Panpacific, remind me again if legacy is such a “hook” why no elite schools accept the majority of their legacies. Everyone has really got to stop pretending that legacy is tossing bricks onto the scale.
This thread is making me laugh a little.
First, the fairly arrogant title: Reflections of an “elite” legacy parent. Is the parent elite as well as the college(s)? How does this make the rest of the CC readership react? It rubbed me the wrong way, but I admit that I started reading it to see what kinds of parents were commenting. I went to Duke and Cornell, so I am one of the lower-tier, non-elite parents posting here.
Second, I am wondering wonder why I liked Saabs when I was younger, and why I like BMWs and Volvos now, but drive an old Toyota minivan. What does that say about me in the college marketing scenarios? Also, I wonder how I was accepted to Brown back in the day, when I was a Republican and not an “activated artsy-boho type?” Although, I did have “multiple interests across disciplines,” so maybe that was it.
Third, I think that the analysis of college marketing plans and the ins and outs of legacy admissions may be discussed more in depth and ad nauseum here than amongst administrators on college campuses! I wonder if any admissions directors or college presidents ever read this CC stuff and what they think.
More on topic - My HS senior was accepted to my undergrad and waitlisted/rejected by my grad university this year - both through RD. No other hook and no big family donor; just a good student with strong math and computer skills. But, the admissions counselors at both of my colleges, as well as his HS college counselor, had all been blunt that ED was the way to go, especially for alumni children. Instead, my child decided to apply ED at a non-legacy school, and that did not fly. Just sharing our story for another legacy data point, albeit not necessarily an “elite” one. My strong opinion: Apply ED or SCEA to a legacy school when possible, but recognize that it still might not work out. Or, just donate a building…
By the way @Pizzagirl I think your comments about how a student newspaper editor could “market” him/herself in a college essay were actually the most helpful advice on this thread. Clever ways of thinking about how to write up a fairly common high school activity.
So, despite my comments at the start, my morbid curiosity will probably keep me reading this thread to see what comes next.
Couple of thoughts (warning, I didn’t read every post in this entire thread … just the last few pages 
):
- You can't know whether the essay matters alot or not with absolute certainty. But there is no downside to writing a good one, and there is plausibly downside to writing something hackneyed, obvious, over-the-top, disingenuous, cliche, etc. etc. I myself believe it matters a lot at some schools, but even at those schools, there are probably individual ad coms who personally don't care about them as much as others and won't advocate for a marginal admit just based on the story. Then, there are probably adcoms at schools that profess to not weigh the essay very heavily who, themselves, are swayed by a story and who choose to advocate. Who knows? You'll never pin it down with perfect or even near-perfect knowledge, so write a good one. Not doing so is stupid. JMO.
- I agree - legacy, in my experience, means a smidge more than bubkus. Not one of my darling, perfect, "why don't you like them??!!!???!" children made it into my alma mater, and they are all a heck of a lot more accomplished than I at their ages.
In my travels, the real “Hook” in selective admissions is sports. It moves the needle like few other hooks do. Like it, hate it or whatever, I think that’s the real big one.
Well it only makes sense to apply ED or SCEA if it’s your first choice.
@mathmom True!
" I went to Duke and Cornell, so I am one of the lower-tier, non-elite parents posting here."
??? What do you mean? Duke and Cornell are certainly elite schools. Why would you think otherwise? There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 colleges in the US. Duke and Cornell are both in the top 15. So that’s the top 0.3%. It’s ludicrous to suggest that they aren’t elite. I’m hoping you were joking?
@Pizzagirl I was being both sarcastic and truthful. Most people who post on this CC website do see my schools as second-tier. With HYPSM (never saw that acronym before reading on here), Chicago, Cal Tech, Berkeley, Hopkins, Pomona, Amherst, and others consistently referred to as the creme de la creme or the tippy top (TT?). I get a chuckle at the acronyms.
I guess I was one of the weird kids who visited a lot of those top schools back in the day, and decided that I was just not comfortable at most of them. I felt overwhelmed by the hectic cities surrounding the campuses at Yale, Penn, Columbia, and Harvard. I felt intimidated by the wealth at Princeton and was worried about the male-dominance at Dartmouth back then. Those were my real feelings at age 17. Thus, the only Ivies I really liked enough to apply to were Cornell and Brown. I did end up applying to Penn too and was accepted, but that was my last choice. I guess I was not very influenced by rankings, or maybe they didn’t exist in the late 70s? I can’t even remember, although I do recall thinking that the “Ivy League” was somehow special, probably because my grandparents in NY and NJ said so.
These days it seems like everyone is way more focused on ratings and what is “elite,” rather than relying on a good gut feeling about a college. I know that engineering school rankings influenced my son in his college decision-making process, despite that I was trying to get him to focus equally on other factors.
I think a handful of know-nothing high-school students who have nothing better to do than to try to impress their similarly know-nothing high school peers see those schools as second-tier. You won’t see that attitude coming from thoughtful adults who know better.
@panpacific, 70-80% of legacy applicants at the tippy-tops don’t get in. Legacies are 3-4x as likely to be denied as admitted. Sure, being a legacy is a hook, and legacies are significantly more likely to be admitted than unhooked applicants, but unless you’ve got a second hook, it’s doubtful you’ll be admitted to a tippy-top without a really strong application, including great essays.
It’s hard for some people to believe, particularly at places like your prep school, that legacy doesn’t trump everything when they see a legacy admitted with class rank a few slots below, or scores a little less than, an unhooked applicant who was denied. Ask yourself, though: does that difference in class rank and scores prove that the unhooked kid was clearly a better applicant, much more likely to succeed at the college and in life? Is the difference so large that the college should have viewed it as significant? Do you have any idea what the legacy wrote in their essays, and how it compared to the unhooked kid’s application? Are you certain that the unhooked applicant’s full package (including how they came across in the interview) is so much better that admitting them over the hooked applicant is a slam dunk? Are you sure you know what the college wants, and that the unhooked kid is a much better match? Or are you myopically assuming that everything should come down to differences in comparative stats, no matter how small (if you even know for sure what each kid’s stats were)?
The truth is, unless that unhooked kid had something fantastic in their background that the college thought it had to have (which great essays could have helped bring out), or the difference in quality of the two kids as reflected in their backgrounds and apps was substantial, the college is viewing them as two comparable applicants from the same school, in which case the hook (or hooks) is going to be more important, all else equal. And at places like your kids’ school, those legacies might well also be development cases, URMs or recruited athletes, and their families are very likely to be generous donors. When they get in, they’ve usually got stronger apps than the overall applicant pool and other things going for them. The legacy is just one piece of the puzzle.
As I said downthread, I think if your unhooked kid were up against a non-wealthy legacy from an undistinguished public school and the two kids had the same stats, I’ll bet your kid would get in over the legacy every time. Why? Because your school is well-known to the college, your kid is assumed to be better prepared to do the work at the college and her transcript is respected more, she’s probably had better teachers and broader EC opportunities at your school (maybe even test prep there) and she’s worked with a professional guidance counselor who’s helped her craft a great application. Your kid’s going to get in, and that legacy isn’t, because, among other reasons, your kid produced strong essays - she was trained and coached to do so. That legacy wasn’t - he was playing checkers while your kid was playing chess.
@DeepBlue86 I haven’t finished reading your post, but I will. Let me just say this - I don’t judge whether legacy enjoys an advantage by the differences of the admit rates of legacy and non-legacy pool because there can be many explanations. Correlation may not be causation. But the colleges explicitly tell the public that there’s preferential treatment to legacy. That’s what I go by. How big of an advatage? Well, how big do you expect? As you explained in an earlier post, given the size of the application pool relative to its class size and with so many institutional needs to meet, a tiny advantage is a big advantage if that makes any sense… And I still think the “essay talk” is a distraction to this topic.
We spent time on Why Us and activities. Why not include the big essay and other writing? It’s all part of the whole.
It seems some think greatness speaks for itself. And some feel that’s primarily stats. You can do that, you can protest holistic. You can think like a parent. After all, you know your kids. But you aren’t making the admit decision, nor are teachers who “love” your kids, or the GC. You’re applying to leave that realm.
It’s kind of like going to state or national level with debate or a sport. You may be tops in your hs, but so are the others who got there. You still need to stand up there and give your best speech or play your best game.
Just think about it.
And yes, this applies to tippy tops, which is where the thread began. If you’re applying to colleges that don’t have fierce competition and/or choose based on stats, of course it’s a different situation.
"As I said downthread, I think if your unhooked kid were up against a non-wealthy legacy from an undistinguished public school and the two kids had the same stats, I’ll bet your kid would get in over the legacy every time. Why? Because your school is well-known to the college, your kid is assumed to be better prepared to do the work at the college and her transcript is respected more, she’s probably had better teachers and broader EC opportunities at your school (maybe even test prep there) and she’s worked with a professional guidance counselor who’s helped her craft a great application. "
Yeah, no kidding. Which is why I think that an elite boarding school parent complaining that legacies have an advantage … PLEASE. You went out of your way to arrange a huge advantage for your kid – something inaccessible to the vast majority of American families for whom a boarding school might as well be on Mars – and somehow you’re worried that legacy upsets the playing field?
And why someone at an elite prep school would conflate the legacy parents that THEY see - who are undoubtedly far wealthier and far more connected – with “everyday vanilla” legacy parents, who are non-donors of any magnitude, who are non-connected beyond being legacies, who send the kids to the local public school – again, it’s just not dealing in the reality of your rarified world.
“But the colleges explicitly tell the public that there’s preferential treatment to legacy. That’s what I go by. How big of an advatage? Well, how big do you expect?”
You keep acting as though none of these colleges ever come and spell it out. There have been links on CC before from many of the top 20 colleges, explicitly saying that the regular acceptance rate is x% and the legacy acceptance rate is y%. Sometimes they are from letters to alumni (like the one from Northwestern that I received and posted a few years back); sometimes they are articles in student newspapers. *But never has any legacy advantage gone above the halfway point. The majority of legacies get denied. * So any legacy who doesn’t prepare for denial is a fool.
How many of the “tippy top” schools even have a “why us” essay? HPY don’t, and I only remember S writing them for Penn and JHU out of his 20 applications…30 minutes of combing their websites for morsels and a sprinkling of bs and he was done.
How many kids really have insightful, original, compelling reasons for applying to a specific school? You are prestigious, or you are my safety, or you offer merit, or you offer great aid don’t count, right? That eliminates about 95% of applications!
You don’t have to have an explicit “why us” essay to be tailoring personal statements to what you believe a particular college’s values, ethos, norms and mores are.
I think prep schools also have a play in the results preferring legacies. Parents pay big dollars for prep schools and if little Johnny or Susie don’t get into the legacy college parents are going to be disappointed. Parents pay more than tuition at these schools. They also donate and may continue to donate long after their kids graduate. Anecdotally my sil felt her kid was not treated the same as those of other more connected parents at the prep school her kid attended on scholarship. (Don’t worry, he ended up at a great college and is now in grad school at MIT.)
@Pizzagirl, to be fair to @panpacific, I don’t think he/she was complaining or saying that they were treated unjustly. He/she just seems to think that legacy is a huge advantage and that it dwarfs the value of producing a great app. What I’m arguing is, as @lookingforward has said, to even get into the higher committee rounds (unless you’ve got some other hook for which they’ll make allowances up to a point, such as being a development case or recruited athlete), you generally have to have stats above a certain qualifying level.
Both the legacy at the prep school and the unhooked candidate with slightly better stats have cleared that bar - unless there’s something else that’s fabulous and truly distinguishing about the unhooked one, they’re both good enough stats-wise, and the stats become just one part of the total package (with small differences in stats not mattering much). They’ve both had the same great training, and have parents who have sent them to the prep school and are providing them with other opportunities. You’d expect them to be comparable.
What I think @panpacific is having trouble accepting is that when the college views Mr. Legacy and Ms. Unhooked as being academically in the same bucket, stats don’t trump everything else, and when you’ve cleared the stats bar and are progressing through the committee rounds, the rest of the app (including essays) and hooks like legacy become increasingly important (and a lot more relevant than a few notches up on class rank and some more SAT points). That’s why, even at the prep schools, many legacies are denied and many unhooked candidates are admitted.
It seems to me that for too many parents of unhooked candidates (particularly at prep schools, in my experience) complaining about legacy preference is just a rationalization for the fact that the college wasn’t wowed enough by their kid’s total package to be willing to admit them in addition to, or instead of, some legacy applicant who was academically in the same ballpark and was almost certainly a very attractive applicant (maybe with other hooks), in addition to being a legacy.
@Pizzagirl You can’t have a conversation without digging in motives and personal agenda etc can you? For the 100th time, I am not complaining about anything. As I said earlier, not everything said here has to have a “personal touch” or be reflective of one’s personal interest. Just days ago, you were arguing with me when I said there were unwritten “feeder school” advantages. Now you are saying that is an advantage that can be “arranged”? Anyway, you have not persuaded me but I have said what I had to say. I stand by my position that per institution policies legacy as a whole is being treated ptreferentially. How the policy is implemented can vary from school to school but there’s no attachment to the policy that says only for those writing exceptional essays.
@DeepBlue86 I understand your point and I don’t disagree with you. I just don’t want to help introduce yet another “distraction” to this thread with a specific topic. Check out relevant posts on this thread if interested: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1902967-forbes-2016-p26.html
“I stand by my position that per institution policies legacy as a whole is being treated ptreferentially. How the policy is implemented can vary from school to school but there’s no attachment to the policy that says only for those writing exceptional essays.”
Not preferentially enough to get the majority of legacies in. I think you’re seeing this as an on/off switch – that here’s a legacy kid, he would be “off” but the legacy button toggles him “on.”