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We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

mitadmissions.org

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Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#2

Post by cma »

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.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#4

Post by pesenti »

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

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#5

Post by joelg »

pesenti wrote: post #4

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…

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.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#6

Post by itchyjunk »

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-scholarsh...

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#7

Post by _m8fo »

joelg wrote: post #5
pesenti wrote: post #4

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…

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.

Really? Seems pretty easy to analyze. Just take legacy applicants and their non-legacy equivalents and see the admittance rates.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#8

Post by foldr »

joelg wrote: post #5
pesenti wrote: post #4

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…

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.

But these instututions explicitly have a preference for legacy applications, so we don't really need to work backwards from the correlation to the cause. They're telling us that they give preferential treatment to legacy applicants.

Re: We Don’t Do Legacy (2012)

#10

Post by _m8fo »

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

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