<p>bouda, do you mean “facbrats” where parents are professors at HYP? Or facbrats whose parents are professors at other institutions? We heard by word of mouth (a friend who has worked at H for a long time) that H would give some advantage in admissions to children of current H faculty, so that applicants whose parents are professors at other institutions might have to overcome being a “facbrat” since H (or Y or P) don’t want to fill their classes with facbrats. In other words, being the child of a faculty member at a non-HYPSM institution could be a disadvantage, because institutions don’t want too many kids of professors in one class. </p>
<p>I think it’s possible that a smart kid whose parents are professors might have a slight advantage, esp. if the parents are professors at an Ivy, but that slight advantage comes from value placed on education, opportunities for travel, more than the parents’ actual jobs. Similar to legacies.</p>
<p>That said, the vast majority of the children of my colleagues – I work at a large, well-regarded public university in the West – not only didn’t choose to go to an Ivy, they didn’t even apply to Ivies. They opted, instead, for the free or mostly-free ride that the children of faculty get at the large publics. I know that regional trends enter in here, too: it is unusual even for good students to go out of state for school, in a number of western states.</p>