<p>I find this discussion odd. These private universities are, in some sense at least, businesses, and they’ve decided that a legacy preference is part of their business model. I don’t believe that it has anything to do–today at least–with keeping anybody out. Maybe it keeps some small number of people out who would otherwise have gotten in (although I’m not convinced that’s it’s very many at all). But I don’t see it as different in kind from other elements of the business model, such as how much they charge full-pay students, how many internationals they will take, the desire to take students from all over the country, etc. All of these decisions disadvantage some students who might be more qualified in terms of stats. I think they do some of these things to maintain the strength of the brand. Policies that hurt the brand–like discriminating against Jews–are scrapped. If the schools decide that legacy preference is hurting the brand, they’ll scrap that too, as some have done. If you really don’t like legacy preference, the thing to do is to preferentially apply to schools that don’t have it.</p>