“Well, they are a legacy so of course they’ll get in!” We hate hearing this sentence from parents. While some parents see legacy status as a sure thing when it comes to admissions, it's much more complicated than that, especially at U Chicago. So, we wanted to break down legacy admissions at U Chicago and what your student should do for the best shot at getting in.
Does U Chicago do legacy admissions?
In 2019, the Guardian listed U Chicago as a school where “legacy status does not give applicants a meaningful boost.” However, if you dig a bit, you’ll see a lot of blogs that say that they do track legacy status. This can be confusing. Many schools that don’t give a boost to legacy status also don’t track it as closely as we would like. U Chicago is a little different. U Chicago has a place on their application that tracks legacy status; however, they state that this status doesn’t give a student a boost. You should have your student put in their legacy status, but don’t anticipate this status to help them get in, at least in a meaningful way. TL;DR: You can’t rely on legacy status to give them a HUGE boost. They still need to be able to get in on their own merits.
Okay, cool. Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s proceed. Usually, when we tell parents that legacy alone won’t be the deciding factor to get into their dream school, they tend to get nervous. As we said, even at schools that consider legacy status, legacy candidates still need to be good and qualified candidates to get in.
There is this vision of legacy students as “privileged but not good students.” We mainly blame 80s romcoms for this. But in reality, legacy students are usually great candidates. They come from families who invest in their education which means great high schools, tutors, and yes, usually working with a college counselor (that is us.) These students have great applications and are competitive candidates in their own right. If your student is a great candidate, it won’t matter that they don’t get a meaningful boost from legacy status. So what makes a great candidate a U Chicago? Let’s break it down:
Get Great Grades:
Grades are the first thing colleges look at. Without good grades, students won’t get in. Way harsh, but U Chicago has a 5.4% acceptance rate right now; they can afford to be picky. Grades as simply the most important thing. They want to see students who are getting good grades in challenging classes. This is the first step every student who hopes to get into U Chicago has to take. U Chicago doesn’t publish an average accepted GPA, but third-party blogs claim it's around 4.4ish. Take these numbers with a grain of salt since they did not directly come from the school, but a good rule of thumb is to try to get as close to a 4.0 unweighted or above a 4.0 weighted for the best chance of getting in.
Score Big
U Chicago is test-optional, but if you are applying with standardized tests, you should be getting great scores. The legacy parents we work with routinely have access to top SAT/ACT tutors. We often see near-perfect or perfect scores from legacy students. This is important given that the middle 50% of admitted students' test scores for the class of 2026 were 34-35 on the ACT and 1510-1560 on the SAT.
Everything else
With a 5.4% acceptance rate, good grades and scores are the tip of the iceberg. UChicago needs to see more from a student. Using a college counselor at least to help with the actual application is important when looking at top schools, but we often start working with students well before they start applying. This is to build the kind of resume that gets students into competitive schools. Being a legacy usually comes with privilege/opportunities and schools want to see how students use that. U Chicago even publishes percentages of what admitted students do outside of class. This is for the Class of 2026:
Whatever your student does outside of class, they need to push themselves to be a leader in that field. Simply put: U Chicago is looking for students who pursue their passions at the highest possible level.
U Chicago is hard to get into and legacy status will not help your student as much as you might want it to. While that might seem scary, it shouldn’t be. At elite schools, students always have to be great candidates to get in. Legacy might help, but it’s never a lock. Your student should be pushing themselves to be the best that they can be—legacy or not. If this all seems like a lot, don’t worry! You aren’t alone. Reach out, we would love to help.
Contact us here.