<p>Being a legacy at Vanderbilt as of two years ago means NOTHING.</p>
<p>At Vanderbilt specifically, there are more direct legacies that apply each year than there are spots in the freshman class.</p>
<p>So, assuming they only accepted half of them, that leaves little room for affirmative action beneficiaries, jewish people, and internationals (not making this up, reference Hustler article online about stated desire to equal Duke’s minority and international rates in 5 years, kind of like Stalin’s five year plans, we all know what good that brought the world).</p>
<p>The higher ED acceptance rate boils down to this simple fact. While Vanderbilt ultimately wants to change its public image so Hillary Clinton and other liberal demoncrats can give speeches at Vanderbilt instead of Belmont/Fisk without being labeled as favoring old money establishment by CNN, it simply is not possible to do this in a four year cycle as every major alumni donor, most of whom were Greek, will…stop donating. Instead, they sneak in a few important legacies, children of well to do families, good looking wiminz, and an athlete here and there in the ED cycle to appease some of these people while still losing a few donors each year for denying legacies from donor families.</p>
<p>Surely in about 15 years after Vanderbilt has completed its shift to become more like Yale and Oxford with rainbow-painted Residential Colleges and a fresher, more liberal and Northeastern alumni base exists, perhaps the legacy factor will be “formally” reintroduced into the admissions process, but until then, they’ll keep on nixing multiple generation Southern families that just can’t produce those 2400s from the Vanderbilt family slowly but surely to make room for Juanita Goldstein and John New Jersey.</p>