<p>It’s a fair question. As I said, I’ve never seen Swarthmore publish an acceptance rate for legacies.</p>
<p>I have seen data for a range of elite colleges and universities. Here’s some (first number is overall acceptance rate, second number is legacy acceptance rate:</p>
<p>Penn
34%
16%</p>
<p>Dartmouth
57%
27%</p>
<p>Columbia
51%
32%</p>
<p>Yale
45%
22%</p>
<p>Princeton
43%
15%</p>
<p>Cornell
43%
37%</p>
<p>Harvard
40%
11%</p>
<p>Brown
35%
14%</p>
<p>[Perspectives:</a> A Legacy of Racial Injustice in American Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_10519.shtml]Perspectives:”>http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_10519.shtml)</p>
<p>I see no reason to believe that Swarthmore is somehow radically different than these schools; however, it is certainly possible that the legacy rate is only 50% higher, not 100%.</p>
<p>BTW, having double the acceptance rate for subgroups is hardly surprising. The acceptance rate for Asian Americans at Swarthmore has been running at least 50% higher than the overall rate in recent years. Nobody suggests this results from some grand conspiracy to unfairly favor Asian American applicants. It’s just the way the numbers have worked out.</p>
<p>It’s also possible that right now is the historic low point for legacy acceptance rates. Swarthmore currently mails less than half of its acceptance letters to white domestic applicants, while nearly all of Swarthmore’s legacies are still white US applicants (although that is changing).</p>