Mon 28 Nov 2005
Time for some more legacy math! Although my own daughters are still several years away from their college applications, it is never too early to start thinking about what their chances might be at Williams. Recall our earlier discussion of the fact that there were 94 legacies admitted into the class of 2009 with an average SAT score of 1446.
Thanks to Jim Kolesar, we now know that 68 of these legacies ended up enrolling in the class. Comments:
1) I wonder about the 26 students who didn’t come to Williams. Are these mostly very strong students who choose places like Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford instead? If so, this would suggest that the average SAT score of the students who came to Williams was lower than the 1446 average of the 94 applicants admitted. It is also possible that they are weaker students who realized that Williams might not be the best place for them, but I doubt that.
2) What is the extreme lower-bound for the enrolled legacies? Assume that all 26 of the students who turned down Williams had perfect 1600s. This implies that the 68 enrolled legacies would average around 1390 since (94 * 1446 - 26 * 1600) / 68 = 1387.
3) Can we reject the null hypothesis that enrolled legacies have similar SAT scores to the overall Williams population? No. Note that the SAT average for the class of 2009 is 1425. Solving the appropriate formula for X:
(94 * 1446 - 26 * X) / 68 = 1425
we can see that X = 1500. In other words, if the average SAT score of the accepted legacies who went elsewhere is 1500, then the average for the enrolled legacies would be the same as the average for the entire class. Is 1500 a plausible estimate for those 26 non-enrollees? Sure.
4) Does this imply that legacy status does not positively impact one’s admissions chances? No. Again, the key issue is that 1425 is the average for the entire class. The average for students from wealthy families with college-educated parents is going to be much higher than 1425 because, for good or for ill, the College gives preferences to applicants, independent of race, from poorer, less educated families. Now, the magnitude of those preferences is not large, but it is not zero.
5) Key unknowns are the characteristics of applicants and admitted students who come from families “like” those of the legacy applicants. Although race, wealth and athletic talent are complicating factors, I doubt that the average SAT scores of similar enrolled students in the class of 2009 is much higher than 1475.
All in all, I will stick with my back-of-the-envelope guess that being a legacy, all else equal, is worth about 50 points in combined average SAT score. This is a minor advantage, much lower than the 100 points that tip-level athleticism counts for and 150 points that accrue to URMs.
In other words, if you’re an Eph and your daughter scores 1300 or below (and she is not an athlete, heiress or deeper shade of purple), you better start looking at Colby.
November 28th, 2005 at 6:51 pm
I don’t think legacies would be any different, except that they enroll at a higher rate than the average student.
Of those who don’t enroll:
a) Some chose to enroll at a “more selective” college. In Williams territory, this usually means Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT.
b) Some chose to enroll at an “equally selective” college that fits their individual priorities better.
c) Some chose to enroll at a “less selective college” because of an attractive merit aid discount.
Whenever I’ve seen data, a college’s enrolled class has slightly lower “stats” than the accepted class. Perfectly logical. The “best” accepted students are those most likely to have other attractive options.
November 28th, 2005 at 8:38 pm
The foregoing may be an interesting discussion to some, but will it cause any person to alter his proposed or actual course of conduct? Except for those who heretofore believed that being a legacy amounted to a much larger advantage at the Williams admissions office than it actually does, most probably not.
November 28th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Actually, legacy is a huge advantage at a school like Williams. It is the tie-breaker between many equally-qualified middle-the-pack applicants. As such, it can’t be quantified by silly stuff like SAT scores, but that kind of “tie-breaker” advantage is priceless to a college applicant.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
Could you please define what you mean by “huge advantage”? Imagine that we have an applicant with so-and-so grades and SAT scores. Assume that this applicant is an AR rank of 3. Now, of all the AR ranks of 3, Williams admits something like 10%. (I don’t know if this number is correct, but just assume it for now.) What happens if this otherwise “normal” applicant is a legacy?
I’ll guess that her chance of admissions goes up from the base rate of 10% to something like 30%. Is this a huge advantage? Perhaps. But if, instead, our applicant with a 3 AR were magically transformed into a tip or a URM, her chances probably increase to more like 90%.
In other words, if you could turn your daughter into a legacy, a tip or a URM, the latter two choices are much more likely to get her into Williams.
If being a legacy were such a “huge” advantage, then the average SAT scores of legacies at Williams would be much lower than it is.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
In vein of an infamous quote by one of our great Presidents, “it depends on what the definition of ‘huge’ is”.
November 29th, 2005 at 1:33 am
David:
The average academic rating of all non-tipped athletes at Williams is just above a 3 — a 2.8 in Fall 2000. 57% of the three classes studied by Lindsey Taylor were academic 1s, 2s, and 3s. My educated guess is that the acceptance rate for academic low 2s and high 3’s is pretty comparable to the overall acceptance rate.
We can see this from the numbers David Kane posted above. 94 legacies admitted with an average SAT of 1446 - very close to the average SAT of the entire accepted class.
I don’t believe that many academic 3 legacies would be rejected, assuming that rest of the application is decent or better. There just aren’t that many of them and the presumption is to admit if they are at least average for the incoming class. Why wouldn’t you accept a legacy that is dead-solid average for all of your students? You’d have to be nuts at a college the size of Williams to reject a legacy without solid justification.
November 29th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
Based on a presentation I attended this fall given by an Admissions Officer, Williams ranks students 1-9 academically. 1 is the top; 9 is the bottom. A 1 student, and I quote, “Walks on water.” This means perfect or very high SATs, valedictorian or top class rank, and recommendations from teachers such as, “Biff is one of the best students I’ve had in my 30 years of teaching.” The majority of admits are 1s and 2s; the acceptance rate starts to plunge radically after that.
To be admitted, legacies have to be 1s or 2s, just like the general population. Once they’re in that pool, their chances of being picked from that pool increase, compared to the general population.
Given the size and quality of the applicant pool these days, I have been told that Williams could have an entire class just made up of valedictorians; or class presidents; or editors of the school paper. Therefore, even if you are an Academic 1, there is no guarantee that you will be admitted. A 1 over here could do just as well as the 1 over there; but only one of them will be admitted, just due to the numbers of applicants and Williams’ need that year (”Oops, down two oboe players.”)
So the days of being a dim legacy are gone. Instead, they’re just as bright as the general population — and a bit more lucky when it comes to who will be plucked from the qualified pool.
November 29th, 2005 at 11:21 pm
Regarding the question of why some legacies don’t come to Williams, I have a Williams classmate whose son was admitted to both Williams and Harvard. Apparently, Williams assumed the son would come to Williams, since both his father and grandfather were alums. Harvard, on the other hand, actively recruited him — professors called him, he had a flurry of communications from Cambridge.
I remember the son telling me, “While I’d initially expected to go to Williams, Harvard made me feel wanted while Williams ignored me, so I went to Harvard.” He went to Harvard, thoroughly enjoyed it, and graduated several years ago. In that specific case, a little Williams TLC probably would have tipped the scales.
November 30th, 2005 at 12:01 am
Guy:
Lindsey Taylor published the actual breakdown of Academic ratings for the actual enrolled classes over a three year period (Class of 2000/01/02) in her senior thesis:
Academic 1: 15.3%
Academic 2: 27.1%
Academic 3: 15.7%
Academic 4: 13.1%
Academic 5: 10.6%
Academic 6: 11.3%
Academic 7: 4.7%
Academic 8: 0.1%
Unknown: 2.1%
The accepted class would be a little higher than this. However, based on the published SAT scores of this year’s accepted legacies, you certainly don’t have to be an Academic 1 or Academic 2 to be accepted as either a legacy or a non-legacy. In fact, the average for both categories is below an Academic 2.
It is true, IMO, that the average joe, applying off the street, with no legacy, no URM, and no hook (athletic or otherwise) probably needs to be an academic 1 or 2.
BTW, Taylor stated the qualifications at the time for an Academic 1 as including valedicatorian, 1520+ SATS, 750+ SATIIs, hardest curriculum including mostly 5s on AP tests, exceptional recommendations and essays. The article in the alumni magazine indicated that the SAT cutoff for Academic 1s is now 1540. Hard to pin it down exactly because the academic rating is not purely rote numbers, but a qualitative evaluation by the application readers.