How did SCEA Legacies fare?

RollOver_Hanover
Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:34:30 +0000

I’m probably a bit of an anomaly, but I had awful luck as a “legacy” applicant last year. I had legacy at Yale, MIT, and to a lesser extent Harvard, although I would not be considered a “development case” at any of these schools. I applied early to Yale, was deferred and later rejected. I was rejected at MIT and waitlisted and later rejected at Harvard. All of this was surprising as I ended up getting into every school I applied to (except a waitlist at Williams which may have been a case of “Tufts syndrome”). I ended up at Dartmouth. The Dartmouth admission was a bit surprising coming from NH, as I was a NH candidate who did not apply ED and who had no legacy or no prior connection to the school. I couldn’t be happier anywhere else.

Here’s my take on legacy admissions at places like Harvard and Yale a year out. These schools receive so much criticism for giving favoritism to legacies that they will be be weary to admit legacies unless the relation is already a key financial supporter. The result of this is that these colleges will be more likely to reject the other pool of legacies who oftentimes have stronger qualifications than the non-legacy admits (this helps keep the legacy admit rate down and keep public opinion up). So good luck to all the legacies who got deferred from Yale, the system is even more mysterious for you!