Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. Photo Courtesy: Fishville
Fishville's Notes: If one of your parents graduated from a college in the Untied States, your chance to getting in the same school is significantly higher. The preference given to the alumni kids was called legacy in America. In many cases, only your mother or father's undergraduate schools count. Sometimes, faculty's kids were also given the similar preference. Experts stated that regarding college admission it is a unique policy for the United States to practice since similar system is virtually not existing in major countries in Asia and Europe. The common explanation to this difference is probably that from the beginning America's famous colleges were founded as the private schools in contrast to their counterparts in England or Japan which were mainly run by state. Legacy would be a perfect tool to attract alumni donations to their Alma Maters. This year Harvard enjoys its record low acceptance rate of 6.2% for the class of 2015 while its legacy acceptance rate was as high as 30%, almost five folds advantage over the regular pool. While they are cherishing the affirmative action for minority students, liberals argue that legacy preference is an another way of affirmative actions for the rich families since the students' parents at least one of them had a degree from the elite schools.
We can easily point out several famous legacy examples as George W. Bush enrolled Yale since his father and grandfather were all Yalies, Al Gore's son went to Harvard despite his several incidents with police on drug and alcohol and now Tiger mom's daughter goes to Harvard. Less famous ones would include that Yale President Richard Levin's daughter went to Stanford. Reported numbers showed that Harvard's legacy rate are the highest among Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The schools' counter arguments are that legacies are usually well prepared as they have been raised in an intellectually stimulated environment. Yale even states that their legacy applicants have higher numbers with regard to standardized testing scores or GPA than the regular application pool. This might be the case for Yale but Harvard refused to disclose their legacy's data, giving rooms for speculations. Moving to a positive direction, legacy preference was weighted much less significantly nowadays compared to several decades ago. One of our friends who was from Boston area told me that they were aware that some of the rich legacy kids at Harvard even hired private tutors to finish their home works, a not-positive image for a privileged son like Al Gore's who follows his father's foot step to Harvard.
如果你的父母的任何一方从美国的一所大学毕业，你进入同一所大学的机会将会明显增加。给校友子女们录取的优待在美国被称为legacy录取， 我们也称之为校友子女优惠录取。在许多情况下，只有你的母亲或父亲的本科学校才算数。有时本校教师的子女们也给于类似的照顾。有关专家指出，校友子女优惠录取似乎是美国独特的做法，因为类似的系统几乎在亚洲和欧洲主要国家不存在。对这种差异的通常的解释，可能涉及从一开始美国的多数著名大学都是私立大学，而英国或日本的大学一般是国营的。校友子女优惠录取是一个很好的工具用于吸引校友对他们母校的捐款。今年哈佛2015班创造了6.2％的录取率新低，而其校友子女的录取率则高达30％，几乎是普通录取的五倍。虽然他们极力鼓吹对少数族裔学生的平权行动，自由派人士认为校友子女优惠是一个为富人家庭设计的另一种形式的平权行动，因为学生家长中至少有一位拥有名校的学位。
我们可以很容易地指出几个有名的校友子女优惠录取的例子，像布什就读耶鲁因为他的父亲和祖父都是耶鲁本科毕业生，尽管有吸毒和酗酒的警察记录戈尔的儿子照样上哈佛，以及最近哈佛录取虎妈的女儿等等。名气不大的还包括耶鲁校长理查德莱文的女儿读斯坦福。报告的数字显示，哈佛的校友子女录取率在哈佛耶鲁和普林斯顿之间是最高的。校方反驳的理由是，因为他们成长于资源丰富的知识分子家庭，校友子女应该准备更加充分。耶鲁大学甚至指出，他们的校友子女申请人平均的标准测试分数或平时成绩比普通申请人更高。可能耶鲁是这样，但哈佛拒绝透露他们这方面的数据则留下了揣测的可能。当然我们看到事情在向好的方向发展，因为现在给于校友子女的优待明显低于几十年以前。我们的一个来自波士顿的朋友告诉我说，他们知道哈佛富的校友子女甚至请私人教师来帮助他们完成家庭作业。这对于跟随父亲的脚步上哈佛的戈尔的特权儿子可不是一个正面的形象。
Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent
Published: Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Harvard’s acceptance rate for legacies has hovered around 30 percent—more than four times the regular admission rate—in recent admissions cycles, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 told The Crimson in an interview this week.
Fitzsimmons also said that Harvard’s undergraduate population is comprised of approximately 12 to 13 percent legacies, a group he defined as children of Harvard College alumni and Radcliffe College alumnae.
Fitzsimmons’ comments came the week after a discussion at New York University on legacy admissions between Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel, senior fellow at The Century Foundation Richard D. Kahlenberg ’85, and Bloomberg News editor at large Daniel L. Golden ’78.
According to a New York Times story on the event, Brenzel said that Yale rejected 80 percent of its legacy applicants. Brenzel reported that Yale legacies comprise less than 10 percent of the class, according to Kahlenberg.
Brenzel also said that there is a positive correlation between alumni donations and legacy admissions. According to Brenzel, Yale fundraising suffers when fewer legacies are accepted. Still, he said, this year Yale rejected more children of top donors than it accepted.
Asked if the Admissions Office communicates with University development at Harvard, Fitzsimmons emphasized the copious amount of information he receives about each applicant. “There is no formal mechanism of communication,” he said.
Kahlenberg, who edited a book entitled “Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions,” has worked to draw attention to the issue of legacy admissions at highly selective colleges.
“There’s been so much focus on affirmative action in college admissions ... Here there is a very large affirmative action program for wealthy students that gets very little attention,” Kahlenberg said. “It’s really a relic of European-style aristocracy that has no place in American higher education.”
Fitzsimmons defended Harvard’s legacy admissions rate.
“If you look at the credentials of Harvard alumni and alumnae sons and daughters, they are better candidates on average,” said Fitzsimmons, part of what he sees as the explanation for the disparity in the acceptance rate. “Very few who apply have no chance of getting in.”
Because of the family background of legacies, he said, students are more likely to be aware if they are unlikely to be accepted.
“It does no one any good to have a student come here and have an unhappy experience,” Fitzsimmons said.
Fitzsimmons said that legacy status, in addition to factors such as place of residence, acts as one of many “tips” in the admissions process at Harvard. All other things being substantially equal, he said, legacy status can “tip” an applicant into the group of accepted students.
But Fitzsimmons emphasized that a number factors, beyond the “tip,” lead to this higher acceptance rate. He said the pool of legacy applicants is a self-selecting group.
“Some parents are particularly reluctant to push their own institution,” Fitzsimmons said. “They want to make sure that their son or daughter really wants to go.”
—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at [email protected].
Information provided by:
HYP Pathway (雅美途 )
An Expert on College Admission in the United States.
E-mail: [email protected]; Website: 雅美途