How to respond when kid gets into school and is Legacy
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Anonymous
If you wouldn’t have gotten in but for your legacy status, legacy got you in. |
Anonymous
So for all the qualified legacy applicants who don't get in, why didn't legacy get them in? |
Anonymous
It’s actually the opposite. The grades, scores, etc. get the kid the second look, otherwise they would go straight in the discard pile. The legacy pushes them over the finish line. |
Anonymous
Because legacy is only a small bump. Remember the vast majority of qualified applicants get rejected, including 67% of qualified legacies and 99% of qualified non-legacies. |
Anonymous
I am begging you look up "but-for causation." The kids who are legacies who didn't get in likely because some combination of luck and not having the legacy-tied chops necessary to get in with the legacy boost. |
Anonymous
Legacy boosts the likelihood of admission many times over. That's not a small boost. Not relitigating this. |
Anonymous
+1. Yes, it’s still a feat to get into a school with a 4 pct acceptance rate, but one study showed that legacies get in at a rate 4x higher than applicants with similar credentials. |
Anonymous
If I could buy a lottery ticket either from the 99% losing stack vs the 67% losing stack, I wouldn't call the difference "small." I wouldn't even buy a ticket from the 99% losing stack but would certainly be tempted from the 67% stack. |
Anonymous
The difference between a 1% chance and 33% is not a small bump- it is a significant advantage. |
Anonymous
+1. Using data from more than 400 colleges and universities and about three and a half million undergraduate students per year, the two economists found that legacy and other elite school admissions practices significantly favor students from wealthy families and serve a gate-keeping function to positions of power and prestige in society. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycast/legacy-privilege-david-deming-and-raj-chetty-how-elite-college-admissions-policies |
Anonymous
My question, exactly. |
Anonymous
Did they donate? Because OP concedes they donated, just not as major donors. |
Anonymous
You can be qualified and still not have good enough credentials to be desirable. Schools are willing to dip lower for the legacy candidates than for the unhooked candidates. And of course there's an element of luck -- whether the admissions officer subjectively liked you or was in a bad mood or whatever. So the qualified legacy applicants still weren't sufficiently attractive to the university in spite of the legacy boost. That doesn't negate the fact that you need lesser qualifications to be admitted as a legacy (despite being qualified to do the work and graduate), that it's much easier to be admitted as a legacy, and that many legacy applicants are admitted solely because they are legacies. |
Anonymous
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The only legacy kid I know got into Yale, her parent's school.
She is a brilliant, hard-working, initiative-taking, community-minded student. She deserves to be there. But being legacy did help secure her a spot, of course, there's no question about that. The top schools turn away so many brilliant, hard-working, initiative-taking, community-minded students! Who all deserve to go to top schools and can't, because there aren't enough seats! So I think this is the price you need to pay for your privilege, OP. It's not your or your child's fault. It's the system's fault, for putting a price on legacy. Universities should stop prioritizing athletes, legacies and big donors. Your kid should reply that he is opposed to the legacy system. That is the only correct answer. |
Anonymous
Yes lol talk about illustrating the point! |