<p>It’s what I said in an earlier post, at ivies legacy applicants need median stats unless they have a second hook. What they don’t need is the world class ECs. Over 20 years I’ve seen many, many get in who who not have gotten in as a non legacy. I did not see any change in terms of lowering legacy numbers over those 2 decades.</p>
<p>What I did see was a growing number of URM legacies. Their rate of acceptance is incredibly high.</p>
<p>At less selective schools legacies do not need median stats, 25th percentile is just fine.</p>
<p>Again, anecdotal stories are just that. It’s impossible to say Princeton does not care about legacy when there is so much evidence to the contrary. In many cases you just don’t know the whole story. Some trouble with the law or at school keeps many qualified third generation legacies out of colleges, yet the families often don’t give you that part of the story. </p>
<p>A few years ago I had a name on a building, highly qualified, brilliant student who was caught drinking at school once. The ivy rejected him because that’s their unswerving policy and he got a Jefferson at Virginia. He had no chance and admissions was clear on that with both me and his family.</p>
<p>I am not trying to be antagonistic, but I am curios, if you had to decide which would be the factor for admission…URM or legacy? Or would you say both? If you say both, why both?</p>
<p>I asked S2 after one of the presentations if it would bother him if people thought he got accepted because of legacy? He looked at me in that teenager tone of voice that just screamed “How is it you’ve lived this long while being so dumb?” and then calmly and pleasantly told me, “I thought the point of all this was to get into the best school I can? My stats match up, but this place is impossible to get into, if legacy gets me in what do I care what anyone else thinks?” My wife just snickered.</p>
<p>Of course it’s both, because two hooks are better than one. If she’s a star athlete then three hooks are better than two. And if she’s the scion of a development case they’ll probably send a plane and a driver to pick her up. Why is it so difficult for you to accept the possibility that some people may get special treatment because they’re repeat customers?</p>
<p>Bullet, it was both. The question remains the same: would the candidate have gotten in without legacy? I saw colleges bend to a bigger extent with URMS. </p>
<p>My own kids are hard working, high stats students who attend top schools where they are legacies. I don’t think they lose any sleep over the fact they may not have otherwise gotten in. Nor do they feel under qualified. Being legacies is just part of who they are in an age when being white and affluent can often be a disadvantage.</p>
<p>we do not live in an age “where being white and affluent is often a disadvantage”. we are NOWHERE NEAR living in that age! i don’t care what profession you’re in, that simply isn’t true.</p>
<p>Can anyone please define legacy status for me?</p>
<p>Will siblings be considered legacy? That seems a little unfair to me since you will be getting an advantage while your brother/sister had to work hard to get there. Are children of grad students also considered legacies in Princeton?</p>
<p>It depends on the school. Harvard only considers children of College alumni/ae as legacies, for example, while Penn will consider the children of any degree holder (for example, a Penn law grad) as legacies. Duke doesn’t equate siblings as legacies per se, but does give sibling “consideration,” and so on.</p>
<p>Thomas Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung, both at Princeton, published an article in 2005 in Social Science Quarterly that “quantified” the benefit/boost/disadvantage different groups of applicants received during the admissions process at three highly selective colleges (which are not named) based upon particular characteristics. They found that the admissions advantage/disadvantage different applicants received equated to having a SAT score higher or lower by these equivalent number of points (on the old 1600 scale):
-Blacks: +230
-Hispanics: +185
-Asians: –50
-Recruited athletes: +200
-Legacies (children of alumni): +160</p>
<p>thank you to canuckguy for the link…very interesting article. Also, I remember when I first saw the statistics reported in the post above. I am pretty sure that my jaw physically (and figuratively) dropped.</p>
<p>I guess what I was originally asking is whether there is empirical evidence to support a legacy boost. The Princeton data certainly seem to support this, although there are factors that have been raised here that would seem important to those numbers (such as the inclusion of female and URM legacies, who would not have been tallied in earlier numbers).</p>
<p>I’d like to muddy the waters even more and ask, what if the legacy needs financial aid? But the family are “boosters” involved in a host of alumni activities, etc. Does the legacy boost extend, then, to monied alumni only?</p>
<p>Well, since we’re white and affluent, and my S sincerely wants a shot at the school where he’s a legacy (despite our repeated attempts to steer him elsewhere for a multitude of reasons, and I never thought this would be the outcome) …</p>
<p>I see no reason not to go for it in ED and maximize any potential legacy impact (slight though it may be) … even though my heart is in my throat at the thought of a rejection, which I am fully prepared for but will still have a sting that will be qualitatively different from any other rejection.</p>
<p>Well, I, for one, hope your son gets in. I can’t imagine he isn’t qualified.</p>
<p>I hope the anectdotal stuff I’ve heard isnt true. To be fair, I live in an area where there are a large number of NU alums, so it could be a matter of unrealistic expectations.</p>
<p>I know our D was accepted to UNC-CH based on being considered as an in state student because of alumni status on her dad’s side, though she didn’t decide to go there.</p>
<p>Good luck to your son. It’s a tough next little while to be a parent, but I’m sure everyone’s kid will recieve some sort of good news by the spring.</p>
<p>The Princeton article is entirely based on data from the 1996-1997 admission season, i.e., 14 years ago. I believe it is seriously out of date in its quantifications of various admissions factors. Since then, applications to elite colleges have almost doubled (or in some cases more than doubled), and yields have increased, resulting in fewer admissions. In 1996, the “echo boom” had not yet begun, and the children of the expanded classes of the early 1970s had not yet started to apply. I don’t think legacy admission practices then have any continuing relevance now.</p>
<p>That’s certainly true. When legacy school rejected D2 I found myself thinking “What? If you are not taking high-SAT, valedictorians, who have won tons of music awards and have literally played Carnegie Hall and are LEGACY to boot, well who ARE you taking?”</p>
<p>None of the the other rejections offended me in quite this way. In fact they didn’t offend me at all. Those were just part of the price of applying to schools with single-digit and very low double-digit acceptance rates.</p>
<p>Sort of off topic, but admissions at these schools have apparently always been a little inscrutable. I happened to Google Eliot Spitzer the other day (for some reason) and read his bio. He was apparently a top student and athlete at the Horace Mann school, which sent a lot of kids to Harvard. He had 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT, which was pretty rare back when he applied. His dad had 100 million bucks, and was well connected. But he still got rejected by Harvard and had to “content” himself with Princeton. Apparently he later got square with Harvard by going to law shool there (after getting a perfect LSAT), and then sending his kid there.</p>
<p>Of course he made some knucklehead mistakes later in life, but nobody know that then :)</p>