No separate process
Stephanie Triantafillou said she supports
a legacy preference. But recalling her sister’s
case left her with questions about her own.
“I’d like to know: Did I get in solely on
merit, or did my legacy status help me?”
she said. “I’d like to believe that I didn’t
need it. It’s like getting bumped up to the
front of the line, not because you earned it,
but because somebody cut you a break.”
Triantafillou may well have gotten a
spot driven in part by legacy preference,
but not necessarily. Farmer said that many
of the 120 or so nonresident legacy students
who matriculate each year are so qualified
that they would get in regardless of family
status. For those who would not, admis-
sions office staff lend a hand as they can,
considering legacy status every step of the
way. They are trained to understand when
a boost is appropriate by viewing examples
of highly competitive, out-of-state non-
legacy candidates and competitive out-of-
state legacy applicants. A competitive legacy
student who would otherwise be waitlisted
in the nonresident pool might be switched
to an admit, for example.
At the end of their preliminary look at
all applicants, the admissions staff proofreads
its decisions. Legacies, like everything else,
get another look here, too. If the staff finds,
for example, that they may have misunderstood a school’s grading scale, it could
change the fortunes of a nonresident legacy
applicant who is sitting on the waitlist.
“The other way we do it is just by looking at numbers at the end,” Farmer said.
“We’ll say, ‘Well, you know, it looks like
maybe we were too tough on out-of-state
legacy students, so let’s go take a look at the
out-of-state legacy students who we’ve got
on the waiting list, and let’s see if there
really are some people we should admit —
not assuming that we should admit them all,
or any of them, but just to kind of check up
on ourselves, so that before we give bad
news for somebody, we’re confident that
we have to deliver bad news.
“We’re always thinking about legacy
students in this, but they’re not pulled out
and put in a separate process,” Farmer said.
“There is no absolute lower limit, and
there’s no absolute upper limit. We’re trying to make the decisions that seem reasonable based on the number of spaces we
‘We got
a letter saying
she was
qualified,
but they just
didn’t have
enough room
for her.
I’m only
human.
If she were
JASON E. MICZEK/AP IMAGES FOR CAROLINA ALUMNI REVIEW
equal in every
other way
with another
candidate,
I wouldn’t
have minded
a favorable call
on the basis
of legacy.
I guess
circumstances
alter feelings.’
Doyne Allison ’ 73
have and based on our understanding of
the competition this year. All that sounds
really kind of hit or miss, I know. But
that’s the only way to do it and give kids a
fair shake as individual people.”
When I mentioned to Farmer that the
variables involved in the decision process
— which he called a “series of educated
guesses, or a series of fairly arguable judg-
ments” — seem like a mystical force that
can’t be captured by those outside Jackson
Hall, he acknowledged that feeling.
Stephanie Triantafillou described it this
way: “It’d be nice if they gave you a sheet
that said, ‘This is why we accepted you;
these are the top reasons.’ I mean, wouldn’t
you like to know?”
“It’s hard for them, you’re right,”
Farmer said. “The uncertainty of it is hurt-
ful to people who are applying, and it
makes them anxious. I understand that. As
an office, we understand that.”
Farmer said the way to think of the col-
lege admissions process is “more like a hir-
ing decision than like taking a test.” This,
then, is often a young person’s first con-
frontation with real-world judgment calls,
where the old saddles with which we
Doyne Allison ’ 73
and daughter Robin.
Allison and his wife,
Jill ’ 75, taught their
daughter that she
could do anything.
Robin was a 4. 5
GPA student in the
top 5 percent of her
class with a 1200-
plus on the SAT.
UNC told her she
was fully qualified
but placed her on its
waitlist in January
2003 and officially
denied her application for admission
that June. Now a
magna cum laude
UNC-Greensboro
graduate, she felt
she didn’t have “the
room to expand”
that she might have
at Chapel Hill.
