Why do we care? These are private institutions (except for Cornell) so they can admit whoever they want, using whatever standards they want.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All I know if my experience. 2 Harvard grads kid's applied to Harvard in recent years and both were wait listed. The students went on to very good schools (not ivy), so I think their stats were good. All the kids I know that gained acceptance to an ivy had a athletic hook.

I don't think anybody would argue that being a recruited athlete gives you a much bigger boost than being a legacy. Before some parent of an athlete freaks out, this is not to say that an athlete can't have perfect test scores, a 4.0 average and the kind of EC accomplishments that non-hooked students need, like Intel Semifinalist status, etc.

*Meant to write "I don't think anybody would argue that being a recruited athlete DOESN'T give you a much bigger boost than being a legacy.

Anonymous wrote:All I know if my experience. 2 Harvard grads kid's applied to Harvard in recent years and both were wait listed. The students went on to very good schools (not ivy), so I think their stats were good. All the kids I know that gained acceptance to an ivy had a athletic hook.

I don't think anybody would argue that being a recruited athlete gives you a much bigger boost than being a legacy. Before some parent of an athlete freaks out, this is not to say that an athlete can't have perfect test scores, a 4.0 average and the kind of EC accomplishments that non-hooked students need, like Intel Semifinalist status, etc.

All I know if my experience. 2 Harvard grads kid's applied to Harvard in recent years and both were wait listed. The students went on to very good schools (not ivy), so I think their stats were good. All the kids I know that gained acceptance to an ivy had a athletic hook.

21:30 again. Knowing that "About 74 percent of students who indicated that they are legacy students ... were admitted through early admissions" doesn't tell us anything about the legacy acceptance rate in this class. For all we know, Harvard rejected 90% of legacy applicants that year (although the 2011 Crimson article suggests it a cots about 1/3 of them, still way higher than unhooked applicants).

The finding that 56% of respondents were accepted EA doesn't make sense. Most colleges take 20-30% of a class in the EA round.

This 4-year-old Crimson article quotes Harvard's president as saying that 30% of legacy applicants are admitted, and legacies are 12-13% of the undergraduate population.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/

Very different from the survey results, but I offer it for discussion....