“Does being a legacy help their chances of getting into Columbia?” It’s a question we get all the time from concerned alumni parents. Legacy admissions can be difficult to get to the bottom of. Many schools do not like to publish a lot of information about legacy admissions and Columbia is one of them. Every year we talk to admissions officers, go through data, and forecast admissions trends, and getting good information can be harder than it looks. So we wanted to break down some of the ins and out of legacy admissions at Columbia and try to answer some of our most asked questions.
How does Columbia define legacy?
Columbia defines legacy as a student who had at least one parent that “attended Columbia.” They also consider it as a “positive factor in an applicant's candidacy for admission to Columbia.”
How many Legacies are on campus?
Columbia doesn’t publish legacy status in their class breakdowns but their alumni magazine for many years published the names of each legacy student in the freshman class (and their Columbia Alumni parent -If you think this is weird, we kind of agree.) While they have stopped in recent years, it leaves us with some interesting data.
The magazine also notes how many students are in Columbia College and how many are in the School of Engineering. Unfortunately, this doesn’t account for students in the School of General Studies. While the numbers fluctuate a little, the majority of legacy students come from Columbia College. Each year 60-some come from the College and under 10 are from Engineering.
Percentage-wise, we are talking approximately 8% of students in the College and Engineering are legacies. This is slightly lower than we have seen at some of the other Ivy League Schools, but not disastrously so. We also do not have the data from the School of General Studies, but it also may affect this number.
We know what you are thinking. This is fine, but how many get in. Unfortunately, Columbia has never published those numbers. Legacy admissions have recently been a source of controversy and colleges have tended to obscure their legacy admissions status. All we can really say for sure is it at least helps. However, you might notice that when we are talking about legacy at Columbia, we are talking about less than 100 students in each freshman class. If you are hoping for your child to be part of this small group, they really need to stand out as a legacy.
How does one stand out as a legacy?
Every applicant to Columbia has to be a great applicant if they want to get in. They need great test scores, grades, activities, and essays. This is a lot to ask for, but it is also kind of the minimum. For the Class of 2026, the acceptance rate was only 3.73%. Admissions officers had to read through over 60,000 applications. With this many applications, having a great application is just kind of the baseline. Many students who are qualified won’t get in with numbers this low. It’s not enough for applications just to be qualified, they need to stand out.
Being a legacy will help an application catch the eye of admissions officers, but the application itself has to be competitive against the other legacy applicants. There is a misnomer about legacies (we blame cheesy 80s movies) that legacies are underqualified, but the majority of legacies are highly qualified. They have been dreaming of going to a top school since childhood and usually have worked hard to make that dream a reality. We work with legacies all the time and usually, they come to us with a great resume and a lot of knowledge about the school. We work with these students to write engaging and creative essays and meticulously craft their applications to make them the strongest candidate possible. While it may seem silly, having great writing sets students apart and it’s an important part of a winning application.
Our other biggest tip is to apply early decision. Columbia’s regular decision acceptance rate was 2.96% but their early decision rate was 10.31%. The ED rate is still low, but it’s far higher than the RD and the overall.
Legacy admissions can be frustrating. At schools like Columbia, being a legacy isn’t enough to guarantee admission. We advise, if your student is serious about Columbia, to make sure their application is strong and push them to apply early as it will give them the best chance possible. It might sound self-serving, but we also advise working with a college counselor. It can be the difference in this process.
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