Yep who would you be more impressed with a 4.0 from "x" state school or a 3.0 from Harvard ?

Development cases? What percentage? I bet single digits. Legacy admits constitute a crazy amount -- 30% at Harvard as of 2011 (not sure it remained the same for more recent admissions cycles).
How could being a legacy hurt?


I bet 1-5% of an entering class, depending on the college. There just aren't enough multi-millionares' kids who can also handle the workload at a highly competitive universities. Harvard is *not* going to accept a kid who is guaranteed to flunk out, no matter what some of you think.

You are wrong, once you get in, one has to work very hard to flunk out. This is well known. Just google Harvard grade inflation. It is a shame, well not really, the name on the degree is more important vs gpa.

11:34 This is just plain wrong. I personally know the parents of two Ivy athlete recruits, one from the DC area and one from out of state, and their SAT/ACT score thresholds were lower. It was discussed by the coaches, the pressure to attain the threshold is fierce. Your child might be in college with athletic recruits from DC area schools, but does he/she discuss their test scores? One recruit who hesitated at an offer was told by the coach that she was preferred over another candidate because her scores were higher. And they just made the cutoff.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Development cases? What percentage? I bet single digits. Legacy admits constitute a crazy amount -- 30% at Harvard as of 2011 (not sure it remained the same for more recent admissions cycles).
How could being a legacy hurt?

I bet 1-5% of an entering class, depending on the college. There just aren't enough multi-millionares' kids who can also handle the workload at a highly competitive universities. Harvard is *not* going to accept a kid who is guaranteed to flunk out, no matter what some of you think.

do you know how hard it is to flunk out of harvard?

in a soft major hyp would be much easier than a flagship state school.

not everyone at harvard takes math 55.

Anonymous wrote:Development cases? What percentage? I bet single digits. Legacy admits constitute a crazy amount -- 30% at Harvard as of 2011 (not sure it remained the same for more recent admissions cycles).
How could being a legacy hurt?

I bet 1-5% of an entering class, depending on the college. There just aren't enough multi-millionares' kids who can also handle the workload at a highly competitive universities. Harvard is *not* going to accept a kid who is guaranteed to flunk out, no matter what some of you think.

Anonymous wrote:23:32 I didn't say legacies didn't have top grades scores. What happens is if there is a student with similar grades and scores, the school often selects the legacy over the non-legacy. Separately, it's a well-known fact that recruited athletes are held to a lower standard for test scores and grades.

10:00 here. This, if you don't have the time to read my math example. If there are two identical kids, and both are on the bubble, the legacy kid has a higher chance of getting in than the non-legacy. This is a well-known fact that has been documented in various books and newspaper investigations into admissions committee decision-making.

I disagree a bit on the athletic recruits. The lower bar may be true of 2nd-tier universities or big sports schools (see the UNC thread), but I don't think it's true of athletic recruits at the top-most selective universities. I didn't mention in my 10:00 that my totally unhooked (non-legacy, non-athlete, non-URM) DC is at one of those widely-discussed schools that takes 7% of kids. The athletic recruits that entered the same university with DC, that DC knows from her high school and from DMV-area meetups of admitted students, come from TJ, the Blair magnet and, to a lesser extent (surprisingly, to me) the top area privates. Also, many are NMSSFs. These athletic recruits are stellar kids by any measure. So, although I haven't read this anywhere and my pool of knowledge is limited to DMV-area athletic recruits to this one most-selective college, my impression is that at the top-most selective universities, being an athlete is sort of like being a legacy: it gives you an advantage over an otherwise identical (stats-wise) kid.

23:32 I didn't say legacies didn't have top grades scores. What happens is if there is a student with similar grades and scores, the school often selects the legacy over the non-legacy. Separately, it's a well-known fact that recruited athletes are held to a lower standard for test scores and grades.

These schools could literally fill up an entire entering class with valedictorians and perfect stats, but they do not. That informs us, as applicants, that they are looking for something beyond simply perfect grades and test scores. When we talk about all the valedictorians and perfect ACTs rejected we miss the point.

Also, I am fairly certain that the valedictorians with perfect SAT/ACT scores and other achievements who apply to every Ivy are being admitted to at least one, and probably several. I am not a legacy, but is an old and tired trope that we should be stressed because somehow as a perfect candidate we have no hope. That is simply not true. And in the end does it really matter if whether the school is Amherst, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Georgetown, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Williams, or one of many other excellent schools?

To the PP, please read college confidential to read about the stretch applicants many of these schools get. The 34,000 applicants to any one of these schools are not all valedictorians they are often just ordinary students who are reaching for the stars, including many legacy applicants who do not get in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:21:22 You're missing the point. There are non-legacies with the same (or better) grades, test scores and accomplishments as the aforementioned. 30% is a very high legacy acceptance rate.

If a legacy wants to apply to another top school, and really wants to go, they should apply ED.

Do you have statistics that demonstrate that the legacies are not very top applicants themselves? The aforementioned example of 2350 sat and 3.96 uw gpa by a previous poster who said that their child is a legacy, seem to me like they would be competitive with or without a legacy component. PP did not go into the student's accomplishments, but I am certain that they had many of those as well. So I am not certain, unless you have statistical information to support your claim, that we can say that the admitted (many more are rejected, I assure you) legacies had less qualifications than the general applicant pool.

NP here. Nobody disagrees with you on that point: we all agree that the legacies who are accepted are probably among the top applicants. This doesn't negate the fact that these top applicant legacies get a huge bump. Maybe a math example will help with the understanding here. Bear with me!

According to this Crimson article, Harvard accepts 30% of legacy applicants, Yale accepts 20% of legacy applicants, and legacies make up 12-13% of Harvard's entering class that year (source: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/). Also according to the Crimson, in 2011 (when that first article was written), Harvard accepted 6.2% of applicants, i.e., , in 2011 Harvard mailed admissions letters to 2,158 applicants from a pool of 34,950 applicants.

Another interesting factoid in that 2nd article include the stat that 3,800 applicants were ranked first in their class, so Harvard simply didn't have room for all of these stellar applicants. (I have no idea what the overlap is between legacies and valedectorians, but I assume it's not perfect). (source: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/31/percent-class-students-year/)

So, let's do some math. Of the 2,158 admissions letters mailed out in 2011, about 259 (12%) were mailed to legacy applicants. This means 1,899 admissions were mailed out to everyone else (unhooked students, development cases, athletes). Now, if 30% of legacy applicants were accepted, this means that about 863 applicants were legacies, which is consistent with Harvard accepting about 30% of the legacy applicants (259 kids) and rejecting/waitlisting about 70% (604 kids) of the legacy applicants.

So what's the point? The point is that 259 kids had a 30% chance of getting into Harvard. And 34,000 kids (rough adjustment that reduces the total applicant pool of 34,950 by the number of legacy kids) had a 6.2% chance of getting into Harvard (that 6.2% figure for general applicants is actually lower if you re-weight it to remove the high acceptance rates for certain groups like legacies, ED and athletes, but I don't have the time). And as I pointed out above, at least 3,800 of that pool of 34,950 were stellar kids at the tops of their classes, and numerically not all of them were legacies (3,800 valedictorians >863 legacy kids). So yes, legacies have a huge advantage.

(Yes, I'm a nerd. Also, I don't know about you guys, but these acceptance numbers are pretty discouraging.)

Anonymous wrote:21:22 You're missing the point. There are non-legacies with the same (or better) grades, test scores and accomplishments as the aforementioned. 30% is a very high legacy acceptance rate.

If a legacy wants to apply to another top school, and really wants to go, they should apply ED.

Do you have statistics that demonstrate that the legacies are not very top applicants themselves? The aforementioned example of 2350 sat and 3.96 uw gpa by a previous poster who said that their child is a legacy, seem to me like they would be competitive with or without a legacy component. PP did not go into the student's accomplishments, but I am certain that they had many of those as well. So I am not certain, unless you have statistical information to support your claim, that we can say that the admitted (many more are rejected, I assure you) legacies had less qualifications than the general applicant pool.

Of course, but the context was legacies.

Anonymous wrote:21:22 You're missing the point. There are non-legacies with the same (or better) grades, test scores and accomplishments as the aforementioned. 30% is a very high legacy acceptance rate.

If a legacy wants to apply to another top school, and really wants to go, they should apply ED.

This advice applies to everyone, not just legacies.

21:22 You're missing the point. There are non-legacies with the same (or better) grades, test scores and accomplishments as the aforementioned. 30% is a very high legacy acceptance rate.

If a legacy wants to apply to another top school, and really wants to go, they should apply ED.

Anonymous wrote:Development cases? What percentage? I bet single digits. Legacy admits constitute a crazy amount -- 30% at Harvard as of 2011 (not sure it remained the same for more recent admissions cycles).
How could being a legacy hurt?

Most legacies get in because they have the grades, test scores, and accomplishments to independently achieve admission on their own merit, like the previous poster who provided their child's impressive stats. I have heard that, in some cases, it is actually more difficult for an independently accomplished and qualified legacy of one top-25 school to be admitted to another top-25 school, because the other school(s) (who want healthy yield stats) work under the assumption that the legacy will likely prefer the parent's alma mater over them.

Development cases? What percentage? I bet single digits. Legacy admits constitute a crazy amount -- 30% at Harvard as of 2011 (not sure it remained the same for more recent admissions cycles).
How could being a legacy hurt?