Yale President On Legacies

voronwe
Sun, 31 Oct 2004 09:01:51 +0000

Very interesting interview with Rick Levin in the current Yale magazine. Among the things he says:

“The pool of legacy applicants is substantially stronger than the average of the rest of the pool. The grades and test scores of the legacies we admit are higher than the average of the rest of the admitted class, and the legacies that matriculate achieve higher grades at Yale than non-legacy students with the same high school grades and test scores.”

“…this isn’t so surprising. Legacy students are coming from highly educated households.”

He goes on to say that he understands the outcry about legacies as public schools, but says private schools are different because they rely on alumni for a significant portion of their money. 35% of the total revenue comes from alumni, and legacy students themselves, when they become adults, are on average “significantly more generous donors.”

Finally he says that they are seeing significant numbers of legacy applicants from formerly underrepresented groups, since they have been increasing their diversity numbers for so many years.