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[quote=Anonymous]I appreciate the interest in this and the impulse to understand what's going on. I't's the sort of thing I love myself!  I've done econometrics at different points during my career. I'm also a parent who attended an Ivy whose kid just got accepted at a better, different Ivy, as a non-legacy obviously (and from an area public HS). So, with that introduction....

I think there are a lot of possible variables here, and the risk is that some variables may be capturing more than one thing. So many different factors go into acceptance at a selective college: legacy, GPA, NMSSF status, whether you even apply because you are confident you can afford it without merit aid and/or financial aid will be sufficient, whether your ECs are at a state or national level of excellence, and even the mood of the AD the day she reads the app.

So, a variable for legacy status (yes/no) may be confounded with things like family income. In particular, there is probably a correlation between legacy status and  family income, and this probably affects the family's ability to buy one-on-one SAT tutoring, the ability to buy high-quality soccer coaching and participate on a travel team (better EC's and/or athletic recruitment), the decision about whether the family can afford Princeton (whether to even apply), and (sadly) URM status is still catching up with legacy status.

These other factors would inflate or deflate the importance of a single variable called "legacy status" in different ways, if there was no adjustment for them. But it would seem almost impossible for you to get HHI data so you could hold income constant.

I think there's definitely something to the lgegacy argument. Heck, so long as Harvard acknowledges that they accept 30% of legacies vs. 6% of regular applicants (actually probably less), there has to be something there.

But as long as you know this, and you provide the proper caveats with your numbers, I say go for it![/quote]

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