How prevalent still is "Legacy Preference" at Ivys?
For example what % of ugrad and mba students at Harvard are legacy students? What is the acceptance rate compared to that of a normal applicant?
How does this % compare to Ivys as a whole? How much has legacy become more/less important since the past, ie when families like the Boston Brahmin's filled the classrooms (and still do?). Just curious..
Additionally, knowing your son(s)/daughter(s) have x% higher chance of admittance, does this come into play at all to you when contemplating the cost of admission?
This sounds like a question for Brady.
A fair amount of students were legacies at my college, but it wasn't really due to admission preferences - they got into peer schools too. It was mostly attributable to smart alumni having smart kids who wanted to follow in their parents' footsteps. I never met somebody who I thought got in just because their parents were alumni.
I didn't go to an ivy, but a college ranked in the upper tier of the "ivy range".
Also a lot of them went to "feeder" prep schools.
There's legacy candidates. And then there's developmental candidates (most developmental candidates are also legacies, but not always).
Legacy: You parents went there. Simple. Developmental: You're parents are very rich/influential. Bonus if they went there, but not req'd.
Legacy and Develop both matters for UG. A better question to ask is what is the admission % for legacies vs. general pool? For Harvard UG- it's about 30%. 4x the general admission rate (but remember- legacies also have higher stats than the general pool). The Developmental admission rate is not known. It could be a simple matter of clearing a low academic hurdle= guaranteed admission. Duke is especially active in this. You can literally get a guarantee out of them just contingent on HS graduation.
For MBAs- legacy doesn't matter much at all unless its backed by Developmental. E.g. if you parents went here but didn't become powerful- then we could care less.
Legacies are around 20-30% at ivies. If you include athletes, that percentage is more like 40%. I personally think the legacy acceptance rate is too high, but they do have higher stats than the normal applicant pool, and i assume that if your parents went to harvard, you grew up in a home that emphasizes education and are thus better prepared. Still, 30% acceptancer rate for legacies vs 5% is a bit too drastic.
Legacy doesn't matter too much at HBS unless the alum gave a ton of money. About 10% of the HBS class is comprised of people who are only there because their parents are wealthy international business tycoons. Most of them aren't qualified; jamie dimon's daughter is one example.
actually the 40% legacy rate is correct. I've seen that number +/- 1% in a number of different academic texts on the subject of college admissions
Prestigious Pete?
Amigos, this entire thread reeks of insecurity and is just dripping with beta banter. Just because I have 7 generations of my family that attended Yale doesn't mean I am any less qualified as a candidate. I filled out the application just like everyone else. I pulled myself up from own bootstraps and worked hard to get to where I am today. I got into Yale because I was just better than everyone else that applied. Better at every conceivable thing - better at Connecticut history, better at croquet, better at picking out argyle socks, better at unfurling a yoyo.
Yale is 13%.
Source (and good write up on the subject)
http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/10/no-country-for-young-chi…
Serious question: does anyone know if my being a Harvard College dropout will qualify my (as of yet nonexistent) brood for official legacy status?
Anyone?
^ forgot to mention yachting. novice move.
Legacy acceptance rates are much much higher than non-legacy acceptance rates. It's hard to read too far into that though, as many legacies are also the best-educated and have the best scores, stats, ECs, etc... I think the typical saying that legacy is a "tie-breaker" among qualified candidates still holds true. I was legacy at the ivy I attended and decided to apply to the school early for that very reason. The other non HYP ivies were all a possibility for me with my SATs/grades/ECs, but my college counselor recommended I not miss the "Sure-thing" of applying early to the school my dad and siblings attended. She told me it was "90%+" if I did early decision at my school and 30-50% (if i remember correctly) at other comparable ivies for early decision... (the fact my dad clearly wanted me to go there and he was the guy paying also made the choice a lot easier...)
Are harvard legacy applicants that much more qualified than the general pool that their acceptance rate is 30% while the overall rate is around 5%? Seems a bit hard to believe.
I think if you combine legacy, urm, and athletes (there are people in overlapping groups obviously) the total would probably come out to 30-40%. That was clearly the case at my ivy (not harvard), but i don't have concrete data on this. Just based on my observations over the 4 years i was at my undergrad.
Sup Brady!
This is one of those things that you hope to be true when you are a parent. I bet there are some parents out there that, like me, had this as a reason to apply to some MBA programs and not others (the strength and reputation of the overall university for our potential 'legacy' kids.) I know I may get flak for this, but I bet there are many other parents out there that thought of the same thing when applying.
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