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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]21:22 You're missing the point. There are non-legacies with the same (or better) grades, test scores and accomplishments as the aforementioned. 30% is a very high legacy acceptance rate.

If a legacy wants to apply to another top school, and really wants to go, they should apply ED. 
[/quote]

Do you have statistics that demonstrate that the legacies are not very top applicants themselves?  The aforementioned example of 2350 sat and 3.96 uw gpa by a previous poster who said that their child is a legacy, seem to me like they would be competitive with or without a legacy component.  PP did not go into the student's accomplishments, but I am certain that they had many of those as well.  So I am not certain, unless you have statistical information to support your claim, that we can say that the [i]admitted[/i] (many more are rejected, I assure you) legacies had less qualifications than the general applicant pool. [/quote]

NP here. Nobody disagrees with you on that point:  we all agree that the legacies who are accepted are probably among the top applicants. This doesn't negate the fact that these top applicant legacies get a huge bump. Maybe a math example will help with the understanding here. Bear with me!

According to this Crimson article, Harvard accepts 30% of legacy applicants, Yale accepts 20% of legacy applicants, and legacies make up 12-13% of Harvard's entering class that year (source:  http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/5/11/admissions-fitzsimmons-legacy-legacies/).  Also according to the Crimson, in 2011 (when that first article was written), Harvard accepted 6.2% of applicants, i.e., , in 2011 Harvard mailed admissions letters to 2,158 applicants from a pool of 34,950 applicants.

Another interesting factoid in that 2nd article include the stat that 3,800 applicants were ranked first in their class, so Harvard simply didn't have room for all of these stellar applicants.  (I have no idea what the overlap is between legacies and valedectorians, but I assume it's not perfect).  (source:  http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/31/percent-class-students-year/)

So, let's do some math.  Of the 2,158 admissions letters mailed out in 2011, about 259 (12%) were mailed to legacy applicants. This means 1,899 admissions were mailed out to everyone else (unhooked students, development cases, athletes).  Now, if 30% of legacy applicants were accepted, this means that about 863 applicants were legacies, which is consistent with Harvard accepting about 30% of the legacy applicants (259 kids) and rejecting/waitlisting about 70% (604 kids) of the legacy applicants.

So what's the point? The point is that 259 kids had a 30% chance of getting into Harvard. And 34,000 kids (rough adjustment that reduces the total applicant pool of 34,950 by the number of legacy kids) had a 6.2% chance of getting into Harvard (that 6.2% figure for general applicants is actually lower if you re-weight it to remove the high acceptance rates for certain groups like legacies, ED and athletes, but I don't have the time). And as I pointed out above, at least 3,800 of that pool of 34,950 were stellar kids at the tops of their classes, and numerically not all of them were legacies (3,800 valedictorians >863 legacy kids). So yes, legacies have a huge advantage.

(Yes, I'm a nerd. Also, I don't know about you guys, but these acceptance numbers are pretty discouraging.)[/quote]

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