Legacies - NOT an automatic admission!

1of42
Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:24:23 +0000

vossron:

Schools admit legacies because it is in their own best interest, for whatever reasons they perceive (e.g., fundraising to support financial aid). Schools don’t craft their classes to be fair to applicants; they admit the applicants they want the most, for their own reasons.



There’s an implication there that schools’ interests often don’t coincide with fairness to applicants. I would contend that the only “fairness” is what the schools want from their applicants. Is it fair that a smarter student gets rejected in favor of a better design student at RISD? Yes, because that’s what they’re looking for. Is it fair that a great leader, opinionated student interested in politics gets rejected at Caltech? Yes, because he/she’s not what they’re looking for. You see where I’m going… fair is defined by the schools themselves. People tend to get their own opinions about what the schools should be looking for and call any deviations unfair, but the fact is at the end of the day that the only arbiters of fair are the schools themselves.