<p>I understand that if a family has their name on a building, that’s one thing, but do regular legacies really get a meaningful boost? Are there statistics to support this?</p>
<p>I think it depends on the college or university. What school are you talking about?</p>
<p>just a general question.</p>
<p>But there’s no general answer. It depends on the school.</p>
<p>Well if you can’t give specifics it is hard to answer that question. Places like a State U may give little if any weight to a legacy candidate yet the Ivy’s and schools like Notre Dame, Boston College, Villanova, Vanderbilt, Georgetown may give some. In the end with today’s competitive applicant pools most legacies need to be qualified to get accepted. It is really an impossible question to answer without knowing the specifics. Sorry.</p>
<p>I know of a very qualified legacy who was denied at Northwestern this year. It really depends on the school.</p>
<p>You can see what the school itself says about the importance of legacy in the common data set. Under section C (Freshman Admission), there’s a section that weights the relative importance of academic and non-academic factors such as GPA, standardized test scores, ECs, and legacy. Each factor is weighted as very important, important, considered, or not considered. In all the data I’ve seen, legacy is weighted as either considered or not considered; it would be interesting to know whether there are schools where it’s weighted more heavily.</p>
<p>Common sense tells me that families who can put their name on a building will receive a boost in the admissions office, though that may not mean acceptance. But that would be more because the applicant could be a developmental admit than because of legacy. When we toured Cornell many years ago, we were told that legacy would be a tipping factor in cases where applicants were seen as having identical qualifications - though the adcom told us that didn’t happen often.</p>
<p>At most schools it’s a boost, even a rather large boost, but that doesn’t mean that all legacies will get in. Boosting your odds from 10% to 20% may be double the chances, but that still isn’t very good odds. Still I don’t think it’s entirely an accident that my oldest who was a top student (top 10 of 3000+ size high school) with great scores and excellent ECs was accepted at the school where he was a legacy, but not at other schools with similar slim acceptance rates. However his younger brother with less stellar grades and scores was not accepted - and that was not a surprise to anyone but his Dad.</p>
<p>Here’s an article on the subject: <a href=“http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/05/a-thumb-on-the-scale.html[/url]”>http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/05/a-thumb-on-the-scale.html</a></p>
<p>Generally speaking it is viewed as a positive, more so at private schools than public. I’ll add that during two college visits where my son would be a legacy the admissions people made it clear that it’s a boost only if you apply ED; in RD you’re just another candidate. But I suspect that even that varies by school.</p>
<p>^^^what he said…in alot of places legacy only counts for ED</p>
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<p>As the mother of a legacy wanting to apply ED to NU, I beg you to keep this information to yourself :-). (just kidding)</p>
<p>Whatever it means, it means far less than the legacy parents would like it to mean.</p>
<p>You have to distinguish between legacy and “families who can put their name on a building”. The most popular ultraselective colleges get a thousand or more legacy applications every year, but no one sees more than a handful of building-namers. That’s a whole different category – “developmental” – and much more powerful.</p>
<p>Four years ago, a senior Harvard admissions officer told a friend of mine – disappointed at his quadruple-legacy child’s rejection – that there was no meaningful difference at Harvard between the acceptance rate for Harvard legacies and the acceptance rate for Yale and Princeton legacies. It was not that they actually gave any preference to Yale or Princeton legacies. It was just that kids from families with highly educated, successful parents generally had fairly strong applications, and that correlated well with Yale and Princeton legacies. Meanwhile, Harvard legacy status was a double-edged sword: kids were, to some extent, considered separately, but there was a cap on how many would be admitted as well as a preference, so they would wind up taking a higher-than-average percentage of a more-qualified-than-average pool.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that Harvard accepts about 250 legacies/year, and maybe 30-40 of those applicants are kids who wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise.</p>
<p>Lower on the food chain, however, I think it can mean a lot – colleges want to build multi-generational loyalty in families, and legacy kids are more likely to enroll if accepted, which gives rankings-oriented colleges an incentive to pack 'em in.</p>
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I suspect that’s about right–and if they got 500 top-notch legacy applications in one year, it could even hurt you to be a legacy, if they didn’t want to admit “too many” legacies.</p>
<p>I think that generally universities depend much less on any one legacy donation to their endowments. These funds are professionally managed sometimes yileding double digit returns even during this great recession. Universities can afford to alienate all but the super rich alumni when it comes to admissions. I think the days of the power of the legacy are all but over. However, the back room dealings of the super rich and politically well connected will continue.</p>
<p>We only have one anecdotal experience: Our D was a 4-time (both parents and two grandparents) legacy for Northwestern and was not admitted this year. Her stats were a little on the low side (not significantly, but lower than the average), so it appears that legacies don’t always overcome academics.</p>
<p>Northwestern doesn’t do anything with Legacies from what I’ve heard.</p>
<p>Also, I recall reading somewhere that Harvard has so many legacies that if they only admitted legacies, they’d still have to reject students every year. fwiw.</p>
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<p>Well, and if your family can put their name on a building, it’s really irrelevant whether said family members actually attended said university or not.</p>
<p>I love, however, that a general question about legacy devolves into discussions of H&Y. Yes, Virginia, there are other colleges in the land, honest.</p>
<p>It really does differ by colleges. In some all legacy applications go to committee, or get an extra reading before rejection is sent. In most top schools a legacy advantage (as opposed to a development one for a very rich and philanthropic legacy) is quite minor, although it can still make a difference in an extremely close call kind of a situation. Other considerations is that in many schools (UPenn is one of them I believe) to get any legacy advantage at all you have to apply early decision/action, there is no advantage in the regular decision process. Finally there are some exceptions _ Notre Dame is known for loving legacies and there are probably other schools below the very tippy-top where the advantage is more significant.</p>
<p>Our friends DD was a Duke legacy, with grandpa’s name on the building, she was a Valedictorian and great stats. However, she got the thin envelope.</p>
<p>It is important to understand the admittance process. Colleges look at the whole package for the incoming class, and they WANT diversity. Legacy is not diversity, but a URM is. Legacy is not going to help if you are applying to a very competitive major because legacy is not a selling point for the school, the caliber of the student is.</p>
<p>Some schools use legacy only if you are on the cusp for admittance between you and another applicant.</p>
<p>It is important to actually address this regarding the particular school. For example, in this economy many state U’s are having bumper crop yrs because it is cheaper to send your child there than private or OOS. If your child is a legacy for even a public Ivy, I.E. UVA, UNCCH, etc., it will make no impact IMHO because of the economy.</p>
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<p>And yet … I know so many NU legacy kids who get in, and even pulled off the wait-list. So there you go. I can’t stop my S from trying, though my heart is really in my throat on this one.</p>