14 ms·

We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

93 points by bootload 10y ago

cma 10y ago
Schools were racially segregated just a couple generations ago. Think about what that means for schools that do legacy preference. They really shouldn't get access to any forms of federal funding.
- csa 10y ago
  That strikes me as being remarkably heavy handed given that these same schools seem to give even more advantage to non-Asian minorities (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences). Many folks, especially HNers, seem to think that entrance to elite schools should be purely (or mostly) based on academic merit. Any school that would choose to do that would be shooting themselves in the foot in a number of ways. For example: 1. Athletics would suffer. Even in the athletically weak Ivy League, winning sports teams increase donations directly and indirectly as well as alumni involvement. 2. Pure merit admissions would negatively discriminate against many minority applicants for various reasons that are fairly well documented in research. 3. The social capital of the institution's graduates would suffer greatly. Elite schools tend to have a healthy mix of people who are great producers and people who are great facilitators based on their personal networks (e.g., rain making, getting funding, doing sales, etc.). These two groups do a good job of scratching each others' backs. If the ratio skews too far in one direction, the balance will be broken and both groups will be less effective. For the most part, legacies either would get in anyway (i.e., without legacy preference), or they are filling in the mediocre parts of the each class while providing some sort of benefit to the school (e.g., strengthening alumni network, strengthening school community, school donations, propensity to encourage their potentially talented progeny to apply to the school, etc.). I assure you that no highly talented applicant with an application that accurately represents them is losing a slot to an elite school based on a legacy (or an athlete, or a z-lister, or whatever) -- either they probably just aren't as talented or interesting as they (or their parents) think they are, or something went sideways with their application (e.g., recommendation writers not being skilled at writing high quality recommendations). As I have said before in other replies on this topic, only 10-30% of an elite school's entering class is "interesting" based on my own personal definition of interesting (having one or more of: creativity, high capacity to learn and synthesize new ideas quickly, true leadership/charisma, etc.). These are all easy admits to any school they apply to -- no perceived strike like non-legacy will hold them back. The rest of each entering class looks remarkably similar and mediocre in comparison, and the admission committee has several vectors they need to consider when filling those slots. Legacy admissions is just one of those vectors, and I think it's a totally reasonable one given the other vectors that are also considered (e.g., affirmative action). Some people seem to think that admissions to an elite school is a golden ticket, and that's a half truth. Elite schools definitely open doors that non-elite schools don't, but the benefit often ends there. The skilled/interesting folks take the opportunity and run with it, and the vast majority of others just fade into mediocrity. This is a favorite topic of mine that I think is often misunderstood. I am happy to share what I know to folks who are interested, so please feel free to ask questions -- I will answer to the best of my ability. Apologies for a reply that is a bit beyond the scope of your comment, but this is as good a spot as any in this thread to make this comment. Source: Me. Attended and worked on admissions committees at two elite schools.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pesenti 10y ago
Compare that to most of the Ivy League: " In 2009, Princeton admitted 41.7% of legacy applicants—more than 4.5 times the 9.2% rate of non-legacies. Similarly, in 2006, Brown University admitted 33.5% of alumni children, significantly higher than the 13.8% overall admissions rate. In 2003, Harvard admitted 40% of legacy applicants, compared to the overall 11% acceptance rate. In short, Ivy League and other top schools typically admit legacies at two to five times their overall admission rates." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences
- joelg 10y ago
  To be fair, it's probably true that the admit rate for MIT legacy applicants is also higher than the overall admit rate. It's just that the MIT admissions committee doesn't consider legacy status in admissions. It's hard to separate correlation from causation in the admit rates.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    Really? Seems pretty easy to analyze. Just take legacy applicants and their non-legacy equivalents and see the admittance rates.
    - peteretep 10y ago
      If ability has a strong genetic component, one would expect a higher acceptance of legacy students.
      - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        Even if ability has a strong nurture component, one would expect the same.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      Difficult to do if you aren't even tracking what applications are legacy in the first place, they'd at least have to ask a sample of admitted and rejected students post facto.
itchyjunk 10y ago
I was randomly checking out MIT's admission page a few days ago and drooling about what it means to go to a school like that. I saw the no legacy preference and merit based admissions and was pretty impressed. What I didn't know was this was a non-common thing. Now I am curious about what all colleges does it legacy based. Edit: No luck finding just a list of colleges that does legacy admissions but found a list for scholarships.[0] https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarships/scholarships-by-type/legacy-scholarships/ https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarsh...
- argonaut 10y ago
  You won't find a list of college with legacy admissions because almost all private colleges do it.
- madhadron 10y ago
  > and drooling about what it means to go to a school like that. As someone who bummed around the high levels of the academy for years as research staff, let me tell you what it means. It means lots of stress (and has been described as drinking from a firehose), and lots of ego, and a more prestigious brand associated with your diploma, exactly comparable to having a Gucci purse instead of one from Banana Republic. It does not mean more capable students, more capable faculty, or better resources for an individual undergraduate. Studentry plateaus in intelligence and ability at the level of a decent state university. Faculty plateaus at a lower level of prestige than that. The prestige is useful for only two things: marrying into privilege and getting jobs with certain prestigious firms in management consulting and finance. If neither is important to you, then there is no reason to spend $180k on MIT instead of $60k to $80k on your state school. Or $5k on four years of tuition at the EPFL in Switzerland, which is as prestigious as MIT or Caltech. (Numbers are tuition and fees, but not cost of living, for four years. State universities are in-state tuition. EPFL is international student tuition.) And if you're interested in engineering and lucky enough to live in California, Georgia, Colorado, or Alabama, you have a state university that, in engineering, is more prestigious than MIT.
  - itchyjunk 10y ago
mirceam 10y ago
School admissions should be reviewed like (some) conference papers, i.e. single-blind review. The name of the student is never known when considering him/her.
- aplummer 10y ago
  It's a weird system, in Australia we all get a standard score on leaving high school and if your score is higher than the next person choosing your degree preference you win the spot. Different for medicine only AFAIK.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    I'm fond of the system in Texas. If you graduate in the top 10% of your class, you get automatically accepted to any public university in the state (well, any one you apply to). I had zero interest in extracurriculars or anything of the like, so I was never going to get into a competitive university. But I'm smart, and I have a near-photographic memory, so I aced most of my classes without having to study too much, so I was able to graduate in the top 10% and then went to UT Dallas, which is possibly the best tech school in the southwest. I'm really, really glad I went to UTD; I made lifelong friends there, the people I hung out with really helped shape my interests, I'm still running into UTD alumni everywhere I go, etc.
tabeth 10y ago
This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways. Picking kids who were already predisposed for success is not education. Unfortunately, many disagree. A real school would have 100% of their kids admitted at random and then, through some criteria, show how they created an environment that allowed those kids to succeed. This contrasts with the current system, which is basically survivorship bias anyway. EDIT: I just want to add any many of these elite schools (high school and college) only recently began to admit women and minorities in particular. [1] Some schools with high amounts of kids going to "elite schools" - Stuyvesant - Boston Latin - Brooklyn Science - Brearly School - Spence School - Harvard-Westlake - Lowell High School - Saint Ann's - Andover
- neil1 10y ago
  This has been sort of done with Charter schools that use a lottery based acceptance system. The problem with even random systems is that parents that are willing to fill out the many forms required are usually more involved in their children's life then the median in poor communities. Also - many charter schools don't provide federally funded free lunches which means that the poorest students who rely on these lunches are unable to attend these schools.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  The survivorship bias is kind of the point. An employer can't administer an IQ test, but they can hire from MIT or Stanford. They can't pull employees from the good old boy's network, but they can recruit from Harvard.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    This is only because schools are so crappy to begin with, by design. If a degree actually meant something it wouldn't matter what school you attained it from.
PaulHoule 10y ago
Legacy admissions have become a problem for the Ivies lately because they undermine their brand. Back in the 1980s you could count on a graduate of Harvard, Cornell, or some other Ivy to be pretty bright, but as legacy admissions accelerated in the 1990s, you started seeing graduates who were average at best. By the 2000s it was clear to the schools themselves that this was a problem because as much as the schools want the money, their brand is their most valuable asset.
- _acme 10y ago
  Do you have any support for these accusations? These are bold claims.
- csa 10y ago
  I have been at Ivies in some capacity in each of those decades. There have been "average at best" folks in each of those decades. While the "average at best" folks may have increased in proportion to above average folks (something I am not sure I agree with), I think it may have more to do with the admissions process being more transparent with the rise in popularity of the Internet than it was pre-internet. My personal and anecdotal take is that I have seen an increase in the proportion of tryhard bookworms who lack creativity, leadership skills, and/or raw intellectual power. I am not sure that this is necessarily a bad thing (these folks make great worker bees), but their proportion in the student body needs to be balanced with folks with other strengths like those mentioned above.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kwhitefoot 10y ago
Viewing this from the other side of the pond. Legacy admissions sounds like a strange idea and one that would surely raise eyebrows if it could be shown that a child of an alumnus (or alumna of course) was favoured over another applicant who was obviously better qualified.
fiatjaf 10y ago
I had never thought about it, but "legacy" seems like a very defensible strategy. If students know their children will probably be studying in the same college they have an incentive do things to make that college better in all respects.
- clintonb 10y ago
  > If students know their children will probably be studying in the same college they have an incentive do things to make that college better in all respects. The downside to this is that legacy students have less incentive to work hard in high school if they know they are guaranteed admission into an elite school.
watwut 10y ago
Is there a stigma associated with being legacy? As in, do people tend to assume you would not make it in otherwise? Or is it unknown who is legacy to teachers and other students?
- nsp 10y ago
  Speaking based on my experience at Columbia, it's not broadcasted and I don't think the instructors tend to know, but snarky comments will definitely be made if you're doing badly and a legacy
jordigh 10y ago
I am so used to "legacy" being a disparaging term that I forgot that there were contexts in which it was something someone could find desirable.
- userbinator 10y ago
  I think that's only in the tech world, because I once came upon a "legacy senior home" and none of my (non-tech) friends found it as amusing. Apparently there are plenty of senior homes with legacy in their names.
- slededit 10y ago
  It's only in tech that we disparage the means that brought us to our current success.
rooneywayne111 10y ago
I want to take this time out to appreciate deephacking17 for his efforts on my grades. He helped me change my University grades at very affordable cost and did a very good job because the grade change also reflected on my University's Admin system.. If you're a student and not satisfied with your grades he can help you change them right from your first year till your current semester…his info is deephacking17 gmail com
rooneywayne111 10y ago
I want to take this time out to appreciate deephacking17 for his efforts on my grades. He helped me change my University grades at very affordable cost and did a very good job because the grade change also reflected on my University's Admin system.. If you're a student and not satisfied with your grades he can help you change them right from your first year till your current semester…his info is deephacking17 gmail com

93 points by bootload 10y ago

cma 10y ago

Schools were racially segregated just a couple generations ago. Think about what that means for schools that do legacy preference. They really shouldn't get access to any forms of federal funding.

csa 10y ago
That strikes me as being remarkably heavy handed given that these same schools seem to give even more advantage to non-Asian minorities (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences). Many folks, especially HNers, seem to think that entrance to elite schools should be purely (or mostly) based on academic merit. Any school that would choose to do that would be shooting themselves in the foot in a number of ways. For example: 1. Athletics would suffer. Even in the athletically weak Ivy League, winning sports teams increase donations directly and indirectly as well as alumni involvement. 2. Pure merit admissions would negatively discriminate against many minority applicants for various reasons that are fairly well documented in research. 3. The social capital of the institution's graduates would suffer greatly. Elite schools tend to have a healthy mix of people who are great producers and people who are great facilitators based on their personal networks (e.g., rain making, getting funding, doing sales, etc.). These two groups do a good job of scratching each others' backs. If the ratio skews too far in one direction, the balance will be broken and both groups will be less effective. For the most part, legacies either would get in anyway (i.e., without legacy preference), or they are filling in the mediocre parts of the each class while providing some sort of benefit to the school (e.g., strengthening alumni network, strengthening school community, school donations, propensity to encourage their potentially talented progeny to apply to the school, etc.). I assure you that no highly talented applicant with an application that accurately represents them is losing a slot to an elite school based on a legacy (or an athlete, or a z-lister, or whatever) -- either they probably just aren't as talented or interesting as they (or their parents) think they are, or something went sideways with their application (e.g., recommendation writers not being skilled at writing high quality recommendations). As I have said before in other replies on this topic, only 10-30% of an elite school's entering class is "interesting" based on my own personal definition of interesting (having one or more of: creativity, high capacity to learn and synthesize new ideas quickly, true leadership/charisma, etc.). These are all easy admits to any school they apply to -- no perceived strike like non-legacy will hold them back. The rest of each entering class looks remarkably similar and mediocre in comparison, and the admission committee has several vectors they need to consider when filling those slots. Legacy admissions is just one of those vectors, and I think it's a totally reasonable one given the other vectors that are also considered (e.g., affirmative action). Some people seem to think that admissions to an elite school is a golden ticket, and that's a half truth. Elite schools definitely open doors that non-elite schools don't, but the benefit often ends there. The skilled/interesting folks take the opportunity and run with it, and the vast majority of others just fade into mediocrity. This is a favorite topic of mine that I think is often misunderstood. I am happy to share what I know to folks who are interested, so please feel free to ask questions -- I will answer to the best of my ability. Apologies for a reply that is a bit beyond the scope of your comment, but this is as good a spot as any in this thread to make this comment. Source: Me. Attended and worked on admissions committees at two elite schools.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pesenti 10y ago

Compare that to most of the Ivy League: " In 2009, Princeton admitted 41.7% of legacy applicants—more than 4.5 times the 9.2% rate of non-legacies. Similarly, in 2006, Brown University admitted 33.5% of alumni children, significantly higher than the 13.8% overall admissions rate. In 2003, Harvard admitted 40% of legacy applicants, compared to the overall 11% acceptance rate. In short, Ivy League and other top schools typically admit legacies at two to five times their overall admission rates." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

joelg 10y ago
To be fair, it's probably true that the admit rate for MIT legacy applicants is also higher than the overall admit rate. It's just that the MIT admissions committee doesn't consider legacy status in admissions. It's hard to separate correlation from causation in the admit rates.
- tabeth 10y ago
  Really? Seems pretty easy to analyze. Just take legacy applicants and their non-legacy equivalents and see the admittance rates.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    If ability has a strong genetic component, one would expect a higher acceptance of legacy students.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      Even if ability has a strong nurture component, one would expect the same.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    Difficult to do if you aren't even tracking what applications are legacy in the first place, they'd at least have to ask a sample of admitted and rejected students post facto.

itchyjunk 10y ago

I was randomly checking out MIT's admission page a few days ago and drooling about what it means to go to a school like that. I saw the no legacy preference and merit based admissions and was pretty impressed. What I didn't know was this was a non-common thing. Now I am curious about what all colleges does it legacy based. Edit: No luck finding just a list of colleges that does legacy admissions but found a list for scholarships.[0] https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarships/scholarships-by-type/legacy-scholarships/ https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarsh...

argonaut 10y ago
You won't find a list of college with legacy admissions because almost all private colleges do it.
madhadron 10y ago
> and drooling about what it means to go to a school like that. As someone who bummed around the high levels of the academy for years as research staff, let me tell you what it means. It means lots of stress (and has been described as drinking from a firehose), and lots of ego, and a more prestigious brand associated with your diploma, exactly comparable to having a Gucci purse instead of one from Banana Republic. It does not mean more capable students, more capable faculty, or better resources for an individual undergraduate. Studentry plateaus in intelligence and ability at the level of a decent state university. Faculty plateaus at a lower level of prestige than that. The prestige is useful for only two things: marrying into privilege and getting jobs with certain prestigious firms in management consulting and finance. If neither is important to you, then there is no reason to spend $180k on MIT instead of $60k to $80k on your state school. Or $5k on four years of tuition at the EPFL in Switzerland, which is as prestigious as MIT or Caltech. (Numbers are tuition and fees, but not cost of living, for four years. State universities are in-state tuition. EPFL is international student tuition.) And if you're interested in engineering and lucky enough to live in California, Georgia, Colorado, or Alabama, you have a state university that, in engineering, is more prestigious than MIT.
- itchyjunk 10y ago

mirceam 10y ago

School admissions should be reviewed like (some) conference papers, i.e. single-blind review. The name of the student is never known when considering him/her.

aplummer 10y ago
It's a weird system, in Australia we all get a standard score on leaving high school and if your score is higher than the next person choosing your degree preference you win the spot. Different for medicine only AFAIK.
- amyjess 10y ago
  I'm fond of the system in Texas. If you graduate in the top 10% of your class, you get automatically accepted to any public university in the state (well, any one you apply to). I had zero interest in extracurriculars or anything of the like, so I was never going to get into a competitive university. But I'm smart, and I have a near-photographic memory, so I aced most of my classes without having to study too much, so I was able to graduate in the top 10% and then went to UT Dallas, which is possibly the best tech school in the southwest. I'm really, really glad I went to UTD; I made lifelong friends there, the people I hung out with really helped shape my interests, I'm still running into UTD alumni everywhere I go, etc.

tabeth 10y ago

This is the reality: 1. High schools that tend to send high numbers of people to schools with acceptance rates less than 20% tend to be dis-proportionally represented. [1] 2. High schools that send kids to good college are more expensive (either inherently, or because they're in an expensive area). Combine these two and you see the perpetual unfairness of education. Not to mention that MIT and other 'elite schools' barely teach well anyways. Picking kids who were already predisposed for success is not education. Unfortunately, many disagree. A real school would have 100% of their kids admitted at random and then, through some criteria, show how they created an environment that allowed those kids to succeed. This contrasts with the current system, which is basically survivorship bias anyway. EDIT: I just want to add any many of these elite schools (high school and college) only recently began to admit women and minorities in particular. [1] Some schools with high amounts of kids going to "elite schools" - Stuyvesant - Boston Latin - Brooklyn Science - Brearly School - Spence School - Harvard-Westlake - Lowell High School - Saint Ann's - Andover

neil1 10y ago
This has been sort of done with Charter schools that use a lottery based acceptance system. The problem with even random systems is that parents that are willing to fill out the many forms required are usually more involved in their children's life then the median in poor communities. Also - many charter schools don't provide federally funded free lunches which means that the poorest students who rely on these lunches are unable to attend these schools.
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
The survivorship bias is kind of the point. An employer can't administer an IQ test, but they can hire from MIT or Stanford. They can't pull employees from the good old boy's network, but they can recruit from Harvard.
- tabeth 10y ago
  This is only because schools are so crappy to begin with, by design. If a degree actually meant something it wouldn't matter what school you attained it from.

PaulHoule 10y ago

Legacy admissions have become a problem for the Ivies lately because they undermine their brand. Back in the 1980s you could count on a graduate of Harvard, Cornell, or some other Ivy to be pretty bright, but as legacy admissions accelerated in the 1990s, you started seeing graduates who were average at best. By the 2000s it was clear to the schools themselves that this was a problem because as much as the schools want the money, their brand is their most valuable asset.

_acme 10y ago
Do you have any support for these accusations? These are bold claims.
csa 10y ago
I have been at Ivies in some capacity in each of those decades. There have been "average at best" folks in each of those decades. While the "average at best" folks may have increased in proportion to above average folks (something I am not sure I agree with), I think it may have more to do with the admissions process being more transparent with the rise in popularity of the Internet than it was pre-internet. My personal and anecdotal take is that I have seen an increase in the proportion of tryhard bookworms who lack creativity, leadership skills, and/or raw intellectual power. I am not sure that this is necessarily a bad thing (these folks make great worker bees), but their proportion in the student body needs to be balanced with folks with other strengths like those mentioned above.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kwhitefoot 10y ago

Viewing this from the other side of the pond. Legacy admissions sounds like a strange idea and one that would surely raise eyebrows if it could be shown that a child of an alumnus (or alumna of course) was favoured over another applicant who was obviously better qualified.

fiatjaf 10y ago

I had never thought about it, but "legacy" seems like a very defensible strategy. If students know their children will probably be studying in the same college they have an incentive do things to make that college better in all respects.

clintonb 10y ago
> If students know their children will probably be studying in the same college they have an incentive do things to make that college better in all respects. The downside to this is that legacy students have less incentive to work hard in high school if they know they are guaranteed admission into an elite school.

watwut 10y ago

Is there a stigma associated with being legacy? As in, do people tend to assume you would not make it in otherwise? Or is it unknown who is legacy to teachers and other students?

nsp 10y ago
Speaking based on my experience at Columbia, it's not broadcasted and I don't think the instructors tend to know, but snarky comments will definitely be made if you're doing badly and a legacy

jordigh 10y ago

I am so used to "legacy" being a disparaging term that I forgot that there were contexts in which it was something someone could find desirable.

userbinator 10y ago
I think that's only in the tech world, because I once came upon a "legacy senior home" and none of my (non-tech) friends found it as amusing. Apparently there are plenty of senior homes with legacy in their names.
slededit 10y ago
It's only in tech that we disparage the means that brought us to our current success.

rooneywayne111 10y ago

I want to take this time out to appreciate deephacking17 for his efforts on my grades. He helped me change my University grades at very affordable cost and did a very good job because the grade change also reflected on my University's Admin system.. If you're a student and not satisfied with your grades he can help you change them right from your first year till your current semester…his info is deephacking17 gmail com

rooneywayne111 10y ago