Interesting news about Harvard admissions

[dbilmes]

On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

I don't know if that is true or not, but I do know that I have been meeting with applicants for many years on behalf of CAAAN. Most years, one or two of the students I meet with have some type of legacy connection to Cornell, although not always a parent. And most of the time, those applicants do not get in. Based on my conversations with those students, it's unlikely that any of them have come from families who have made major donations to Cornell. But I can tell you that being a legacy does not mean an applicant is a slam-dunk for being admitted.
To put this in context, on a given year I will meet with 10-15 students. Some years none of them are admitted. Most years, one might be.

[Robb]

On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

I went to a dinner for legacies back when I was an undergrad in the early 90s.  At that, a university official (I don't recall if alumni relations or admissions or what) alleged that 90% of legacies would have been admitted even without the legacy connection.  But what else would they tell a roomful of legacies, "you guys don't really belong here"?

When I applied in 1989, they explicitly only asked if you had parents or grandparents with Cornell degrees, but then only provided 4 lines to fill in.  It was tricky to fit all 6 names in there....

[CAS]

Doubt any legacy boost is dependent on a large family donation. Btw for the current freshman class, Cornell admitted only 8.7% of applicants, with a 64.3% yield.

[Weder]

I know people who who were legacies and children of faculty members (sometimes both) who did not get admitted. In those cases, Cornell often offers the guaranteed transfer option -- go somewhere else for a year and if you meet whatever the GPA threshold is we'll let you in as a sophomore. Do many other elite schools do that?

[billhoward]

There are only a handful of schools that get more than half of admits on sign on. These are year-old stats from US News has only 24 schools with yields of >= 50%. A half-dozen are religious-affiliation schools or specialized (Gallaudet for hearing-impaired students) where you're probably not weighing multiple equal options.

Code Select Expand


SCHOOL (STATE)       YIELD
Harvard University (MA) 82%
Stanford University (CA) 82%
Brigham Young University—Provo 81%
University of Chicago 81%
Massachusetts Institute of Tech 77%
Harding University (AR) 71%
Princeton University (NJ) 70%
University of Pennsylvania 70%
Yale University (CT) 69%
Dartmouth College (NH) 64%
Gallaudet University (DC) 63%
Columbia University (NY) 62%
Brown University (RI) 61%
Keiser University (FL) 61%
Yeshiva University (NY) 61%
[b][color=#FF0000]Cornell University (NY) 60%[/color][/b]
University of Notre Dame (IN) 58%
Georgia Southern University 56%
U of Texas—Rio Grande Valley 56%
Kennesaw State University (GA) 55%
Northwestern University (IL) 55%
Duke University (NC) 54%
William Carey University (MS) 50%

Yield is one metric that determines the pecking order of the nation's universities. It also may be why a good-not-great school rejects a too-qualified applicant, knowing they'll never matriculate, and low-acceptance rate is another metric.

[nshapiro]

On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

I don't know if that is true or not, but I do know that I have been meeting with applicants for many years on behalf of CAAAN. Most years, one or two of the students I meet with have some type of legacy connection to Cornell, although not always a parent. And most of the time, those applicants do not get in. Based on my conversations with those students, it's unlikely that any of them have come from families who have made major donations to Cornell. But I can tell you that being a legacy does not mean an applicant is a slam-dunk for being admitted.
To put this in context, on a given year I will meet with 10-15 students. Some years none of them are admitted. Most years, one might be.

I spent over 20 years as a CAAAN committee chair, and my experience showed that alumni children needed to apply early decision for the legacy standing to make any impact.  I also think that being an involved alumnus matters almost as much as being a big donor.  If you graduate from Cornell, and the next time you think about your alma mater is when your kid applies, why do you think Cornell should preference your kid?  However, if you donate, or participate in CAAAN or other CAA activities, then it makes sense that your child's legacy status is a thumb on the scale.

[Swampy]

Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s.  There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

I look in the dictionary under spit take and there's your post.

[tda; thread drift alert] As for husband-shopping, there's a Princeton mother who generated waves in 2013 saying how important it was for her Princeton daughter to spend 4 years looking for a suitable life partner, and start freshman not junior or senior year because women't "shouldn't date younger."

"As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/01/princeton-mom-letter-to-female-students/2041903/

[Swampy]

Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s.  There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

I look in the dictionary under spit take and there's your post.

[tda; thread drift alert] As for husband-shopping, there's a Princeton mother who generated waves in 2013 saying how important it was for her Princeton daughter to spend 4 years looking for a suitable life partner, and start freshman not junior or senior year because women't "shouldn't date younger."

"As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/01/princeton-mom-letter-to-female-students/2041903/

Ms. Patton doesn't say where her spouse went to school. Maybe from experience she knows whereof she speaks. ::stupid::

Of course, there's always grad school. True, if one accepts her gendered-ageist assumptions, grad school expands the field even more for men. Then again, those in grad school (men or women) always can harvest from the faculty.

[Swampy]

Engineering felt very male dominated in the early 80s.  There was quite a bit of Hum Ec MRS degree husband-shopping.

Glad to see that shit's gone the way of a competitive Cornell football team.

I look in the dictionary under spit take and there's your post.

[tda; thread drift alert] As for husband-shopping, there's a Princeton mother who generated waves in 2013 saying how important it was for her Princeton daughter to spend 4 years looking for a suitable life partner, and start freshman not junior or senior year because women't "shouldn't date younger."

"As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/01/princeton-mom-letter-to-female-students/2041903/

Ms. Patton doesn't say where her spouse went to school. Maybe from experience she knows whereof she speaks. ::stupid::

Of course, there's always grad school. True, if one accepts her gendered-ageist assumptions, grad school expands the field even more for men. Then again, those in grad school (men or women) always can harvest from the faculty.

Aha! Just as I thought:

"My husband was not a Princetonian, but my best friend is."

After 27 years together, Patton and her ex-husband finalized their divorce last month. "He went to a school of almost no name recognition," she said, declining to name the institution. "Almost no name recognition. A school that nobody has respect for, including him, really."

[/url]

Hummmmm. I wonder what role her "best friend" played in her divorce.

[billhoward]

I spent over 20 years as a CAAAN committee chair, and my experience showed that alumni children needed to apply early decision for the legacy standing to make any impact.  I also think that being an involved alumnus matters almost as much as being a big donor.  If you graduate from Cornell, and the next time you think about your alma mater is when your kid applies, why do you think Cornell should preference your kid?  However, if you donate, or participate in CAAAN or other CAA activities, then it makes sense that your child's legacy status is a thumb on the scale.

You're right, service to Cornell does count. A lot. And two-plus decades of various service to Cornell, the magazine, my class ... is for naught when your kid bypasses Cornell and applies to BU because he believed their hotel school has more hotels to work at in town.

When he was accepted, our son got a solicitation call from the dean of the BU school who was a Hobart undergrad / lax team manager same era as me and we reminisced about both being there in Geneva the day Hobart fans pelted Cornell with beer bottles and (I am imagining some Harvard hockey story?) perhaps also fish. That ticked off coach Richie Moran no end -- well, your players maybe getting hurt would have that effect -- and while it may not have ended alcohol in the stadium, it did end the practice of rolling filled kegs into the stadium, as well as playing lax in Geneva for a while.

And before I handed the phone to Greg, the dean at BU said the nicest thing to me about Greg's likely career arc from what he knew, and he said it in an uplifting fashion: "It sounds like school will not get in the way of your son's education, as it didn't for me."

[Swampy]

I spent over 20 years as a CAAAN committee chair, and my experience showed that alumni children needed to apply early decision for the legacy standing to make any impact.  I also think that being an involved alumnus matters almost as much as being a big donor.  If you graduate from Cornell, and the next time you think about your alma mater is when your kid applies, why do you think Cornell should preference your kid?  However, if you donate, or participate in CAAAN or other CAA activities, then it makes sense that your child's legacy status is a thumb on the scale.

You're right, service to Cornell does count. A lot. And two-plus decades of various service to Cornell, the magazine, my class ... is for naught when your kid bypasses Cornell and applies to BU because he believed their hotel school has more hotels to work at in town.

When he was accepted, our son got a solicitation call from the dean of the BU school who was a Hobart undergrad / lax team manager same era as me and we reminisced about both being there in Geneva the day Hobart fans pelted Cornell with beer bottles and (I am imagining some Harvard hockey story?) perhaps also fish. That ticked off coach Richie Moran no end -- well, your players maybe getting hurt would have that effect -- and while it may not have ended alcohol in the stadium, it did end the practice of rolling filled kegs into the stadium, as well as playing lax in Geneva for a while.

And before I handed the phone to Greg, the dean at BU said the nicest thing to me about Greg's likely career arc from what he knew, and he said it in an uplifting fashion: "It sounds like school will not get in the way of your son's education, as it didn't for me."

Funny, my son went to BU, and his roommate was studying in BU's hotel school. The roommate had been rejected by Cornell but hoped by doing well at BU he could transfer. I don't know what happened to him.

[George64]

The engineering class of 1965 had one woman, and her last name was Cornell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Tarter

There was a lone women engineering student from roughly the same era, so maybe it was Ms. Cornell, who drove a British racing green MG.  I remember, because I coveted, but never owned one.  Anyhow, one day her car was parked in front of Carpenter Library, where a group of engineering students lifted it and put it between two of the stone piers, so snug, it couldn't be driven out.  A great stunt, only eclipsed by the pumpkin atop Libe Tower.

[Trotsky]

On the legacy point, I was always under the impression that legacy was only meaningful if the parent alumnus also wrote a big check, like 6 figures big. Anyone have any insight?

Yes.  It's wealth, not legacy status per se.  A rich non-legacy who writes a big enough check also gets their braindead spawn in.

No doubt the university has a suitably self-serving rationale for this.  My favorite was Harvard's excuse for not admitting Jews in the 1920s.  "We of course would love to, but our job is to educate the leaders of tomorrow and because of the rest of the country's antisemitism, Jews won't be those leaders so we are sadly forced to deny them entry."

Ivy hypocrisy is evergeen.  At least we're slightly better than the other 7.  The People's Ivy & etc.

tldr: cook the rich alive, slowly, on a spit.  Except my personal rich friends, of course.  They are the meretricious exceptions.

[billhoward]

Funny, my son went to BU, and his roommate was studying in BU's hotel school. The roommate had been rejected by Cornell but hoped by doing well at BU he could transfer. I don't know what happened to him.

I never would have considered BU in high school and now I wouldn't get in. BU is now in the top 50 universities per WSJ, ahead of BC, which must annoy the people on Chestnut Hill. Some of the credit must go to BU president John Silber, who annoyed both the students and faculty, suggesting some of them weren't very good and weren't working very. The faculty were outraged, but it's unclear if the reason was because Silber was wrong, or because he was right. He certainly was a difficult person to deal with. Perhaps on par with Elon Musk.

[billhoward]

tldr: cook the rich alive, slowly, on a spit.  Except my personal rich friends, of course.  They are the meretricious exceptions.

Meretricious is a fabulous word; many people think it has something to do with merit. As opposed to "appealing, flashy, no real value/integrity." My boss at PCMag upon leaving a previous job told his then-boss she was one of the most meretricious people he'd met. The moment he left her office, she looked it up. It went from bad (definition) to worse (archaic definition): "characteristic of or relating to a prostitute."