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<p>I certainly realize that. However, weren’t state schools created particularly to service the people who reside in that state? Athletes have athletic merit; URMs add much needed cultural and social diversity; low-income/disadvantaged students faced great challenges.</p>
<p>Certainly, it’s not ‘fair’, since no one can pick whether they’re born a URM/in-state/disadvantaged. However, I still think legacy admissions is ‘worse’ than other types of affirmative action, because the point of it is almost wholly to raise money (rather than to add more diversity, choose students who’ve faced obstacles, students with great skills, etc.); I’d rather even out the playing field as much as possible than give preferential treatment to some just to try to get more alumni donations (also, it’s still debated whether legacy admissions increases a school’s donations that significantly anyway). </p>
<p>Obviously, universities are perfectly within their rights to admit students based on legacy admissions, or any other factor they want. Like I said, I don’t think this is huge, super important problem; I personally disagree with the practice, and if I had children, I wouldn’t want my school to give them preferential treatment due to who their parent is.</p>