Aha moment - I know 7 current Ivy League students, and all of them happen to be legacies

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wut? I went to an ivy league school and almost nobody I knew was legacy. One person was the first in her entire county to have ever gone to any ivy league school.

YOu may not have known they were legacy because we didn't walk around with T-shirts emblazoned "I am a legacy". no one in my harvard class discussed that or financial aid. I remember someone thinking my dad was the person who got me in - no - it was my straight As, SATs and slot in my high school class and gift for writing that got me in.

I found it interesting from the Harvard Crimson survey that legacies had higher average SAT scores than the non-legacy students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wut? I went to an ivy league school and almost nobody I knew was legacy. One person was the first in her entire county to have ever gone to any ivy league school.

YOu may not have known they were legacy because we didn't walk around with T-shirts emblazoned "I am a legacy". no one in my harvard class discussed that or financial aid. I remember someone thinking my dad was the person who got me in - no - it was my straight As, SATs and slot in my high school class and gift for writing that got me in.

I found it interesting from the Harvard Crimson survey that legacies had higher average SAT scores than the non-legacy students

That trends with family income. Same paragraph but you somehow failed to notice or mention that kids with family incomes nearly half-a-million dollars less are still achieving nearly the same scores

Classy

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Don’t smart, high achievers beget smart, high achievers, on average?

Yes. Legacy kids must have the stats to get in. I know many who were not strong enough students, and were not admitted. And some with outstanding stats but not admitted.

There's a good article about the real corruption being in the area of athletic recruits, for whom academic standards are substantially lowered by contrast:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/09/opinions/college-admissions-elite-sports-harvard-affirmative-action-macintosh/index.html

Wow, recruited athletes get a 1000% bump, and with lowered academic standards to boot? That's not right.

+1. Athletic recruiting has 10x the impact of legacy these days, yet legacy gets 10x the attention post-Supreme Court decision.

Institutions should be *forced* to reveal the academic stats of all athletic recruits. Full transparency. Where is that lawsuit?

It’s coming soon enough.

It will be dismissed. It would be nothing like the recent SC case. Athletic recruiting is clearly based on merit. You can argue that many sports require money or that schools don't need so many sports (or sports at all) but you can't say athletic recruits are like legacies in terms of the boost since it wasn't something they just lucked into birth wise.

I disagree. I think that it will be viewed through the lens of a disparate impact analysis.

Interesting you think disparate impact analysis will survive.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am an immigrant (white), so no legacies in my circle. However, I know 7 kids at Ivies - 3 Cornell, 3 UPenn, 1 Yale; I am sure none are legacies, URM or athletes. All graduated from public schools.

But are they first generation.

All the parents have college degrees, some have graduate degrees, mostly from US, so unlikely to count as first gen.

You wrote mostly from the US. The students who I know who got in marked that that they are first gen when in fact their parents have university degrees from Asia, Africa, and/or Latin America.

We don't know anyone like this. Like PPs have said, the several Ivy admits we know from our public school were Asian and white with grad degree parents, not legacy. In fact the kid we know who had double/several Ivy legacy and is an incredible student, got rejected at all those schools. Of the ones accepted, it broke down to about 4 Asian, 2 white, 1 urm.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:High stat DC got into an Ivy this year.
-not a legacy
-not an athlete
-not an URM
-not a faculty kid
-public school (not TJ)
-no crazy national/international awards
Just got super super lucky.

Stats and major?

1580, 4.6 weighted, Engineering

Very impressive, congrats to your DC on getting in for one of the toughest majors. Essays must have been excellent!

The sad thing is the assumption that a kid with these stats wouldn't normally get in without a hook. Back in the day they would have sailed in!

Test prep culture has considerably cheapened the value of a 1580.

No, 1580 is very hard to achieve prep or not.
Everybody should study and prepare hard for major test such as SAT, MCAT, BAR exam, Professional Engineer exam, etc.

Not a great comparison because the SAT is designed to determine kid’s ability to learn. The bar exam and professional engineering exams are to test what they have already learned.

I
-1 it's a great comparison because everyone is free to prepare.

It's like the Olympics where athletes train for 4 or more years. They are supposed to train - even if training gives them advantage. I don't know any elite athlete who simply shows up and expect to win the gold. Showong up and expect to take home the gold on the strength of the color of skin happens only at Harvard.

This illustrates the changed attitude toward the SAT since “back in the day.” I think it’s a terrible waste. The SAT used to measure aptitude. Now there’s no way to tell whether a 1540 was achieved cold or after months of intense study. That means it’s not a reliable measure of either effort or aptitude.

No it didn't. SAT never measured aptitude. "Back in the day," they marketed it as such but had to change the name from "Aptitude " to "Assessment " because it was proven that it did not measure aptitude. It never did. It still doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wut? I went to an ivy league school and almost nobody I knew was legacy. One person was the first in her entire county to have ever gone to any ivy league school.

YOu may not have known they were legacy because we didn't walk around with T-shirts emblazoned "I am a legacy". no one in my harvard class discussed that or financial aid. I remember someone thinking my dad was the person who got me in - no - it was my straight As, SATs and slot in my high school class and gift for writing that got me in.

I found it interesting from the Harvard Crimson survey that legacies had higher average SAT scores than the non-legacy students

Numerous studies have shown that higher income kids have higher SAT scores. This is because parents are more educated, they can afford tutoring, prepping, etc… Legacies tend to be higher income kids so this is not surprising.

[Anonymous]

Could it be that you are just in social circles where you are not likely to meet non-legacy Ivy admits?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Could it be that you are just in social circles where you are not likely to meet non-legacy Ivy admits?

+1 since that clearly isn't the case for a lot of people on DCUM

[Anonymous]

I know a lot more UVA legacy than Ivy

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High stat DC got into an Ivy this year.
-not a legacy
-not an athlete
-not an URM
-not a faculty kid
-public school (not TJ)
-no crazy national/international awards
Just got super super lucky.

Stats and major?

1580, 4.6 weighted, Engineering

Very impressive, congrats to your DC on getting in for one of the toughest majors. Essays must have been excellent!

The sad thing is the assumption that a kid with these stats wouldn't normally get in without a hook. Back in the day they would have sailed in!

Test prep culture has considerably cheapened the value of a 1580.

No, 1580 is very hard to achieve prep or not.
Everybody should study and prepare hard for major test such as SAT, MCAT, BAR exam, Professional Engineer exam, etc.

Not a great comparison because the SAT is designed to determine kid’s ability to learn. The bar exam and professional engineering exams are to test what they have already learned.

I
-1 it's a great comparison because everyone is free to prepare.

It's like the Olympics where athletes train for 4 or more years. They are supposed to train - even if training gives them advantage. I don't know any elite athlete who simply shows up and expect to win the gold. Showong up and expect to take home the gold on the strength of the color of skin happens only at Harvard.

This illustrates the changed attitude toward the SAT since “back in the day.” I think it’s a terrible waste. The SAT used to measure aptitude. Now there’s no way to tell whether a 1540 was achieved cold or after months of intense study. That means it’s not a reliable measure of either effort or aptitude.

No it didn't. SAT never measured aptitude. "Back in the day," they marketed it as such but had to change the name from "Aptitude " to "Assessment " because it was proven that it did not measure aptitude. It never did. It still doesn't.

They actually modified the test to be less like an IQ test and more like an achievement test; removing analogies etc. Scores on the old SAT correlated well with scores on IQ tests. It’s changed so that’s it’s not as similar to an IQ test and is more preppable, but it clearly still measures academic aptitude to some degree. There’s a lot of really large and well researched studies that show that standardized test scores are the single best predictor of college success. GPA/rigor combined with test scores is the best predictor. Interestingly enough, standardized test scores predict equally well across all SES levels; a poor kid with a 1400 does as well as a UMC kid with a 1400. They’ve also looked at the role SES plays with scores; when you add in parental education levels, family income no longer predicts test scores. In short, smart well educated parents generally will have smart kids. The high SES is a consequence of being smart and well educated. When the child of a neurosurgeon and a phd physicist gets high test scores, it’s almost certainly not because the family had money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High stat DC got into an Ivy this year.
-not a legacy
-not an athlete
-not an URM
-not a faculty kid
-public school (not TJ)
-no crazy national/international awards
Just got super super lucky.

Stats and major?

1580, 4.6 weighted, Engineering

Very impressive, congrats to your DC on getting in for one of the toughest majors. Essays must have been excellent!

The sad thing is the assumption that a kid with these stats wouldn't normally get in without a hook. Back in the day they would have sailed in!

Test prep culture has considerably cheapened the value of a 1580.

No, 1580 is very hard to achieve prep or not.
Everybody should study and prepare hard for major test such as SAT, MCAT, BAR exam, Professional Engineer exam, etc.

Not a great comparison because the SAT is designed to determine kid’s ability to learn. The bar exam and professional engineering exams are to test what they have already learned.

I
-1 it's a great comparison because everyone is free to prepare.

It's like the Olympics where athletes train for 4 or more years. They are supposed to train - even if training gives them advantage. I don't know any elite athlete who simply shows up and expect to win the gold. Showong up and expect to take home the gold on the strength of the color of skin happens only at Harvard.

This illustrates the changed attitude toward the SAT since “back in the day.” I think it’s a terrible waste. The SAT used to measure aptitude. Now there’s no way to tell whether a 1540 was achieved cold or after months of intense study. That means it’s not a reliable measure of either effort or aptitude.

No it didn't. SAT never measured aptitude. "Back in the day," they marketed it as such but had to change the name from "Aptitude " to "Assessment " because it was proven that it did not measure aptitude. It never did. It still doesn't.

They actually modified the test to be less like an IQ test and more like an achievement test; removing analogies etc. Scores on the old SAT correlated well with scores on IQ tests. It’s changed so that’s it’s not as similar to an IQ test and is more preppable, but it clearly still measures academic aptitude to some degree. There’s a lot of really large and well researched studies that show that standardized test scores are the single best predictor of college success. GPA/rigor combined with test scores is the best predictor. Interestingly enough, standardized test scores predict equally well across all SES levels; a poor kid with a 1400 does as well as a UMC kid with a 1400. They’ve also looked at the role SES plays with scores; when you add in parental education levels, family income no longer predicts test scores. In short, smart well educated parents generally will have smart kids. The high SES is a consequence of being smart and well educated. When the child of a neurosurgeon and a phd physicist gets high test scores, it’s almost certainly not because the family had money.

This is inaccurate.
The name change came when analogies were still on the test. Also, analogies are very easy to improve on w/ prep/strategy.
Former test prep teacher. (I taught analogies years after the name change, btw).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
No one “preps” for an eye exam. PP was talking about “back in the day,” and back in the day we were told that the SAT was unpreppable.

Wait, what? Back in 1983 we prepped for the SAT. There were books, Saturday classes, vocabulary lists to study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wut? I went to an ivy league school and almost nobody I knew was legacy. One person was the first in her entire county to have ever gone to any ivy league school.

YOu may not have known they were legacy because we didn't walk around with T-shirts emblazoned "I am a legacy". no one in my harvard class discussed that or financial aid. I remember someone thinking my dad was the person who got me in - no - it was my straight As, SATs and slot in my high school class and gift for writing that got me in.

I found it interesting from the Harvard Crimson survey that legacies had higher average SAT scores than the non-legacy students

Numerous studies have shown that higher income kids have higher SAT scores. This is because parents are more educated, they can afford tutoring, prepping, etc… Legacies tend to be higher income kids so this is not surprising.

Right. Genes don’t matter at all. /s

[Anonymous]

I know many Ivy parents, surprisingly none of their kids admitted. But no state college for them. SLACs or Public Ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:High stat DC got into an Ivy this year.
-not a legacy
-not an athlete
-not an URM
-not a faculty kid
-public school (not TJ)
-no crazy national/international awards
Just got super super lucky.

Not an Asian male?
Not in computer science?

white kids getting in Ivy League is not a big deal.