Family legacy

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Nov 26, 2014
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My father graduated from West Point (1981). I wanted to know if this effects my chances of admission at all.
 
For the most part, no; unless of course you piss your RC off claiming some legacy status entitles you to admittance. The only potential help is if your father did at least 20 years and retired, and that gets you the Presidential nomination.
 
A father at West Point is not a legacy. If you had 3 generations before you it might help your chances, but they wouldn't kick out a more qualified candidate for you.


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A father at West Point is not a legacy. If you had 3 generations before you it might help your chances, but they wouldn't kick out a more qualified candidate for you.

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Technically, legacy does refer to immediate family members, ie father, mother, siblings. But it won't make up for a low WCS or lack of nomination.
 
Ca2 is correct it is technically a legacy. I agree with others unless dead old Dad has/had several stars on his shoulders I wouldn't place much weight on it getting you an appointment.

Caveat: the reason I think the stars help is not from an admissions board perspective, but from a nomination aspect. MoCs may decide because of those stars that you will get a principal nomination, and thus, an appointment, regardless of what your WCS is (as long as it is 3Q)
~ Again not because you are per se a legacy, but a military dependent of a General.

Look at Sen. MCCain. He wasn't a very competitive applicant according to him, but Dad was an Admiral. If I recall he even says that he was almost the anchor at USNA.
 
Ca2 is correct it is technically a legacy. I agree with others unless dead old Dad has/had several stars on his shoulders I wouldn't place much weight on it getting you an appointment.

Caveat: the reason I think the stars help is not from an admissions board perspective, but from a nomination aspect. MoCs may decide because of those stars that you will get a principal nomination, and thus, an appointment, regardless of what your WCS is (as long as it is 3Q)
~ Again not because you are per se a legacy, but a military dependent of a General.

Look at Sen. MCCain. He wasn't a very competitive applicant according to him, but Dad was an Admiral. If I recall he even says that he was almost the anchor at USNA.

+ Grandpa was an Admiral as well.
 
Last year, we were told multiple times that family history at West Point does not help your application. We were also told that a visit to West Point does not help your application as well. However....neither of those facts would hurt your application. You will notice that the only place the admission folks see your family history is in your essays in your application if you care to mention it. I would certainly mention it there. Do everything possible. My son took the SAT for the third time to have his results hit a week before the deadline. We also visited West Point in the same month in a blizzard. There are a lot of cases where the admission folks are looking for a tie-breaker between your application and someone else's. Give them every reason to give you that appointment. My son got one and I think all those things helped his application.
 
You will notice that the only place the admission folks see your family history is in your essays in your application if you care to mention it.

or during candidate interview, if you care to mention it.
 
Agree with AZ2018, except that the USMA application does ask if you have siblings who attended or are attending a service academy. I've wondered why they ask that question if, in fact, they don't take it into account during the application process.
 
sibling question on application

I was told that when you have a sibling who has or is attending one of the academies that you probably have a pretty good (vs someone who doesnt have sibling attending) idea of what you are getting into.
 
True

True you are likely more aware what you are getting into, but I know first had some siblings that did not get in at USNA. Maybe its added a point but wasn't enough for them to overcome other factors.
 
Some things are for statistical purposes as well - if you don't know who has a sibling or parent who attended, how can you determine whether or not they are more or less likely to: accept, be retained, perform, graduate. Same thing with what majors a candidate is interested in or what other schools they are applying to. They don't factor into admissions especially since you don't declare a major until you are a yuk/sophomore, but it does help for marketing to determine who/how to reach the right candidates. If you don't collect the data points, you can't use it as a variable in your analysis/draw conclusions.
 
I read some report once, that showed that children of grads, as a group, had the highest graduation rate at the academy (It was either USNA or USMA, not sure which). The next highest group was Eagle Scouts/Gold Scouts. I don't know if the academies give any preference in admissions to legacies or not, but I thought that was interesting. It makes we wonder, though, why is this the case? Do grads really talk about what the experience was like at the academy so their kids are more prepared? Do the kids want to feel the same pride of graduating from the academy that there parents have? Do academy grads raise there kids differently that would allow their kids to have the personalities/drive/skills/discipline to succeed? Is it DNA?
 
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