Legacies - NOT an automatic admission!

JHS
Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:41:17 +0000

Newmassdad: I was a legacy at an Ivy League college (although I chose to go to another one). My high school didn’t rank, but I was clearly the top student in my class, and I had one pre-recentering 800 Verbal and my math score was close enough to be an easy 800 in a post-recentered world. My children were both rejected at the college where they were double legacies, and they racked up quite a few 800s between them. I know six children of friends from college who were accepted at our college. One was a valedictorian, two others were the clear top students in their respective classes at a school that doesn’t rank, one was fourth in my son’s large public high school class and a really impressive leader and student, another was fifth in my daughter’s class at the same school, a football starter, and the top humanities student in a really strong class. (The sixth grew up mainly in England; I have no idea where she stood.) I don’t know any of their SATs precisely, except that one of the kids got a 1500 in 8th grade.

Nothing I have seen leads me to believe that legacies get a meaningful break, at HYPS at least. I know one kid who was a Princeton three-generation legacy who was deferred ED and then rejected there, and accepted at Harvard, and a Yale legacy who was rejected there and accepted at Oxford and Harvard.