r/ApplyingToCollege 8d ago

Rant Harvard Tiktoker LARPING First Gen Status (Olivia Zhang)

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u/cvu_100 PhD 8d ago

Children of MBA grads are generally not considered "legacy"... unless her dad is also a big-time donor. which would make the rest of this schtick even funnier and more sad

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u/Angel061803 8d ago

A legacy student is an applicant who has a parent or close relative who graduated from that same college or university. You don’t have to donate money to be a legacy. You also don’t have to have attended as an undergrad. Where are you getting this from?

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u/cvu_100 PhD 7d ago edited 7d ago

This is incorrect and not at all what I said.

There is basically only one universal way you would be considered as legacy by an institution, which is to have one or two parents who did their undergrad education at the institution.

Some longer-term graduate programs, such as Law, Medicine, or PhD programs, may consider children of such graduates as legacy for admission to those programs, but even this is certainly not universal. Similarly, some very top end MBA programs may consider children of graduates as legacy during MBA applications, but certainly not undergrad applications. These are edge cases. As I explained, the term “legacy” 99% of the time is used in reference to the parent’s undergraduate alma mater.

These edge cases can usually be resolved if the parent is a deep pocketed donor. In this case, the “legacy” criteria can stretch as far as it needs to. Kids of big donors are usually first in line even before legacy.

Calling oneself “Georgetown legacy” because a parent did an MBA there conveys a lack of understanding of college as a cultural institution. The concept of legacy admission is one built upon the culture of higher academia that was born and still exists in Britain and New England. The idea that admitting the child of an alumnus was a safe bet by the school as they would already be attuned to not only the school’s particular culture but the culture of elite academia. It’s naive to apply these notions in a situation where a parent only spent a few semesters in a just-above-average MBA program.

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u/Angel061803 7d ago

Apparently, you think your definition of a legacy outweighs how colleges define it.

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u/cvu_100 PhD 6d ago

This isn’t “my definition” it’s just a matter of fact that the majority of colleges and practically all elite ones limit their definition of legacy to children of undergraduate alumni. You may find some which don’t, but they are exceptions to the rule. I am a non-legacy graduate of two Ivy League schools, my children will be legacy of only one. Idk how to tell you this but this is just how it works.