<p>I think the perception of the problem is exaggerated by the feeling that applicants or parents of applicants believe that being denied admission is because some undeserving legacy took their spot. Take a highly competitive school that has a freshman class of 1000 and which admits 2000 out of a pool of 15,000 applicants. If 5% of those admitted are undeserving legacies, that comes to 100 students. Yet there are probably 1000 highly qualified applicants who feel slighted by the admissions committee. If legacy preference were eliminated 900 would still feel slighted, except they would no longer be able to blame a legacy admission policy for their plight.</p>
<p>So who exactly is the victim of legacy preference? I would suggest that there are far more who think the are victims than actually are. The increasing diversity on most college campuses would suggest that it is not URMs who are being denied by legacy admits. Who is it that is getting squeezed? It would have to be highly qualified non-legacy, non-URMs, would it not? How then does the university make room for more of these highly qualified applicants? Eliminating legacy preference is one method. Another method would be to eliminate minority preferences. If the concern is for the pool of highly qualified applicants that are being denied, both methods should be acceptable. So who decides how the interests of all these subsets of applicants should be weighed in the admissions process? Mr. Kahlenberg or the colleges and universities? It has to be the schools. They are fully capable to taking Mr. Kahlenberg’s opinion and the comments of others into account when they set goals and standards for their institution.</p>