Reply to Big College Admissions Year at St. Albans

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I would like to see a study that compared the Harvard/Ivies legacy applicant pool to the non-legacy applicant pool using some sort of quantifiable metric -- I guess SATs is what there is, as school GPAs vary so wildly.  (Such studies might be out there, would love to see them if somebody has a link.)  From observation only (so this is not statistically valid), the legacy kids who get in from our school are also often superlative students (National Merit Scholarship Finalists) who get into non-legacy schools as well (I'm thinking of a student who won a Morehead Scholarship, pretty stunning pool of winners, who attended the Ivy at which the student was a legacy, or a student who is a Presidential Scholar, also a pretty stunning pool, who attended the Ivy at which the student is a legacy).  I remember from my own college days some rather dimmer bulbs from august (and robustly donating) legacy families, so maybe the overall numbers of the legacy pool are not that impressive -- but I'd like to see the numbers.[/quote]

They ALL have SAT&gt;2200. The legacies, the non-legacies and plenty of rejected/waitlisted applicants have SAT&gt;2200. And, of course, comparable extracurriculars, GPAs and other accomplishments like Presidential Scholarships or even NMSSFs with those SATs.

That's why this seems so unfair. It must burn to know that your chance of getting in is 3% but the legacy kid in your class, with the same SAT as yours, has a 30% chance. The word &quot;tip&quot; for describing a 10X increase in admissions odds is an understatement.[/quote]

I don't know -- if the stats are equal, I'm not sure why I can complain if the college wants to maximize donations by admitting legacies.  That is a rational strategy for a private institution dependent upon endowment.

I do get the point of "affirmative action of privilege" but have seen abstracts of Espenshade's work in which I believe he does conclude that the effect of legacy admissions are rather small (it's been a while though, I should re-read).  I believe he thinks the preferential admission of athletes has a more significant impact, am I remembering correctly?

I believe it is likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule affirmative action for under-represented minorities is unconstitutional this year (the case out of Texas).  (Professor Espenshade has stated, by the way, that even if colleges switch to affirmative action based on socioeconomic status, that will result in a drop in the number of African-Americans and Latinos at highly selective colleges because the pool of low income white applicants is fairly large too.)  If, indeed, the Supreme Court ends what we think of as "affirmative action," I do wonder if public pressure/outcry might force the Ivies and other highly selective schools to disclaim the legacy preference.[/quote]

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