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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DH and I were both Harvard grads (public school kids, first in the family in each case).  Our DC thought legacy advantage was appalling and no wanted part of it.  Got into a peer institution EA, so we never had to sort out our feelings about it.

I’m ambivalent about it.  OTOH, I was first gen in my family to go to college FT (vs PT night school, while also working).  So it feels kinda effed up that legacy becomes problematic just when the alumns with kids who might benefit from it stop being from “elite” families.  OTOH, Harvard was life-changing for DH and I in a way it wouldn’t have been for DC, who grew up within those changed lives.  So I certainly get the “give this kind of transformative experience to someone who needs it more than your already privileged kid” logic.

Meanwhile, tuition has gotten so ridiculously expensive that, even without legacy, rich kids will continue to be grossly over represented at these schools. [/quote]

How do you know it was Harvard that was “life-changing”. You came from a family where you were first generation college.   Virtually any decent college under those circumstances would’ve been “life changing” for you.[/quote]

Nope, we both have sibs who went to a range of decent through public Ivy colleges and both we and our DC have very different lives than they and they kids do.  And FWIW, we were both first kids in family to go to Harvard, but our parents were college educated.  His dad at a state flagship. My parents (who went to college PT at night) gotten decent educations at what I think are now called directional schools — BA in Dad’s case.  MA in Mom’s.[/quote]

Ah ok. I didn’t read your post thoroughly enough.  Your and DH’s parents all DID have college degrees - night school and MAs count, you see - so you’re not first generation disadvantaged anything.  Also, the anecdotal experience of you and your siblings proves nothing.

Case in point:  me.  My parents didn’t graduate high school and were truly working class.  I went to a no-name college and non-I vy League law school (not even that close, honestly) and ended up making partner and millions of dollars at a firm where the large majority of my colleagues were Ivy League (Harvard being most common) educated and I and my kids live “very different” lives from my siblings and their cousins as a result.  But our lives aren’t different from the literally hundreds of Ivy League grads who I know.  Same neighborhoods, same public/private elementary and high schools, same vacation destinations, same friends, same incomes, same connections, etc etc etc.  You realize that in DC the Ivy League is a dime a dozen, right?  [/quote]

Never claimed to be disadvantaged.  I wrote as a poster who did not, herself, benefit from legacy preference at Harvard but whose kid is a double legacy.  And explained how that left me ambivalent about whether there should be such a preference.

And, yeah, I realize I live in an area where lots of my neighbors have Ivy League degrees — that’s an example of what I meant by Harvard being a life-changing experience.  (I didn’t say it was all for the good, LOL!)

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