<p>I was wondering if anybody knew if an applicant who has letters of recommendation from Alum would be waited the same or more as legacy?</p>
<p>I thought maybe Alum, because they don’t have to or benefit from you getting in. I figured if an Alum went out of their way to recommend you it may mean a little more than having a family connection.</p>
<p>Does anybody have experience or a story in this area??</p>
<p>Look at the stats for admit with regard to legacy.</p>
<p>That is a foolish notion. Legacy means many things while a recommendation from an alumnus means that your dad knows someone who has talked to you (maybe) a couple of times. In the vast majority of cases, this doesnt hold any real value.</p>
<p>I think that a basic letter of recommendation from an alumni has no value even if the alumn is on the board of trustees, as it is not their child. Most of these letters are generic. However, where an alumni recommedation could hold weight is where the alunni is very connected to either the admissions office or the development office and where the alumni is not writing the basic letter for the applicant but one in which he or she indicates that the appicant is extraordinary. The only benefit that is derived from such a letter is that such a recommecation might cause the Dean of Admissions to personallly review a file. Bear in mind however that those who have given ssubstantially financially to the school and contact the developmet office to write on behalf of a friends child normally do not hold much weight. Usually these letters are written by people who do not know the applicant welll. While a college or university might lean towards accepting a person connected to the gift giver for fear that they will refrain from giving in the future, they will do this however only if the person connected is the gift givers child or grandchild and has the SAT scores and grades that at least put the applicant in the minimum range. The development office does not treat friends of tha families children the same way. For they know that if they do not accept that applicant, it will not prevent the gift giver from continuing to give in the futhre.
Most people think they are at a disadvantage if they dont have an alumni write a letter about them and send it to the school. These letters just sit in the file unless either the writer is a big contributor and he indicates this applicant is very important to him - which I imagine hardly happens, or the alumni is not a gift giver but very connected to the school and indicates that in all his or her years of involvement with the school has never met someone so extraordinary.
As for legacy applicants there are two kinds. Those who have a parent or grandparent who attended but never gave a penny and those who are legacy development admits in that their families have been big gift givers to the school. The latter carries more weight.</p>
<p>Get an alum to adopt you now! Don’t weight another day.</p>
<p>If your alumni rec is or was your teacher in high school, it can have a great influence on your application.</p>
<p>One alumnus, two alumni. One alumna, two alumnae. And if you have one alumnus and one alumna in the same group, the convention is that the plural form is alumni. </p>
<p>You can wait for news about something, or you can weigh different factors in making an admission decision. </p>
<p>Good luck to all of you. Read a good book while you are waiting for news about how your admission file was weighed by the admission committee.</p>