<p>This is hearsay, but what I’ve heard about Stanford is that if a legacy applies ED and is not accepted, that applicant will usually be deferred and the application will be reviewed again in the RD round.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if a non-legacy applies ED and is not accepted, that applicant is usually rejected outright.</p>
<p>If this is true, the main benefit of being a legacy is that you get a second look – and perhaps that helps some individuals. It may also prolong the agony for others.</p>
<p>From our high school only legacies or recruited athletes (and preferably both) have ever gotten into Stanford. Their SAT scores are well below reported averages for Stanford. It’s very frustrating for top unhooked students who know they basically have no chance - these are students who do get into HYPMC.</p>
<p>PG, No one claims legacy is a shoo-in. But in some top schools it gives you a almost 10x boost in admission chance. I not one top school admission rate is 45% for legacy but <5% for unhooked.</p>
<p>If legacies are accepted at a rate of 50% and “unhooked” are admitted at a rate of 5%, that doesn’t mean that being a legacy provides a 10x advantage.</p>
<p>Indeed, without comparing their qualifications, you can’t even tell from that if legacies are at an advantage at all. They could be at a disadvantage if they’re highly qualified.</p>
<p>Hunt, even though there is a non-zero probability that the scenario that you described may be possible. But you know it’s NOT true. Please don’t hide behind those hypothetical possibilities and try to defend the system you benefited from.</p>
<p>If you’d like to search old threads, you can find my son’s stats. I don’t feel he needed much help. I myself wasn’t a legacy. My son’s qualifications were significantly better than mine were. I don’t understand why people are so surprised that the children of graduates from selective school often themselves have excellent qualifications.</p>
<p>That may well be true but you know for an unhooked applicant even with stellar stats the admission rate is in single digit.
If legacy applicant don’t get a boost or may get hurt, why in the world would they fill the form claiming they were legacy applicants?</p>
<p>I think legacy applicants get a modest boost, most likely. It may differ from school to school (it sure seems to be less at Stanford than elsewhere). I just get exasperated by statements suggesting that they get a tenfold boost or anything like that. My guess is that the legacies that get an actual boost are those that are in the zone where the school might or might not take a bunch of qualified applicants. Remember, these schools are still rejecting most legacy applicants.</p>
<p>I think Marian makes an excellent point about the publicity value of legacy families. Most people don’t openly criticize their alma mater, in part because it can reflect badly on themselves. But you can be reasonably sure they honestly had a good experience there if they are willing to send their child too.</p>
<p>Regarding who Stanford accepts–several times on CC I’ve read posts stating that at this or that poster’s high school, only athletes and URM’s have gotten accepted. Does anyone have an opinion or insider knowledge of what Stanford looks for in the remainder of the students who aren’t URM’s or athletes? Because clearly they do get accepted. I recall that someone proposed the theory that the adcoms look for the mindset Stanford prof Carol Dweck claims is important to success.</p>
<p>PS. Whatever criteria they use, it seems to be very effective in assembling a group of people who love their school and like each other. I think Dartmouth also does a reasonable job of that.</p>
<p>I agree tenfold my be extreme but it might be close to the true number in some schools. Consider two applicants with perfect stats, one legacy non-athlete and one unhooked.
It’s quite possible that this legacy is close to a shoo-in and the unhooked has <10% chance of getting in.</p>
You’d have to see what the rate is for unhooked applicants with perfect stats. I’ll bet it’s not the same as the rate for all unhooked applicants. That’s the fallacy.</p>
<p>I know some unhooked kids with perfect stats and a lot of ECs get in 1 out of 10 top schools. It’s possible that admission rate for total unhooked is well below 5% considering some school average admission rate is 6-7% and URM/athlete/legaces have much much higher admission rates.</p>
<p>21.6% of applicants with > 2300 SAT scores were accepted to Princeton for the class of 2015. Your chances go way up if your stats are better. There is no way an applicant with perfect scores has a 5% chance of being admitted.</p>
<p>I think HYP get many many applicants that have really a zero chance of getting in. Therefore the odds for those competitive applicants are much higher than people think.</p>
<p>^ read my post. I didn’t say perfect scorer gets 5%. I said overall unhooked admission rate is <5%, perfect scorer’s rate is close to 10%. Princeton may well be an exception among top schools. Stats matter less in H, S, M, etc.</p>
<p>At S’s school, they are transparent - the acceptance rate for legacies is double the overall rate. But neither of those are high in the absolute, so really, who cares? The people who whine about this always seem to be the people who want straight numbers to drive admissions decisions. I mean, I don’t personally value athletic prowess, but I can at least GET why schools do, and I wouldn’t whine that my unathletic kids were disadvantaged because of it - because schools get to pick their own decision criteria. </p>
<p>Let’s ask the question a different way. Let’s assume legacy provides a bump in admissions from 5% to 10%. (Just pulling numbers out of the air for the sake of argument)</p>
<p>School A - those alums just looove their school and their kids do too. So 10% of their applicants are legacies, and because their acceptance rate is double, legacies wind up being 20% of the freshman class.</p>
<p>School B - those alums really didn’t care for their experience. So only 2% of their applicants are legacies, and because their acceptance rate is double, legacies wind up being 4% of the freshman class.</p>
<p>Is there an appreciable difference in this scenario? IOW, what is the “tipping point” at which there are too many legacies in a class?</p>
<p>“what I’ve heard about Stanford is that if a legacy applies ED and is not accepted, that applicant will usually be deferred and the application will be reviewed again in the RD round.”</p>
<p>That’s what happened to DS. Of course in the 2nd round, 90% of applicants are rejected. So the legacy deferral is viewed by most as a “polite, less painful way of saying " no thanks.”</p>
<p>The other legacy purgatory is the waitlist. The school has decided to deny, but because they are legacy they get waitlisted (with no real hope of ever getting in to the school). Not sure that is really any better than an outright rejection.</p>
<p>I think its impossible to guess what the legacy “boost rate” is. I have heard it said on CC (and it makes sense to me) that the higher the stats, the more the boost.</p>
<p>When our double legacy D applied to Stanford last year we quickly received a letter as alumni parents detailing how competitive S had become and letting us know that the typical acceptance rate for legacy students was only 14% (or 2x normal rate). However, this higher acceptance rate could very well be because these students are well qualified. D got in early to S but decided to go elsewhere and follow her own path (black sheep, lol!).</p>