Rich legacies get a bigger boost

According to Chetty et al.

We’re continuing our series examining the main lessons from this paper by Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman. Today we’ll continue to examine how high-income turns into an admission boost for those rich kids. Here are the previous posts in this series:

How does income affect admission at elite schools?

State flagships do the right thing

Extracurriculars can broaden the path in

Feeder schools are real, part 2

Chetty et al. figure that high-income preferences at the most prestigious and selective colleges in the country mean that an incoming freshman class at one of these schools has 103 “extra” kids from the top 1% of the income distribution. That is, if these colleges turned off the preferences that give those very rich kids an advantage, there would be 103 fewer of them in an imaginary 1650-person class at Stanvard.

Of those 103 “extra” rich kids, Chetty and his coauthors figure 25 of them get in because they’re recruited athletes, 47 because of legacy preferences, and 31 because of their high non-academic ratings. Let’s focus on those 47 legacies.

Healthy scrutiny

Elite colleges get coy about legacies. They say, “Legacies are motivated to apply because they grew up loving the college!” “Legacies just happen to be the best prepared and most competitive applicants anyway.”

Chetty and his coauthors don’t let them get away with that. This chart shows the odds that legacy applicants get in at the college where their parents went, compared to chances at a different elite college.

Let’s imagine a legacy applicant for the leftmost three bars. He faces a 36.5% admission rate at the college where his parent(s) went (teal bar). If he were not a legacy, he would face an 11.8% admission rate at that same college (dark blue bar). A non-legacy applicant, a different kid, faces a 9.4% admission rate at the college in question.

Looking to the right of this chart, our legacy applicant has an 11.8% chance of getting in at a different elite college, where his parent(s) didn’t go, compared to a non-legacy applicant’s odds of 9.7%.

So, the elite colleges’ claim that legacy applicants are just stronger applicants is partially true. Not super surprising, because intelligence is heritable. But that claim only explains 2.4% of the better odds this kid faces. The rest of the benefit he gets—the difference between 11.8% and 36.5%—is because of his legacy status.

Not all legacies are created equal

Chetty and his coauthors then examine how legacy status interacts with household income. They’re right to do this, because colleges favor legacies in large part because they’re angling for donations from the family.

When asked why Harvard gives a legacy preference during a deposition, its dean of admission said:

“It's also the case that alumnae and alumni make an enormous difference in our ability to have a strong financial aid program, and by advancing, for example, Harvard's cutting-edge research and advancing Harvard's mission across the board, without the financial help both in terms of giving money and raising money, Harvard would be nowhere near the strong institution it is today and we would be — you know, Harvard would be, unfortunately, a very different place.”

Here’s what Chetty and his coauthors find:

A legacy applicant from the top 1% of the income distribution has a 45% chance of admission at an elite school. Those are much better odds than 9 percent for non-legacy applicants. It makes sense that these colleges turn up the legacy preference dial most for rich kids, because milking the parents for donations is the main point of legacy preference.

The picture that accompanies this post is of Whitman College, one of the residential colleges at Princeton. Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and Princeton alumna, paid for it. Her son was my Princeton classmate.

What does this mean for your kid?

If:

1. You or your spouse went to colleges that gives legacy preference, and

2. Your parents or in-laws went to colleges that give legacy preferences to grandchildren, and

3. Your child’s standardized test scores fall within the middle 50 ranges for those colleges, and

4. Your family can afford to pay tuition at those colleges, then

those colleges should be on your child’s list. This is common-sense advice, but now we have clear numbers to back it up. If you’re in the tippy-top of the income distribution, those colleges should definitely be on your child’s list. But you don’t need me to tell you that. I’m sure the development offices already have!

If you’re not in those super high income percentiles and still want the best advice, I’m the admission advisor for you. You can sign up for online classes here or one-on-one consultations here. I look forward to working with your family!