In reply to: College Admissions.. posted by TWO
Was told a while back that legacies are held to about 25% or so of an incoming class so about 500 slots.
fications. ND parents tend to have smart, hardworking kids.
I remember an ND Admissions speaker, when visiting my high school, say it's often actually harder to get in as a legacy because there are so many of us and every one of them is stellar.
This has been discussed here before, if I recall correctly.
There was an article in the WSJ last year that examined legacy admits at the Top-25 schools. ND is among the most preferential to legacy among all the schools.
The article I link may be behind a pay-wall. I subscribe to WSJ so I can't tell if this is one of the open-access stories or not.
than at other schools.
I’ll try to find that ND graphic from last year, which I think shows the # of legacy applicants and % of the class who are legacies. Without those figures the degree of preference is impossible to measure.
It doesn't say that legacy applicants have a greater chance of admission than a non-legacy applicant for a given level of credentials. It says that the portion of all legacy applicants admitted is much greater than the portion of all non-legacy applicants admitted.
This might be a measure of loyalty. That is, for ND compared to other schools, a greater number of highly qualified sons and daughters apply.
The article mentions this as a problem for achieving ethnic and economic diversity (which it is). It doesn't attempt to assess whether legacy applicants get preferential treatment.
However, I believe that to the extent an apples-to-apples comparison is possible, if two applicants have the same credentials, the legacy candidate is going to have a greater chance of admission. I am skeptical that the bona fides of the legacy pool are statistically superior to those of the non-legacy applicant pool to justify the 2x admission acceptance rate.
I doubt ND can, or would, offer more granular data than that.
As others have said, one explanation would be that high achieving legacies tend to apply to Notre Dame at a higher rate than the high achieving general population.
One factor that might be relevant is that I'm pretty sure the "bubble" is rather "deep". That is, there is a large number of applicants in the range from just below to just above the cutoff for admission. Thus a slight advantage to anything (including legacy status) could lead to a significant change in the mix of accepted applicants.
I highly doubt that admissions would consider it to be a negative consideration. Thus, if it is openly admitted to be consideration, it is a positive consideration.
Whether or not there is an appreciable difference in qualifications, I guess I can't answer.
that there is almost no difference between the last 500-1000 kids that get in and the first 3000-5000 who don't quite get in. When you're comparing otherwise indistinguishable applicants, I suspect it's a big advantage. It's not that legacies get in with lesser qualifications. It's that for those whose qualifications would otherwise make their admission a coin flip, they get to play with a weighted coin.
You need to be higher than the middle of the pack (of admitted students) if you are not a legacy (or athlete or other favored class).
students and the general pool is remarkably small. It would be very easy for ND to ‘eliminate’ Legacy preference, and still have 20-25% Legacy students. At the level of admittances that ND has, its rarely test scores and GPA that differentiate students (because they’re generally all very similar) but things like institutional fit and diversity that make the last bit of difference.
over represented in the top 20% of most ND classes. I knew more than a few legacies who probably would have been at MIT, Princeton, etc. but for ND being their "family" school.
I'm guessing the majority of legacies are right in the middle though. If you were to rank all 20,000 applicants to ND, I'm guessing the kids ranked between 2500 and 8000 are almost indistinguishable, but only 1300 of the 5500 kids in this band are going to get in. This is where being a legacy probably helps. Also, I'm guessing applying early admission gives one an advantage, and legacies are probably more likely to apply early.
...intent to enroll if accepted, which is one of the main mechanisms that ND Admissions has at its disposal to manage the yield rate at about 55-57% every year.
In last years REA pool, 2/3 of the accepted students ended up enrolling. I'd wager that an REA Legacy kid who gets accepted probably yields at 80% minimum.