<p>Oh no, not “elitism” - that scary feeling that someone who accomplished more and got into a better law school gets rewarded!</p>
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<p>Actually, if you look at the entire history of USNews rankings, Stanford and Harvard switch spots quite frequently.</p>
<p>^ He said it; I don’t have the link. Your local library may have old copies, not sure if you can access them online.</p>
<p><a href=“News, Politics, Sports, Mail & Latest Headlines - AOL.com”>News, Politics, Sports, Mail & Latest Headlines - AOL.com;
<p>The undeserved arrogance is awe-inspiring.</p>
<p>Why would Stanford beat out Harvard? Harvard has more than twice the people yet Stanford is unable to beat it even though having higher quality peers and better per-capita resources is easier for a smaller institution than a large one. Harvard also, in general, has better national placement than Stanford does.</p>
<p>The dean at Stanford also stated that SLS often losses in the cross-admit battles with Yale and Harvard.</p>
<p>There’s also the additional benefit that having your children be Harvard legacies instead of Stanford legacies is superior too.</p>
<p>I understand the legacy factor for law schools admissions (if that’s what you are referring to) is not that important – unless there are some major donations involved, or the person is unusually prominent in the field.</p>
<p>I don’t mean law, I meant for undergrad. People have told me that people who attend the graduate institutions of top law schools give their children legacy status for undergraduate programs as well.</p>
<p>That depends on the school. Every school has its own legacy rules. For example, Harvard College specifically states that legacy can only be activated if the parents graduate from Harvard College, not any other Harvard program.</p>
<p>Hmmm … where do you find these rules?</p>
<p>They are well known, for Harvard at least.</p>
<p>What about UCLA? My parents attended UCLA for grad school, if I applied to their law school would that give me any sort of boost?</p>
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<p>Definitely not true at Harvard (I am an alumni interviewer). Each school has its own rules.</p>
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<p>I agree with Hanna that at Harvard, the legacy rules are widely understood to be applicable only to the particular school you graduated from. For example, a parent who graduated from HLS will help you get into HLS, but not into any other Harvard school.</p>
<p>But hey, if you don’t believe us, you can go right to the source. You can contact the Harvard adcoms yourself and ask them how they run legacy admissions.</p>
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<p>Highly doubtful. After all, the UC’s in general do not run a legacy program. For example, legacy admissions don’t help people get into UC for undergrad, so it’s hard to see how or why they would help for grad.</p>
<p>Now, I will make a digression and say that one small caveat should be made. There is a category of admits that is largely shrouded in secrecy in the UC system - that of the ‘special admits’. These are the candidates that one of the UC Regents or some other highly prominent officers at UC can promote at their discretion. For example, if your parents happened to donate a lot of money to UC, you can probably get special admit consideration. </p>
<p>I can think of one person who almost certainly got admitted to Berkeley through a special admit. This guy had a terrible academic record in high school, but somewhat rehabilitated himself through strong performance in community college classes. Still, according to the UC rules at the time, he was academically ineligible for UC freshmen admissions because the rules clearly state that you have to have a certain academic index score (a combination of high school GPA + SAT scores) to even be eligible for a spot at any UC, not even the lowest-level UC, because he did not have the minimum score. However, he had 3 things going for him. #1, he was a Hispanic, back in the days before Proposition 209. #2, more importantly, his sister, who was a Berkeley graduate, also happened to be close friends with the head of minority admissions in the Berkeley College of Engineering. Most important of all, #3, and unbeknownst to anybody at Berkeley, this officer was getting ready to quit Berkeley to take a position at another school. So she basically had no reason not to help her friend out by admitting her otherwise ineligible brother. As it turned out, she left a mess, because this guy promptly flunked out of Berkeley. But what does she care if was leaving a mess? She was leaving Berkeley anyway. </p>
<p>When it comes to any of these ‘special admit’ programs such as affirmative action, legacies, athletic admissions, and so forth, I think one vital aspect of the program is that if one admissions officer consistently admits special-admit students who do poorly, then not only should those students be expelled, but that officer should be fired because that officer is clearly being irresponsible in admitting students who should not be admitted. In other words, there has to be some sort of accountability process to make sure these admissions officers are not abusing their power. If an admissions officer constantly admits bad students, then that officer is clearly doing a poor job, and anybody in the world who does their job poorly should not expect to keep their job. For example, if I am a consultant, and I keep producing failed project after failed project, I should expect to be fired. However, I know of no reasonable way to solve the problem of an admissions officer who is planning to leave the job anyway. This person may admit a whole boatload of bad students, and by the time they flunk out, that officer is long gone.</p>