<p>One of my closest friends from Harvard is the child of a tenured faculty member. He is very bright with a great personality, but he’s the first to tell you that he did not have competitive credentials as a high school senior (as indeed he told me the night I met him). He had good class rank, but scores and ECs well below what you’d expect to see from an unrecruited WASP admitted to Harvard. Plus, he got into Harvard and UMass, but nowhere else, even though he applied to several match schools less competitive than Harvard. We can never know for sure whether his faculty parent played a role in the decision, but he believes that he got in largely because of that connection, and I think that’s the best explanation for his admissions results. Of course, disclaimers, this is one individual, this was several years ago, yada yada.</p>