 1 out of every 4 (Y) students is a legacy. Based on what’s been posted on CC before, the writer was attempting to say that the acceptance rates were 33%, 30% and 25%. ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from what % of the class is legacy. </p>
<p>Look, Harvard could have an acceptance rate of 100% for legacies, and that could be consistent with 5% of their entering class actually being legacies or 75% of their class actually being legacies. It would just depend on how thick their applicant pool was with legacies in the first place. Major differences in that stat from college to college impact what % of the ending class are legacies (again, my Notre Dame example of the “thick pool” - even if ND gave no preference for legacies at all, they’ll always have a high % of the class being legacies simply because their pool is so thick).</p>
<p>High achieving parents who value education tend to have high achieving kids who also value education. My son was accepted as a legacy at Brown, but he chose to attend Harvard where he was not a legacy.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, without a whole lot more information all we can do is make semi-educated guesses.</p>
<p>Even if we knew the percentage of applicants who fall in the legacy category for each school there would still be too much missing information to come to a useful conclusion. </p>
<p>For instance, </p>
<p>How many of the legacies met other institutional needs? How many were recruited athletes, URMs, development cases?</p>
<p>What proportion of the legacies applied ED? ED admit rates at most Ivies are considerably higher than RD admit rates.</p>
<p>What did the legacies’ stats look like relative to their non-legacy peers?
Breaking those stats down further, how strong were the legacies’ schools relative to their peers? How many came from competitive admit schools, how many from schools with easy grading? It’s a whole lot tougher to be the valedictorian at Thomas Jefferson or Phillips Andover than at a nice little community school with a graduating class of 50.</p>
<p>What proportion of applications from each group were of the “What the heck?” variety, those coming from students with extremely weak credentials who through ignorance, hubris, or just for the fun of it apply to top schools?</p>
<p>I’m curious as to whether those who bemoan legacy admissions have a qualitative sense of “what % is too much” of the freshman class being legacies. Is 12% too much? 20%? 30%? What IS the tipping point, and should the legacy admit rate be “worked” to keep legacies below that tipping point – which could lead to a DEPRESSED legacy admit rate.</p>
<p>And is there a problem, if the legacy students are qualified to be there? Is there a way of dividing out the deserving (ie., academically and otherwise qualified) legacies from the “undeserving” legacy students? What about legacy students who would likely have gained admission even without legacy status because they were just appealing candidates on their own merits?</p>