Wondering how important it is to be a legacy? “The Dean” weighs in.
https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/will-legacy-ties-help-michigan-grades-low/
I’d like to ask The Dean if it’s different at schools that aren’t the big “rah rah” sporty huge undergrad populations with tons of athletes running around. At the smaller LACs with actual holistic admissions, don’t legacies count more even if the parent alums don’t have buildings named after them?
@JenJenJenJen -LAC’s do typically consider legacy ties but, as a general rule of thumb, the more selective the school, the less a legacy connection will matter. The most sought-after colleges (whether LAC’s or otherwise) simply don’t have room for all of the alumni progeny who are clamoring for acceptance. So at the hyper-competitive places, it really helps if a legacy applicant (whose folks didn’t build a gym or plan the school’s sesquicentennial) also happens to have another hook, too (e.g., athlete, underrepresented minority, resident of Montana, etc.).
My husband graduated from Amherst College many decades ago, and now–when he attends reunions or homecoming football games–a popular topic of conversation among his classmates is how their own children–who were far better high school students than they had been themselves–got turned down by their alma mater.
But at colleges where acceptance percentages aren’t hovering around the teens or lower twenties, then legacy status often does help applicants–even borderline ones–get a leg up.
Thank you, Sally.
I would assume legacy has more impact at private universities, particularly LACs, than it has at public universities. UIUC, one I am very familiar with, specifically states it does not consider legacy in admissions; the reason: a large percentage of applicants have a parent that attended UIUC and to consider legacy could result in many other qualified, in-state applicants not being admitted.
While legacy admission does typically play a greater role at private institutions than at public, there can still be legacy influences that are not always acknowledged openly at any college that practices holistic admission to at least some degree (which is most everywhere). If a student has a legacy background, particularly an extensive one (and especially one that includes strong donor support) and not just a parent who attended, then this may come up when admission officials are discussing the candidate and trying to estimate the candidate’s likelihood of attending. While certainly there are legacy candidates who only apply to a particular college due to family pressure and who don’t actually want to go there, more commonly when there are strong legacy ties which a student may convey via an essay or elsewhere in the application, this can translate into a higher probability of matriculation. So even if the college doesn’t officially code applications as “Legacy,” the family ties might turn into something of a plus in the final decision-making process.
Some high end publics have explicit legacy policies that provide a boost as big (or maybe bigger) than the legacy boost you get at some high end privates, but there are some differences.
At UNC and UVA, for example, provide a quite strong legacy boost, but you only get the boost if you are an out-of-state applicant. For in-staters, the thinking is that all resident applicants already get a break (lower in-state tuition, easier admission requirements than out-of-state) and should get treated the same. Especially since all the parents of those applicants are state tax payers.
So the legacy policy helps some OOS applicants get in over other OOS applicants, but doesn’t negatively impact any in-state applicants (which would be politically difficult for a state school to do).
UCLA and UCB explicitly say they don’t do legacies.