Beautiful post, @RenaissanceMom. Your son was wise beyond his years to write that email to his admissions rep. Clearly the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
@RenaissanceMom, I have heard of a number of cases of legacy applicants to Ivies being deferred and then admitted. I think they get admitted early if it’s clear they’d get in RD; otherwise, I think the schools might prefer to use an early chit on someone they really don’t want to lose. I would guess these schools can afford to take legacy applicants for granted - if they decide to admit them, they feel pretty confident they’ll enroll, particularly if they originally applied early. I don’t hear about a lot of early denials - maybe the schools try to avoid doing it out of courtesy.
@RenaissanceMom Post #619 Thanks for sharing. I’m not sure that I would have thought to or wanted to write such a nice note to the Brown Admissions Office.
A big part of me hopes that my kids find great careers that don’t require graduate school!
Fascinating. I’ve learned a lot from reading this thread. But after 42 pages, I have to say that my practical take away is exactly what it was before I started reading. My son (rising 10th grader) will take a good hard look at Weseyan, where I went. (My husband went to Columbia, but my son has NO interest because of the core curriculum.) If he likes it enough to be happy to go and to give up the possibility of other schools, he’ll apply ED to get the legacy boost.
I’ve donated modest amounts to Wesleyan every year since I graduated. I loved my experience there, am grateful for the financial aid that made it possible and want to help provide that opportunity for others. Over the last few years I’ve tended to make restricted gifts to be used only for financial aid. That’s probably an available choice at most schools.
With all the discussions of the mystery of holistic admissions in this thread, I’m surprised no one has mentioned The Gatekeepers, although there was a discussion of some similar materials around post #560. I know it followed a selection process from a number of years ago and it’s “only” Wesleyan, which isn’t HYP, but is hardly Joe’s Garage and Diploma Mill. But my assumption is that, in broad strokes, it’s still a useful insight into the holistic process at elite schools. The letter from the Duke dean is pretty much right in line with what I learned from the Gatekeepers. The process isn’t random, but it is subjective. The AO is trying to meet many, sometimes competing objectives, all at once. Most of these schools could build another, entirely satisfactory class or two from the kids they reject, but decisions have to be made somehow. When I was applying to college in the late 70’s, the joke about these schools was that the Dean of Admissions stood at the top of some stairs with all the applications and threw them down the stairs. The ones that landed face up got rejected. The ones that landed face down got rejected. The ones that landed on their edges were the handful they accepted. It feels even more true now, but it’s not how it was done either then or now.
My son is considering whether to apply to my legacy school (Princeton) but I am not interested in pushing him to go there. Which raises the question of whether legacies get benefits in admission if they don’t apply early action/early decision. I understand that some schools are known for providing benefits to legacy applicants only if they apply ED (Penn and Northwestern come to mind), and other posts on this site say that an admissions officer at Yale asserted that there the treatment was the same for legacies between SCEA and RD. Is there any wisdom about whether the same is true for other SCEA schools like Princeton?
In answer to the question above of whether it would change my alumni giving if my son applied and were not admitted to Princeton, I expect my giving will not change. While I don’t deny some element when writing the annual check of hoping to get a benefit for my children if they apply, I mostly give the money because Princeton gave me good financial aid, which provided me access to a great education and helped me live the life I wanted. I will always be grateful for that, and will feel that I should do my part in making that same opportunity available for students in need, just as others did for me.
Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast on Stanford’s hoarding made my husband and I reconsider our donations. This year we are going to give to smaller local colleges [we did not not attend] where our money will hopefully make a bigger impact.
^^^ Listening to Malcolm Gladwell now - thanks for this!
@stressedmum1 @suzyQ7 there is another point of view on this issue: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/10/28/skorina-legere-endowment-hoarding-hoax/
It’s important also to remember that the endowments at schools like Stanford and Yale aren’t one big account somewhere; they’re hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of separate funds earmarked for various purposes, often as a donor condition of a gift. Even if the investments made with them are managed centrally, the funds can’t be reallocated willy-nilly. Because of this, if you look under the hood at the operating budgets of individual schools and departments of universities, you generally find that some of them are in great shape while others are running at a deficit, even though the headline size of the endowment is large.
In my opinion, the best way to ensure a good outcome from your donation is to indicate explicitly that it’s to be used for financial aid.
Haven’t read all 42 pgs so apologies if this has been asked and answered, but how can you be legacies at 3 schools? they do not typically consider a graduate/professional school - only undergrad. So you and spouse would have only 2, not 3. Which are the 2 undergrads, and in what field is the grad/professional?
My mother was a legacy at Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, Northwestern and American - yes she attended them all as an undergrad! Only BM and American asked her regularly for donations though.
I supposed is one did a 3/2 engineering program you’d probably get legacy benefits from both schools.
@jym626 Which colleges specify that only undergrad degrees can result in legacies? Duke seemed to consider my son a legacy even though I only went there for grad school. I even received a letter from alumni relations identifying him by name as the child of an alum and offering alumni office assistance if I had questions regarding admissions. His application was clearly flagged for some reason.
Guessing this legacy preference issue re: grad v. undergrad could be handled differently at each, unique college.
The Vanderbilt application asked about family members beyond the parents. My son put an uncle’s name. I think some colleges take note of siblings who have attended the same school too.
It may be noted but that doesn’t mean it has the strength of parent-at-undergrad.
@Pizzagirl Is this a blanket truth at all colleges? How do you know? My son’s college counselor did not say anything about grad school being a lesser “legacy” at Duke. Although we didn’t ask that question. She was more interested in him applying ED there for an advantage, which he didn’t.
Of course it’s not a blanket statement at all universities. However, many of the elites only count parent-at-undergrad and give minimal if any weight to parent-at-grad, or uncle, or grandfather. Duke’s mileage may vary. I don’t know. It’s not a school my kids were interested in so I never looked into it one way or the other.
A legacy is commonly considered associated with the undergrad institution from which you graduated. A 3/2 program is an interesting addition, but IMO if a student attended a school for a year or 2 and then transferred or dropped out, that would not likely be considered a legacy in the spirit of their meaning of the term. Yes, the student “attended” but did not graduate from that school. Now, if they nonetheless donated lots of $ to the school, even if they transferred, that would be another story 
Re my husband’s and my alma mater - we both attended/graduated as undergrads. I attended grad school (MBA) but never finished, and my MIL had attended for a year or two back in the day and transferred elsewhere. I’m not even sure if S put either of those down, to be honest.
I can’t imagine that someone would be considered a legacy at a school where the parent (or grandparent) never graduated. But who knows. One definition of alumnus that I just read said “a graduate or former student of a specific school.” So one class at a college could make you an alum by that definition!
As I said, Bryn Mawr considered my Mom and alumna. She only attended one semester and then left to get married.
It’s not the definition of alumnus though. It’s the question as to what that specific school defines as alumnus for the purposes of legacy!
@Pizzagirl Yes. Important clarification. And that definition of legacy and the weight it is given is probably unique to each college.
I did just read an article that said many colleges will “generally” give more weight on the undergrad legacy status, as you & others have said on here. But, again, the article did not say that grad school legacies were totally ignored or that all colleges do it the same way. There is no one answer about legacy admissions issues in that fits all IMHO.