Being a legacy at rival school hurts chances?

[Pizzagirl]

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Because of the similarities between the two colleges, it suggests to me that Katie puts her money where her mouth is … i.e., she believes in the type of liberal arts education that Amherst provides. But it also shows that, as a wise mom, she realizes that her child should have a college experience that isn’t right in his own back yard.

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<p>Which therefore seems a shame if indeed other colleges believe that legacies of other schools “should” have experiences in their own back yards and therefore pre-emptively reject them under the belief they’ll choose their legacy school anyway.</p>

<p>You could second-guess so much about applications, though. If the kid from Missouri applies to two “equal” schools, one in Chicago and one in New York, should the New York school presume that he’d rather go to school in Chicago since it’s closer and pre-emptively reject him? If the rural kid applies to a rural school and an urban school, should the urban school presume that he’d be more comfortable in a rural environment and pre-emptively reject him? This could go on forever!</p>

<p>Actually since a lot of you have experience at high-level prep schools, let me ask another question. I totally get that the Harvards of the world have arrangements with the Exeters of the world, etc. Fine. That isn’t going to change anytime soon.</p>

<p>But … looked at over a long time frame … what % of accepted students come from schools where there simply isn’t any relationship with the school? Not everyone at Harvard can come from Exeter or Harvard-Westlake or Harker or even Short Hills and New Trier. What does that % look like? 10%? 30%? 50%? 80%? IOW, what’s the size of the “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” pool relative to the total pool? Simply saying what % of the class comes from private school vs public school doesn’t provide that answer, since private school is not synonymous with “elite private school.” Plenty of nondescript parochial / private schools out there that have no relationships with anyone.</p>

<p>And then looked at the other way … there are 30,000 hs in this country (I’m going to exclude homeschoolers for the moment). What % penetration do elite schools have – in other words, are we all just talking at ourselves if our kids don’t go to one of the top, oh, I don’t know, 500 or so high schools in the country? What’s been the cumulative reach? It’d be interesting to see that distribution.</p>