Legacy doesn’t “dwarf the value of producing a great app,” (the whole app, academics, activities, writing, LoRs and interview notes.)
The app is where your rubber hits the road. Or not. It’s the vehicle. It’s your chance to, so to say, stand up and open your mouth, speak for yourself, show how you think. Or not. And show it to strangers, looking to build the right class.
Colleges that don’t have an explicit Why Us can, nonetheless, have other questions meant to see if you’re the kind of kid who does his college app homework thoughtfully. Or not. It’s a risk to ‘spend 30 minutes and sprinkle bs’ when these adcoms are reading apps year in, year out.
There will always be anecdotes of some kid who made it, even without the savvy. Sometimes, there was another pull, sometimes even just the desire to take a kid from that hs. You can’t know in advance and you don’t see another kid’s app. Be the sort who tries to think and show it.
One diff with the boarding schools is the tight relationship some have with various colleges. Another is they generally don’t push for kids they feel are mismatched. Some cultivate kids through their SAT/ACT prep (semester or even a full year) and their apps. Whole different game.
Get off the notion this is just about academics, just about an essay. It’s about the “whole” self-presentation. Try to think of this from the colleges’ perspectives, they’re the ones making decisions.
Oh, come on. That’s exactly what legacy preference does. I have no problem with a modest amount of legacy preference, but I also don’t see the need to be reluctant to admit the truth. The legacy hook is often what tips these students into the accept bucket. Doesn’t mean they’re not perfectly qualified candidates and great kids, but lots of outstanding candidates get turned down all the time simply because there’s not enough room.
And legacy preference among parents who are the type to send their kids to elite boarding schools is a whole 'nother kettle of fish than what we’ve been talking about in this thread. I think when @panpacific 's children apply to college he/she will have lots of real-life interesting experience to report …
Al2, no it doesn’t.
It’s no big fat thumb on the scale. This kid is still making his decisions, presenting himself, with the goods or not. (Legacy isn’t the same as major donor, athlete, certain uber connections or other discretion.)
If they “prefer” to build a class of legacies, why are more rejected than admitted?
Lots of “qualified” applicants, even what some see as “outstanding,” (if you mean stats and maybe stu govt pres, varsity athlete, or other things that make a kid tops in his own high school,) get turned down based on their own applications, what they choose to write, what they miss, that “whole” people seem to fear.
If panpacific’s kids are yet to apply, the GC will be the first filter.
I’ve seen way way too many “perfect” packages that failed. There’s only so much packaging one could do without “the goods”. I say do your best writing a good application to show you care, you are thoughtful or you are a good writer, but know that at the end of the day the process to super selective is a “hardcore” process and how you present can only have a marginal impact (caution: bad one with red flags can do harm).
But I’m saying, you don’t know what a perfect package is. Not enough to state here that someone had one. The self-presentation is the make or break. Not marginal, at all (excepting athletes.)
Oh, this must be the supposed “I know all of my kids’ classmates’ SAT scores, GPAs, and all of their personal ECs / achievements, whether they have occurred in or out of school, plus I have insight into their teacher recommendations and how well they can write essays. If they are legacies, I also know exactly what their families have donated to this school over time.”
I agree the process to selective is a “hard core” process, which is why it’s best to focus your efforts on your own application, and simply not waste your brain cells worrying about what the kid down the block has or doesn’t have - whether it’s athletics, legacy, better SAT’s, whatever. Run your own race, which is good advice for life in general.
@al2simon as you can see, this is not a super nurturing environment to “share” but I understand some folks don’t want to know certain things, and I do try to jump out of the bubble of mine when I chime in on here. I do have a life outside my kids school you know. Granted, our views are inevitably shaped by our experience. Otherwise we’d be much more agreeable unless we cannot refrain from taking anything and everything so personal so quickly.
“Oh, come on. That’s exactly what legacy preference does. I have no problem with a modest amount of legacy preference, but I also don’t see the need to be reluctant to admit the truth. The legacy hook is often what tips these students into the accept bucket. Doesn’t mean they’re not perfectly qualified candidates and great kids, but lots of outstanding candidates get turned down all the time simply because there’s not enough room.”
Sorry, I did not express myself clearly. What I meant was:
It’s not as though legacy preference turns the kid who was, otherwise, not qualified / “off” into qualified “on,” above and beyond a higher-qualified kid. It may be a deal-breaker between two otherwise equally qualified kids.
But if it were such a big “preference,” you’d see the majority of legacy kids getting in. It would be super-easy for schools to implement. And yet they don’t do so. What does that tell you about the strength of this so-called preference?
At least for some legacies, the application is pulled out of the pile when it comes into the admissions office and I’m not talking about development cases. The file is treated differently and read differently. I am not going to weigh in on whether the advantage is good or neutral or bad. My sole point is that there is an advantage that cannot be explained away by better preparation, better applications, or better understanding of the school.
If people are focused on stats, I’m missing it. I thought people were focused on legacy, whether there’s an advantage to it, how much of an advantage there is, and then whether the advantage is fair. There’s also a discussion about how a parent or student figures out what a school is looking for and how to understand whether there is a mutual fit. But I am not seeing an obsession with stats in this particular discussion.
FWIW, I participated in a very helpful admissions workshop two years ago. Parents and kids were separated into different groups and each group read fictional applications under the guidance of professional admissions officers from various colleges. Admittedly, none of the people guiding my group represented tippy top schools. One working with my daughter’s group came from a highly ranked school. You know what mattered most to every single one of these people? The counselor’s recommendation. Yeah. Not the essays, not the Why Us (unless some sort of misbehavior or arrogance shone through). They wanted to see where the counselor saw this kid relative to his class within the context of his school. Was he a leader? Was he someone they saw as exceptional, someone you don’t see more than once or twice in their career? What set him apart? They also looked carefully at the rigor of the classwork, whether the student continued to challenge himself as he progressed through school. Finally, they looked to what the student did in and outside of school; what mattered to this person and what made him tick.
How would you know the file is pulled and treated separately? Ime, they come through same as every other kid. The difference can be when, at some point, any kid’s file is flagged for the dean to have a look. That’s a teeny subset.
And the whole first third (or so) of this thread had lots of talk about stats.
Yes, it’s different at a most selective college. But my question is: who was most concerned with the counselor report? The adcoms there or the other families?
Legacy can be a disadvantage as well. The “we forgive” less than perfect elements of an application from a kid who might be the first kid from a HS to apply to an elite college where the assumption is that the GC might be clueless goes completely out the window with a legacy. So the supposed advantage of extra/better/closer scrutiny cuts both ways.
If a legacy kid ends up with a GC recommendation using “diligent” in all its glory- forget it. A “diligent” first Gen, or coming from a tiny HS, or coming from a small town in Wyoming- fine. But a legacy kid needs a hell of a lot more enthusiasm from the grownups at his/her HS than “hard-working” or its many synonyms.
Finger on the scale- perhaps. But also an entirely different lens with which to evaluate. That’s the theory of all my classmates whose otherwise (statistically) qualified kids did not get in. Being a Val with super high scores? Yeah, great to have your application flagged for extra scrutiny. But what happens during that extra scrutiny?
“You know what mattered most to every single one of these people? The counselor’s recommendation. Yeah. Not the essays, not the Why Us (unless some sort of misbehavior or arrogance shone through). They wanted to see where the counselor saw this kid relative to his class within the context of his school. Was he a leader?”
Did these parents seriously, honestly think that in the vast majority of public schools in this country, there was a guidance counselor who actually knew anything about any given student? Are they really that out of touch with reality not to get that for most public schools, the guidance counselors have caseloads of a couple hundred students, are dealing with students in crisis, truants, etc. as well as college applications, and they wouldn’t recognize Johnny, Mary, or Susie if they tripped over them in the hallway?
Now THAT’s a racket - the guidance counselor statement. If it’s an affluent public or private school, the GC recommendations can be full of lots of insight. But for the rest, the GC recommendation is simply a boilerplate fill-in-the-plate “Johnny/Mary/Susie is very talented when it comes to history/French/math.” One would have to believe that colleges know this, and that the GC recommendation only confirms what they already know – Johnny goes to an affluent school, or he doesn’t.
"How would you know the file is pulled and treated separately? "
I think the colleges look for and flag separately legacy applications when the applications are first received.
Stanford certainly does and did as of 10 years ago. WE found out when a Stanford alumni admissions rep contacted us over the Thanksgiving vacation to let us know there were some documents missing from DS’s file.
The point of the workshop was to enlighten us, as parents, and as students as to how the application would be viewed by the admissions officer. It was probably the most helpful piece of information I received along the way. To be honest, I’d never really thought about the impact of a counselor’s statement. I’d heard mention here on cc of kids worrying about the rigor of their course load and whether the counselor would check the “rigorous” box but that was it.
The adcoms were showing us how * they * weighted an application. They trained us to highlight certain key elements before reading the entire package (progression of classes, grades in those classes, school profile (not just for the obvious but also to evaluate things like number of APs taken along he way), and counselor recommendation. They aren’t stupid; they understand that they aren’t going to get the beautifully written, comprehensive statement from less affluent Public School that they might getl from affluent Public School and especially from wealthy Private School. They are, however, going to get a standardized paper with a ratings scale that, they claim, every counselor completes. The scale asks the recommender to evaluate the student as one of the best I’ve seen in my career, top 5%, top 10%, top 50% etc. The reviewers emphasized that they wanted to see how this student was viewed * within the context of his school environment. * We looked at fictional applicants from different scenarios and got a glimpse of how the apps coming in from a big understaffed city school might look. The counselor’s statement is a lot more abbreviated but it still provides valuable information. And when one of these people raves about a student, the reviewers take notice.
I found the workshop very helpful. Since we seem to be getting into a game of speculation with people tossing around what matters and what makes the difference to creating that special application that shows that extra something, I thought I should share the concrete bit of information I had. If it isn’t helpful to you, by all means, feel free to ignore it.
Coding an app as legacy is different than saying that it’s “pulled out of the pile when it comes into the admissions office … treated differently and read differently.”
And as Harvard says, reps (or in some cases, their teams) do contact when info is missing (depending on what it is.)
Just because the process is hardcore, doesn’t mean your own presentation has minimal impact. To me, that’s counterintuitive. You are, to them, what you present. Kids worry more about typos.
@3girls3cats Post #529 I agree that the Counselor Rec, and the form where the counselor rates the rigor of the student’s course load and how that student compares with the others in his class at that school, is really important. My son signed a waiver, so we have no idea what the counselor said in her letter, other than we saw that she ranked his course load above the most rigorous available, by using plus signs. For kids at high schools, like ours, that don’t compute a class rank by GPA, the secretive counselor writeup must be even more important to distinguish some kids from others, where many have inflated GPAs and test scores.
@3girls3cats Would have loved to be part of that workshop! I wish there were more real or X adcoms on this site giving us real insight into the logistics of apps. How exactly do they quantify students in the context of each school? Do they use numerical weightings or do most of them rank them similar to what you mentioned? And how does legacy factor into that scale? These are the types of real insights I’d love to have from an adcom. Please come forward!
Many parents have commented on those workshops and found them helpful, gained insight into holistic. But realize there is no consistency in the sorts of info GCs present. Many times, they just repeat the activities section or say the same old as many other kids from other areas receive. Sometimes, they just go on about how much they like the kid. In the good ones, yes, lots to learn from it. Same issue with LoRs.
And nothing says, btw, that great kids from poor schools with overworked GCs, can’t get a great rec, have some impressive ECs and present themselves well. The fancy sports camps, safe neighborhoods, privileged counseling, don’t always have the result of creating a category of especially qualified kids. You could boil it down to “An A is an A.” Not sure how widespread some think it is to depend on the gym teacher to teach chem.
@lookingforward Post #530
At Duke, they have a staff person specifically designated as the interface between alumni relations and admissions. She wrote me a letter early on saying that she was aware of my son’s legacy application and for me to contact her if we had any questions. I vividly remember the Duke letter, because I did pick up the phone to call her when son was waitlisted. Was just looking for friendly advice specific to the engineering waitlist and her role in the whole process. But, since my son wasn’t as excited about Duke after he got into Cornell, I became the only one actually interested in that wait list! His HS counselor offered to help, but only if Duke was really son’s first choice. Which, at that point, it was not.
Clearly the low-donor legacy preference did not work for my son at Duke, but I actually believe it would have if he had applied ED. The other advice he had gotten from both Duke and his HS college counselor was to apply to Arts & Sciences, because Engineering there is small and popular these days. Son was not into that game.
Fwiw, I received absolutely no “special” communication or indication of a specific alumni liaison to contact when my legacy kid applied to Northwestern. He just applied like everyone else. No special phone calls.