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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes, legacy helps at Ivies.[/quote]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2024/11/01/does-legacy-still-matter-for-ivy-league-college-admission/
A 2023 civil rights complaint against Harvard reported that between 2014 and 2019, donor-related applicants were a whopping seven times more likely to be admitted to Harvard than other applicants, while legacy applicants were almost six times more likely to be admitted. Though “recruited athletes, legacies, relatives of donors and children of faculty and staff” make up less than 5% of the applicant pool, they constitute approximately 30% of those accepted each year. At Princeton, legacy applicants are four times more likely to earn admission. In a 2022 interview, Notre Dame’s former head of enrollment Don Bishop estimated that 19–25% of the school’s incoming class is made up of legacy students each year. The school has one of the highest rates of legacy admission nationally. In other words, at top schools, legacy status still matters—and it matters a lot.[/quote]

But were these applicants less qualified? Or do smart people have smart kids who work really hard to get into mom and/or dad's alma mater because they want the same experience.

My spouse went to an Ivy. I went to an Ivy equivalent. Our HS freshman wants to go to one of our schools really badly. We don't donate a lot. We have made it clear that he has to work really hard to get in. He is already a highly motivated, smart kid, but this pushes him even more.

There are definitely some kids who get an edge because of donations and/or legacies. But the reported numbers are really exaggerated.[/quote]

What's your evidence that the reported numbers are really exaggerated?  My spouse and I both went to Ivies, and recognize that if our kids do want to go to any of our alma maters, it will be a big boost that they have relative to non-legacy kids.[/quote]

I am saying that all of these people getting really worked up about legacies being accepted at a much higher rate are assuming that the vast majority of these kids are several standard deviations below the average non-legacy admit. And that is not true. I would bet that a large percentage would have gotten in anyway, a decent percentage are borderline, most of the rest are relatively close, with a few notable outliers.[/quote]

No, that's not the case.  Try reading some studies with data rather than assuming that legacy kids are highly deserving replicas of their parents.  This one finds that roughly 3/4 of white ALDC (athletes, legacies, big donors, children of faculty or staff) wouldn't have gotten in without their special status.
https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/2021-arcidiacono.pdf[/quote]

Try actually reading and understanding what you point to. The originating work by Arcidicano was shredded by Card in the SFFA case. And this paper purposely leaves out the personal rating (they say that it is a bioased variable) because including it would result in a finding opposite of what they wanted. [/quote]

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