There have been a number of articles in the news in the past few years about legacy admissions in college. Legacy admissions is when a college gives admissions preference to a student because a relative, often a parent, attended that college. The issue with legacy admissions is that it tends to favor those who already have privelege, the rich and well educated.
Does this privilege extend to legacy status and BS/MD programs? Although our sample numbers are fairly small, the answer appears to be yes, legacy status can improve the odds at a BS/MD program. Over the years that we have been doing BS/MD admissions, we have worked with more than 10 students who have had a parent or sibling that attended a BS/MD program. I can think of only one instance when a student that had legacy status at a specific BS/MD program did not get into that program.
Does this apply to BS/MD programs where the student didn’t have legacy status? It doesn’t appear so. Those students with legacy status at one program didn’t seem to have any better admissions chances than other students at non legacy BS/MD programs.
While this issue doesn’t affect the majority of the students we work with, if you are someone with legacy status at a particular program, you should seriously consider applying to that program if you are looking for a BS/MD program for yourself.
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