Hey, I was wondering if I’d fall under the category of legacy admission if my older sister went to Stanford for graduate school, and I were to apply to one of the graduate programs, even if it’s in a different field (hers is Geophysics)? Stanford defines legacy as “primary legacy,” which means at least one of your parents went to the university, but would being a brother of a student who attended be taken into account at all, even if unofficially, or does it give me no “leg up” either formally or informally?
I know that for undergraduate, a lot of my friends who were accepted to top colleges had older siblings who were also accepted, although this is anecdotal evidence and my friends were very qualified otherwise. I was wondering whether siblings count as legacies for undergrad only, or for both grad and undergrad, or neither.
Hmm. And you are asking us Dopets this question why?
Don’t know how any legacies work these days. If you make it clear you can pay full tuition, and have the grades etc, I am sure connections via relatives is never a bad thing.
I’ve never known a university that was worth anything that exerted significant control over graduate admissions. Those are handled at the department level. Two different departments: forget about it.
The folks in the administration building handle paperwork and check on how many are admitted and how many accept. That’s it.
Sometimes a department will look a bit more favorably on a sibling if the previous one turned out well. The admissions committee might be inclined to believe the younger is going to be good like the older. OTOH, if the older was an idiot, it isn’t going to help.