“He thinks his kid would- or should- have a better chance” isn’t what qualifies a kid for a single digit college admit. It can risk being quite under-informed. “I think” my kid should get this. How about pondering why, what the match really is, both ways (that school for that kid and vice versa.) Not calling “unfair” and at the same time admitting one knows very little. Not calling “Black Box” when a family hasn’t dug deeper than USNews or the CDS. How hard is it to read a college website, dig in? That’s my position.
Congrats on UCLA.
Legacy has no place in college admissions other than demonstrated interest
When I peeked in here a couple of days ago, the majority seemed reluctant or unwilling to concede that there was any real legacy boost. I’m glad that that point seems to have been made and accepted.
Whether it’s fair or not is an entirely different question. I can’t answer that one simply, any more than I can say whether athletic recruiting, money or, faculty relationships should drive a boost in admissions. As much as I like the idea of a pure meritocracy, I am not sure I’d ever be able to define it let alone create it.
Chris Peterson, Assistant Director at MIT Admissions:
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So good for MIT! They’re certainly entitled to run their admissions with whatever philosophies they like. More power to them. No one is saying that there have to be legacy admissions or the world will end.
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There are certainly non-legacy (for a given school) students who equally come from a long line of educated people, who have means to go to college, who had the advantages of learning. That seems equally unfair as well given that there are students who come from homes without such traditions. Are those of you who are concerned that the legacy students are getting an unfair leg up concerned at all with the fact that your students have unfair legs up compared with the kids from less affluent families, less affluent school districts, backgrounds that don’t emphasize learning?
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From the quote above, if seems as though the person being quoted is concerned with the loss of “equal / better students who overcame more by not having those advantages accrued by prior generations.” So … for you participating in this thread, are you in favor of boosts for first-gen and / or low SES students? In other words, is it that you object to any kind of boost for anything (other than pure academic scores) or are there some boosts that you consider ok (just not legacy)?
Right. But it will take us right back to the futile attempt to figure out just how much legacy gives a real boost. And the belief (fear) some hold that it moves unequal kids into those few slots.
@Pizzagirl You know the super elites are liberal arts model based and undergraduates are not required to declare major and even they do they are free to change major almost at any time. Someone identified as a Classic potential can end up a STEM and vice versa. Now, if you are talking about the diversity of talents. Sure, if there’s a lack of Classic talents in the applicant pool then yes a slightly lower SAT shouldn’t be the road blocker. If I may speculate, were you thinking of the a few too many STEM fixated high stats Asian students when you presented your example? Regardless and putting political correctness aside for minute, why do you think the classics talents are more likely to be from the legacy pool? Wouldn’t they be equally if not more so possible to be pulled from the much bigger upper middle class non-legacy white applicants pool?
Well, actually, panpacific, at some elites you enter into specific schools / majors, such as engineering schools.
I did not say that Classics talents were more likely from a legacy pool. (How would I know?) I gave that hypothetical as an example for illustration’s sake. For all I know, they are equally distributed between legacy and non-legacy populations.
I would also note the following: Legacy preferences have historically benefited mostly white upper middle class families. As schools become more diverse (boosting first-gens; boosting URM presence; Asian populations of 25% or so at some schools, including my kids’), it sure would be a shame to “yank” legacy preference at this point.
And any elite which asks about your possible major will account for that in their review. Whether or not they have a separate school devoted to that.
@Pizzagirl For “practical purpose”, I’m not in the camp of yanking legacy preference. My children didn’t get any “preferential treatment” but their children might! But here I am, just trying to be “objective and fair” 
If any given college chose to wipe out legacy preference tomorrow, I’d be agnostic about it. My perspective is that they have the right to decide to privilege or not-privilege whomever they like. Stanford appears to strongly privilege athletes, from my point of view – well, ok, that’s what they want. Some colleges love their legacies (Notre Dame a great example); other colleges, not so much. Some colleges give athletic scholarships; in theory I’m not crazy about this, but I sent my kid to a school which offers such scholarships, so clearly I didn’t object with sufficient vigor to prohibit an application there. I am capable of voting with my feet.
The below was posted a year again on CC by a poster named Sue22, but I think it fits nicely here to illustrate the point that there is always some “unfairness” but what that is is predicated upon where you’re standing.
Warning: stereotypes to follow.
Everyone’s screwed.
The suburban white girl from MA who plays soccer, is the editor of the school paper, and volunteers knows she’s in a terribly oversubscribed demographic. Half her class is applying to the Ivies and NESCACs, and even with her 4.0 and strong test scores there’s no way for her to differentiate herself. “If only I lived in a small town in Idaho” she thinks, “I’d have it made.”
The kid from small-town Idaho knows he’s at a disadvantage because his school doesn’t offer AP’s and no one from his school has been admitted to an Ivy League college in 5 years. He points to the kid from a swanky New York private school offering 15 AP courses who obviously has an easier path to the Ivies.
The prep school kid notes that his class is made up of superstars. Even with his 2300 SAT he’ll never crack the top 10% of his class. Terribly unfair, and clearly he’s at a major disadvantage when it comes to elite admissions. If only he attended some mediocre public school across the border in NJ he’d be the valedictorian and he’d have a ticket to Harvard.
The high scoring middle class kid from a mediocre New Jersey school can’t afford to attend his top choices. Sadly, if he were a first gen. black kid from Mississippi his PSAT would have made the cutoff for NMSF and between that and minority scholarships the money would be pouring in.
The kid from Mississippi is trying to do it all on his own. How can anyone expect him to get into a top school when he has a terrible GC and so little support from his parents? If only he were one of those kids whose parents signed him up for Kumon math and Suzuki violin from the age of 4 like those Asian kids he’d be golden.
The Asian kid has read Espenshade’s research and knows she has to score higher and be a better all-around candidate to get into the schools she values, particularly because she’s applying as a STEM major. “Why should I pick a different major ? That Hispanic kid in my class isn’t even in the top 10 and I’m sure she’ll be welcomed to an Ivy with open arms” she thinks.
The Hispanic kid ranked #11 has only been in this country for 5 years. His parents attended college but they don’t seem to have any idea how American college admissions work. He knows he’s way behind all those suburban East Coast kids whose families have populated the Ivies for generations. They’re all legacies, right?
The suburban white girl from MA…
Just want to add that not all parents who went to elite schools are wealthy or advantaged. Some really did go for the education and experience and have ordinary, though upper middle class jobs. They are not millionaires and don’t necessary drive Teslas or even new cars.
Actually, some super selective schools like Columbia, Cornell, and Penn admit by division, and have restrictions on changing to a major in a different division. Even elite schools that do not admit by division can have some restricted majors that one has to meet some additional criteria (e.g. GPA) or apply to get into (e.g. Harvard visual environmental studies).
However, the legacy applicants have at least one college educated parent. So they are not disadvantaged in the ways that first generation to college applicants often are.
Maybe I missed it, but there is little discussion of WHY colleges favor legacies to any degree. My understanding is that the ones that do believe it is directly related to the growth of their endowments as families with multiple grads are statistically much more likely to give. If that’s genuinely the case, shouldn’t they be allowed, and even encouraged, to admit legacies?
Thanks to @al2simon for another excellent synopsis. I would not dismiss Hurtwitz’s suggestion outright though. I re-read the Arcidiacono study (as I promised @JHS) and the author made it pretty clear that “legacies are actually weaker candidates”. Here is a quote from the study:
However, controlling for course selection as freshmen raises legacy rank. The net effect is then a widening of the gap between white non-legacies and legacies over time. While the unadjusted class rank showed the median legacy improving their position relative to the median white non-legacy by 5.5 percentage points, adjusting for selection shows their position actually falls by 3.8 percentage points.
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf
Hurtwitz appeared somewhat apologetic for his findings…I wonder how much more apologetic Hurtwitz would be if he knows about the Arcidiacono study as well.
If you visit the Cornell website, you will find that for this university at least, this is not true. And there are others that are more like Cornell than like the model you describe.
But then, you may not consider Cornell to be super elite.
Maybe some need to shift from seeing college as a commodity.
Lol. Well there are the super elites, the super duper elites and then the super elitist 
Frank Bruni had some interesting stories in his book about how Cornell is viewed by students at other Ivies and by its own student body. I found his book a sad but fascinating read.