Legacy Admit is racist

[Anonymous]

My father wanted to go to Harvard. His college counselor told him he would have to be at the tippy top of the class to be considered because he was Catholic. He had very little money and his parents were uneducated immigrants, and he didn't know how to play the game at all, but he worked his tail off. He graduated first in his gargantuan public high school class, but he still didn't get into Harvard. He did, however, get into another non-HYP Ivy League college. Fast forward a generation, and I went there too. I was qualified by the standards of the time (today might be different) and even though I probably would have had other options, I was risk-averse and decided to apply there early to leverage the legacy advantage. Even at the time, the irony wasn't lost on me that the same policy that had held my father back gave me an edge. Fast forward one more generation, and my own child didn't want to apply to the school my father and I attended. They applied early to another dream school instead. They were as qualified as anyone could possibly be, but they were not a legacy at that school. They were deferred from that "HYP" school, but then they were admitted in the regular round to both that school and the one my father and I attended. In the end, they chose the "legacy" school, surprising even themselves. It was a sentimental choice, I think, and they now say they'd make the same choice again. An outsider would probably assume they chose that school because it was their best option, and maybe would question their qualifications and think they were admitted solely because they were a legacy, but their classmates knew they had turned down HYP and had earned the spot. It's not a clear-cut issue, and assumptions and generalizations simply don't tell the whole story. Even big donors are a mixed bag - yeah, they may get their less qualified kid into a school, but they also fund scholarships that give kids like my first-gen father a chance to attend these places.