Upenn Early Decision Legacy Acceptance Rate

The advantages that colleges offer legacy students extend well beyond admission preferences. Some universities have alumni councils that provide legacies with special advising sessions, pair these would-be students with current legacy students, and generally provide advice and mentoring for legacy applicants. In cases where legacies are rejected, some universities offer legacy admissions counseling and help with placement at other colleges. Such students are often encouraged to enroll at a lesser ranked school for one or two years to prove themselves and then to reapply as transfer students. News & World Report and other media take into account only the SAT scores and high school grades of entering freshmen, a college can accept poor achieving legacies as transfer students without hurting its standing. Currently, the Ivy League institutions are estimated to admit 10% to 15% of each entering class using legacy admissions.

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 short, Ivy League and other top schools typically admit legacies at two to five times their overall admission rates. Among top universities, the University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University are known to weigh legacy status heavily in their application processes. A quarter of students admitted through Early Decision to the University of Pennsylvania's Class of 2022 are the children and grandchildren of UPenn alumni.

It's an astounding statistic, especially considering legacy students made up only 16% of this year's Early pool. Legacy students were almost twice as likely to earn admission as non-legacy applicants. But it's not like the University of Pennsylvania is alone in offering preferential treatment in admissions to legacy applicants. Ivy Coach is featured in this podcast conducted by Jacob Gardenschwartz and Anika Ranginani and it's certainly worth a listen.

While collecting exact numbers on legacy acceptance rates is very difficult at many colleges it can increase your chance of admissions by 2 or 3 times the amount of non legacy. Usually that means being a primary legacy where one of your parents attended that university, but sometimes even a looser connection like a grandparent or an uncle can make a small difference. Some colleges openly oppose granting any special status to Legacy and most notable would be MIT.

Other colleges like U Penn and Cornell will only give Legacy a consideration in their ED rounds. This year I worked with five candidates who applied to highly selective universities. They all got into more than one choice but each student eventually was admitted to and I think is choosing to enroll at the highly selective university where one of their parents attended. As a first generation / low income Asian American parent who attended an Ivy League university, it was fortunate to help my daughter use legacy status to help her gain admission to my alma mater.

I do think Asians have a significant disadvantage in the college admissions process and was happy to have legacy level the playing field. My main concern for her was would she be successful and happy at my school. Her tests scores and other credentials were in the top third of last year's class and felt she would do well.

I think all parents should make that judgment call for their children. On a broader point, I do think more and more Asians will start to the see the benefit in legacy admissions as our kids come of age to counter-act the bias against them. I don't want to be cynical because this country provides so much opporunity for those who work hard but it will be interesting if the white establishment will try to modify the rules to benefit them. Legacy preference or legacy admission is a preference given by an institution or organization to certain applicants on the basis of their familial relationship to alumni of that institution. It is most controversial in college admissions, where students so admitted are referred to as legacies or legacy students. The practice is particularly widespread in the college admissions in the United States; almost three-quarters of research universities and nearly all liberal arts colleges grant legacy preferences in admissions.

Legatt, who worked in admissions at Wharton before founding her company, explains that when the most competitive colleges made test scores optional, "More applicants figured, 'They're not going to look at this 1300. I can do it,' where they would have disqualified themselves in previous years." (Harvard's early-decision applications spiked by 57 percent.) For top-tier colleges, that's a feature, not a bug. "A lot of elite institutions encourage lots of people to apply, accept a small number, and keep their acceptance rate low for prestige," Fiorentino says.

Test-optional policies pushed Ivy League acceptance rates to historic lows, which only makes the schools seem more elusive and exclusive, which only makes more families want in. We have always been fans of applying early decision for the strategic advantage that it gives an applicant, but for legacy applicants, this may be even more important. Some schools only consider legacy status for early round applicants. This is just one example where legacy status in and of itself will not help a student who doesn't take advantage of other strategic choices in the admissions process. And if you are not in the middle 50% for test scores and GPA for a college, legacy status is unlikely to give you a huge boost.

But that combination of legacy + ED can seal the deal for an otherwise-qualified applicant. A 2005 analysis of 180,000 student records obtained from nineteen selective colleges and universities found that, within a set range of SAT scores, being a legacy raised an applicant's chances of admission by 19.7 percentage points. Similarly, Dartmouth College has an overall acceptance rate of 10.4% but an early decision acceptance rate of 27.8%. In general, acceptance rates across top schools show that a growing number of students are being admitted through early decision and early action programs.

Penn Early Decision Legacy Acceptance Rate Therefore, if your child knows they want to attend a particular school, applying early decision increases their chances of admission significantly. Assuming your legacy status will make up for a mediocre academic record. Highly selective colleges and universities are not going to admit students, legacy or not, who are unlikely to succeed.

Legacy status tends to come into play when the admissions officers are comparing two equally qualified applicants. In such cases, the legacy applicant will often have a slight advantage. At the same time, this doesn't mean that colleges won't lower the admissions bar slightly for legacy applicants from prominent and/or extremely wealthy families (but you'll rarely hear colleges admit this fact).

A legacy student is someone who has a close family member, normally a parent, who attended the same college. These applicants receive special consideration during the admissions process. At most schools, the legacy boost only counts for applicants who had at least one parent enrolled there, though some colleges may extend legacy status to grandchildren or even siblings of alumni. As most know at this point the number of applications at highly selective colleges was way up and the acceptance rates consistently fell by approximately 20% or more.

As an example, Harvard received over 57,000 applications, 42% more than last year. NYU received over 100,000 applications up 17% from last year. The admissions rate at Harvard went from 4.92% for the Class of 2024 to 3.4% for the Class of 2025. At NYU the admissions rate went from 15% for the Class of 2024 to 12.8% for the Class of 2025. Keep in mind because of the timing of the pandemic last year most admit rates were up for the Class of 2024, but this years numbers are for the most part lower than ever before. "There's a widespread perception that applying ED puts students at a disadvantage for financial aid.

That may be the case at schools with limited resources, because they know accepted students are committed to coming, so the college could short them on financial aid. But like everything else in the admissions game, there is no hard and fast rule. At least one study on ed found just the opposite — that financial aid is more generous for Early Decision students because schools sometimes run out of money for regular decision admits".

Legacy preference continues to be a hot-button issue for applicants to highly selective colleges and universities. Whether the consideration of legacy status in the admissions process is encouraging or discouraging to the applicant, it is increasingly coming under scrutiny. The advantage of applying Early Decision is that acceptance rates for ED applications are sometimes two to three times higher than the Regular Decision admission rates at the same schools.

For instance, Northwestern's overall acceptance rate is only 9%, but its early decision rate is closer to 25%. Johns Hopkins University's jump is even bigger, from 9% to 31%. And the early decision rates at schools like Washington University in St. Louis, Emory University, and Tufts University are all multiple times the regular decision admission rate.

When the US News started ranking colleges in 1983, it quickly gained traction and colleges started to apply strategy to increase their rankings. Universities quickly recognized that a higher ranking would increase their level of desirability, prestige, and even, perhaps inadvertently, their endowment. Elite institutions would attract more donors from wealthy parents seeking to give their child a one-up in the process, or from alumni who would now be prouder than ever before to attend their alma mater.

In the past 10 or so years, Northeastern has climbed significantly in the rankings, resulting in increased desirability, more applications and thus, a lower acceptance rate. Admission StandardsEliteApplicant CompetitionExtremeHow hard is it to get into Penn and can I get accepted? The school has a 8% acceptance rate ranking it #1 in Pennsylvania for lowest rate of acceptance. Last year, 3,740 out of 44,491 applicants were admitted making Penn an extremely competitive school to get into with a very low chance of acceptance – even for applicants with the highest scores and grades. Academically, it has exceptionally high requirements for admission test scores, generally admitting students who score in the top 4 percent.

University of Pennsylvania typically accepts and attracts "A-" average high school students. With over half of admitted students enrolling, acceptance by University of Pennsylvania is a prized outcome for many students. Most incoming freshmen graduated in the top ten percent of their high school class.

If calculus is offered in a student's high school and he or she has not taken the class by graduation, it is unlikely the applicant will be admitted to Wharton. We will follow up by recommending that the student take calculus during the summer. To broaden this answer for other programs at Penn and other institutions, academic preparation is the single most important factor in college admissions. Certain course work and higher levels of preparation are necessary at the secondary school level to provide a foundation for success in college. In these cases, the admissions office is not trying to place hurdles in front of students. Rather, these requirements are informed by our faculty based on knowledge of the curriculum and past student performance.

Stanford was the most selective school this early action round, accepting 748 students for an acceptance rate of 10.8 percent. This would effectively mean that the early boost, and Tulane's actual selectivity, is not what it seems. At the University of Pennsylvania, Early Decision applicants comprise more than 45% of recent classes. Penn's acceptance rate for Early Decision is in the neighborhood of 30% compared to 14%-17% for regular admission. At Penn, legacies comprise about 15% of Early Decision candidates and nearly half of those are typically admitted. When assessing the likelihood of your admission, don't rely on admission percentages alone.

It's important to consider factors such as legacy applicants and recruited athletes, because the admissions rate for everyone else can be considerably lower. Because private universities in the U.S. rely heavily on donations from alumni, critics argue that legacy preferences are a way to indirectly sell university placement. Opponents accuse these programs of perpetuating an oligarchy and plutocracy as they lower the weight of academic merit in the admissions process in exchange for a financial one.

Legacy students tend to be the white and wealthy, contributing to socioeconomic inequality. This boost will only occur if you first apply to Cornell's ED Early Decision program after you commit to them. Besides UPenn, Cornell is the only school that exclusively only considers legacy applicants during the early ED cycle. Historically, ED admits rates were in the low 20s as compared to the overall acceptance rate around 10.5 to 11%. Legacies all make up about 1/4th of the admit pool during the ED cycle so about 450 students. Since it is anticipated that all Ivy admit rates are down this year, the Class of 2025 ED rate could be less than 20% but we won't know until months from now since Cornell tends to keep figures under wraps as much as possible.

Legacy admissions makes sense not just because of potential donations. In my opinion, the main reason legacy admissions makes sense is because legacy admits are more likely to succeed at that specific elite college. Through their parents, these students have rare insight into the workings of the school well in advance of getting there and invaluable guidance once they get there. Their families share with them valuable insights about the school culture, the resources, how to go about getting research positions/internships, common pitfalls to avoid etc, that most other students find out the hard way. Many alums stay in touch with the latest news so they can be a very valuable source of up-to-date information. I know this is what I did for my daughter when she attended my ivy alma mater and what I will do with my son if he gets into the school next year.

Even elite public universities such as the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia grant favor to legacy applicants. However, these two schools differ in how openly they advertise their legacy policies. UVA created its own Admission Liaison Program where children of alumni can attend special events, webinars, and even schedule a one-on-one transcript consultation with the director of the organization at any point throughout high school. In contrast, the University of Michigan's admissions website does not make any reference to legacy status—the only statement about legacy admissions in buried in an FAQ.

Of course, most legacy students still need to have competitive applications to be considered. It's rare for legacy students to be admitted with a sub-par application. That being said, because their family attended a prestigious institution, legacy students often benefit from additional resources, making the admissions process bearable.

Although colleges do not publicly admit to this fact, Taylor said it is obvious to both students and outside experts that it is easier to get into a school early decision than during the regular round. By filling nearly half the spots in their freshman class with early decision applicants, schools such as UPenn and Dartmouth send a signal that applicants get a boost for applying early, Morse said. But he added that it is counterproductive to these institutions' overall mission of attracting students from all economic backgrounds to accept so many students in a round that is inaccessible to low-income students. When Harvard University was sued in 2018 for discriminating against Asian Americans in the admissions process, one issue that emerged was how the school's legacy practices favored wealthy and typically white applicants. Harvard applicants with legacy status were over five times more likely to be admitted than non legacy applicants. Information such as this has put a lot of pressure on elite institutions to address legacy practices that clearly contradict an institution's claims of valuing diversity and merit more than privilege.

Given its renowned reputation as one of the best medical schools in both the U.S. and the world, Penn Med's admissions process is extremely rigorous. It's also highly selective, with one of the lowest acceptance rates in the country. As reported in The New York Times, a sweeping college admissions scandal in 2019 involved bribery and cheating by parents to get their children admitted to top-tier schools. This situation was merely a recent example, and as some have pointed out, wealthy parents use other avenues to gain an advantage in the admissions process, such as legacy status. At Harvard, 36% of the Class of 2022 has a relative who previously attended the university (Harvard's overall acceptance hovers around 6%).

Other Ivies are close behind, as University of Pennsylvania and Brown report upwards of 33% legacies, more than double their admit rate. Princeton has been known to admit over 30% of legacy applicants. A rolling admissions process is an entirely different kind of early admissions process.