<p>Is it to give the wasp establishment an advantage over outsiders(minorities)?</p>
<p>No. It is called donations. The school, like anything else, runs on money contributed. </p>
<p>Catholic schools, HBCU schools, Jewish Universities all like legacies too, it’s not just “the wasp establishment”. As awcntdb said, it’s all about donations. If you attended a school and donate money to the school, you’re likely to donate even more if your kid graduates from there as well. And then the kid donates, and maybe their kid goes there, and the school has a nice pipeline of money. Schools want you to feel good about them so you’ll donate - having more than one generation go to a school usually equates to good feelings (and $$).</p>
<p>A college might also assume that an applicant will be more likely to succeed at their institution if he or she already has family that went there. But yeah, it’s probably more about the money. </p>
<p>money money money money money… MONEY!</p>
<p>Schools like Harvard with their multi-billion endowments have to get that money from somewhere, right? And guess where a huge majority of it comes from? Former successful Harvard alumni, who, in their minds, associate their financial success in life with their education of Harvard. They were given the gift of success from Harvard, and they now decide to give back in return. But consider those millionaires who have their own talented children that they want to follow the same education and path? What would happen if their children were rejected unreasonably? Well, if their children had sub-2000 SATs and a low GPA, it would be reasonable, but if these children had top 9 Academic Index(s), then the former alumni would definitely be angry. And this would result in those multi-million donations fueling the billion dollar endowment of Harvard to cease. </p>
<p>This would be a bad case for Harvard, and that is why legacy admissions are completely hated by those whose parents are not alumni and often the outcry and cause of rage from equally talented applicants who just didn’t have the advantage of legacy.</p>
<p>Sad story, but that’s just how ‘unfair’ life is, at least in the scope of college applications to the Ivy League/HYPSM.</p>
<p>There is also the matter of what they want people to believe. They want alumni to believe that there is a large legacy preference in order to keep the donations coming, and so that if they reject a legacy kid, they alumni may figure that if the kid couldn’t get in with the legacy preference, then the kid had no chance anyway. But they want the non-alumni to believe that the legacy preference is small, because if the non-alumni believe that it is large, they may not bother applying in belief that it is futile.</p>
<p>Additionally, legacies might have an advantage just because they’re more likely to attend the school than non legacies. Kids will generally have more exposure to the school, showing more interest which colleges obviously like, so it kind of seems like an ED type boost but in miniature. Obviously, the money thing is a huge part of it too.</p>