@oldfort It may differ at different schools, but I have been told (an my anecdotal info seems to support) that outside of “special” larger donor cases, they don’t even bother to check the amount of donation/involvement - and I know of a number of kids who have had parents quite active as an alumni not get in and others who have donated less time or money get accepted. That said, if you are involved and get face time with the admissions folks, you can get your kid a closer read, as far as I can tell.
Development is different. Most alumni are not even close to the kind of donation numbers that flip that switch.
My good friend is a private college counselor. She worked with my daughter. One night at dinners with us she was Praising daughters list as " highly realistic" ( lots of like likelies one low reach) and talking about how some kids think they can get into Ivy’s when they have no chance. My daughter piped up to say that her friend Cara was just the opposite. She applied to HYS, which her parents encourage her to do, but Cara thought her chances were low . My daughter said everyone else thought Cara’s chances were very high. The following discussion ensued:
Daughter: I mean Cara is is going to be our Val, she has a 36 and she’s President of Model UN and Cheer Captain
CC: well you know most kids like that are rejected from HYS
Daughter But she’s a legacy at H and S and…
CC : well that might help her a little but not much
Daughter: … and she’s African-American
CC: Ok well she probably does have a pretty good chance.
“And people wonder why racism is increasing when they exaggerate the effect of race in college admissions (and elsewhere).”
Come on, what Stanford “reports” and the reality are not necessarily the same. And we are talking about as I mentioned an all around outstanding student and very good (just not outstanding) EC. It’s just that outstanding students with good EC’s are rejected all the time from Stanford. Being a URM absolutely is a hook in a way that non-money giving alumni is not. By the way, I believe that is ABSOLUTELY AS IT SHOULD BE.
My daughter’s friend, did indeed get into all three (HYS). Something almost unheard of at our very white school. The only other student to do it in the past decade was a perfect score/grades kid PLUS Westinghouse winner.
It’s more than being an outstanding student with some good ECs. That’s just the bones. To look at it only from that dimension is to miss the rest. Same with legacy and wealth.
Lighten up UCB. The data on this stuff is very clear. Facts are the facts, and have zero to do with racism.
Obviously no dummies get into HYPS. But the studies have ranked the relative power of the various hooks.
Strongest hook is African American. Close second is recruited athlete. A good ways back in third place is Latino. Barely behind in fourth place is legacy. There really is no dispute or mystery about how this works.
A friend’s kid recently got an offer to play a focus sport at Harvard. White, affluent, suburban kid who is really good at the sport. Harvard told him a 26 ACT would guarantee admission. A 26 is the 83rd percentile nationally. So the kid presumably would be strong enough to get through Harvard and graduate.
But that is a gigantic break on the academic stats. Without a VERY strong hook, a 26 ACT at Harvard goes straight to the circular file.
So are you saying that a similar applicant (including the 26 ACT), who is not a recruited athlete but is black, will be admitted to Harvard, since you say that being black is a stronger hook than being a recruited athlete?
That you believe so does not prevent others from feeling racially resentful about it, or casting doubt on the achievements of URM students because they assume that the URM students only got into the selective college due to being URM.
Guys, this thread is supposed to be about wealthy families and admission, not race. There are plenty of other threads with race as a theme (and if you don’t like any of them, you can start your own).
“@maya54@Jara123 - you sound like the same person, unless I’m misunderstanding”
Sorry, sorry. Today, I went on an old computer in our basement when many years ago my friends’s daughter logged on when she was staying with us for awhile and for some reason that computer keeps logging on as her, and on the rare occasion I use that computer I fail to notice! It was me Maya! I really don’t mean to log on as someone else!!
"Guys, this thread is supposed to be about wealthy families and admission, not race. There are plenty of other threads with race as a theme (and if you don’t like any of them, you can start your own). "
My point that was that legacy makes such a small difference compared to URM status, it is such a small “hook” that wealthy families can use.
I think wealthy families benefit most from the fact that they can provide so many resources during the entire educational life of their child.
@lookingforward and, just to tie it back to the thread topic, some number of those athletes are rich kids recruited to play rich kid sports (e.g., squash, sailing, golf).
Espenshade’s study is from 2004-2005. He rated the strength of various hooks expressed as the admissions equivalent of having extra SAT points (1600 scale) added to your score. His conclusions:
That’s mainly because like many conversations about legacies, it conflates legacy applicants…especially from ordinary upper-middle class families with alum parents who donate a few hundred or less/year to their alma mater with HS stats/ECs/application package were so strong that the “legacy” was effectively a non-factor as they likely never needed the legacy tip and those who had marginal stats for the colleges concerned, but whose alum parents made sustained donations of several hundreds of thousands/year at the very least for many years and/or donated a few million at the drop of a hat OR those with parents with personal achievements*/connections are such that admitting their progeny would bring great credit/benefit to the U.
From what I’ve gathered from my HS GC and two people who worked in admissions offices of elite colleges…including one as a bona-fide adcom, it’s the latter group who meaningfully benefits from the legacy tip.
*E.g. President of the US, Fields Medalist, Nobel Prize winner, renowned literary author, renowned scholar/scientist, etc.
While the more merit-oriented “holistic” admissions process from the post mid-'60s onward has substantially reduced the chances of admitting as many “dummies”, it’s a tall order to definitively say that “clearly no dummies get in”.
One only needs ONE exception for that statement to be proven false. Here’s one example of a recent Harvard admit/alum who can arguably be considered a “dummy” by her actions and outcome:
Anecdotally, I’ve also worked with a couple of Harvard College grads who weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed in a post-college job at a financial company. That is before they were dismissed before completing their probationary period with our firm.
CoBrat – developmental applicants are a totally different animal. The millions of dollars are still green if they come from a non-alumni. The Kushner father, after all, is an NYU grad but (allegedly) secured seats at Harvard for his two sons by stroking a check to Harvard for a few million. You can also look at the billionaire Bass family (mostly Yalies) who heavily donated to (and got multiple kids admitted to) Duke. It is possible that some dummies get admitted from this group.
FYI, none of Rudi G and his wives went to Harvard. So “celebrity” admits don’t have to be alumni kids either. Malia Obama, for example, isn’t a legacy kid. Mom and Dad went to Harvard Law School. Harvard College only counts Harvard College degrees for legacy admissions.
The studies of legacies studied “garden variety” legacies. 1%-ers most likely, but some not in the one percent. But not 1% of 1%-ers. Kids of doctors, lawyers and bankers. Upper middle class or lower upper class. Modest donors. Dummies don’t get admitted from this group, but they get a significant boost.
Smaller boost than athletes or AAs or Latinos. But statistically quite significant, depending on how you look at it. Going from a 10% chance to a 40% chance still means a 60% chance of rejection and still means you have to be strongly qualified. That’s why the schools say it isn’t that big a deal – a feather on the scale, just a tie-breaker.
But 4X-ing your chances is huge when compared to a 10% admit rate. Having a tie-breaker in your favor is huge if you are playing a game where lots of ties occur.
My pet theory is that the financial angle on legacy admissions has very little to do with donations. But very much to do with full pay tuition dollars. Most legacy parents will send way more money to Harvard for tuition than they ever will for donations. Every Harvard College alumni parent is not going to be a full payor. But demographically/statistically, a lot of them will. And Harvard needs those full pay dollars. 30% of Harvard students are full pay – which is a lot of dough.
@cobrat Virtually EVERY applicant to Harvard needs any help he/she can get. Just look at the stats for those who are rejected - tons of very high test scores, super high GPAs, etc. No applicant is a sure thing. At the very top, an elite applicant can benefit from any little “flag” that distinguishes himself from others. Every year, tons of super high achieving students are rejected from Harvard because there simply isn’t room for them all. Being a legacy is VERY helpful.
@northwesty The athlete thing is tough because the Academic Index forces coaches to have, at a minimum, a balance of strong candidates who don’t “need” that boost proxied by the 200 points on the SAT, along with other recruited athletes who DO need that boost. In fact, there is another long discussion to be had about athletes recruited primarily to boost the team’s Academic Index, instead of contributing on the playing field. There are “committed athlete” lists online for lots of different sports, and particularly for high school girls, you will see lots of commits who are currently sophomores, with many Ivy League schools on the lists. That is very early to identify athletic as well as academic talent.
I wonder what exactly Espenshade means by “athlete.” Simplifying somewhat, there are four kinds of candidates I would consider “athletes”: (1) Athletes recruited with the coach’s full support for a “slot” the coach essentially can fill, and who have been pre-cleared by Admissions. These athletes have an admission rate of 90% or better. (I say 90%, not 100%, because I know of two athletes in that position who were unexpectedly deferred EA or ED.) (2) Fill-in athletes that are on the coach’s list as having his support, but Admissions has a good deal of discretion as to which and exactly how many of these athletes get admitted. They probably have an admission rate of 40-60%, maybe a little better. (3) Stars in sports that are not intercollegiate sports at the school in question – e.g., Olympic skaters and skiers. A huge boost, and the more celebrity the better, but no preclearance. High admission rate, but I have no idea how many apply. (4) Applicants for whom sports has been an important, lifelong commitment, and who have developed leadership skills, discipline, and time management skills through athletics, but who are not expected to continue at a varsity or equivalent level (for non-NCAA sports) in college. These kids may or may not do a little bit better than the average applicant, but it would be a very little bit.
Averaging all of them together, I would expect them to have an admission rate significantly higher than average. But really it’s a relatively small group with a 90% admission rate, a somewhat larger group with a 50% rate, and a much larger group that is perhaps marginally better than average. It’s not really meaningful to average all of them together.
I note also that a lot of Espenshade’s data was collected at Princeton during the Fred Hargadon era. Hargadon was widely known to love high-school athletes, more than most of his peers. So my fourth group may well have done meaningfully better than average at Princeton in the late 90s and early 00s. Also, many elite liberal arts colleges definitely favor athletes, because they have a tradition of fielding many varsity teams and need to populate all of them. I believe that at Amherst, which is very small, over half the student body plays at least one intercollegiate sport. That has a huge impact on admissions for those colleges.
Another girl I know was a recruitable basketball player AND top 2 percent of HS class and 35 ACT. She was not suprisingly amitted to a top Ivy. The " surprise" came when she met with her assigned to all athletes tutor. The math tutor came and said I saw that they put this ( super high level ) math class on my list of your classes . I assume that’s a mistake. And the girl was like “No. I’m probably going to major in math”. The tutor immediately phone the Grad Math department to get her another tutor.