Reply to Big 3 College Placement 2018-19 Cycle

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t think anyone is in denial.  Most of the posters say it helps.   It’s a question of whether you can draw any general conclusions about the legacy pool or claim that you must be hooked to be admitted.   [/quote]
Exactly.  It's the folks dismissing certain admit as merely "legacies" who are, without any evidence, implying that these students were somehow less qualified or deserving on the merits.  When in fact the opposite is generally true.[/quote]

There are certain similarities and dissimilarities between a track race and vying for admission to highly selective schools.  In both cases many worthy candidates are competing with one another.  There are a limited number of prizes in track and seats in Freshman class.  On an oval track it appears as though, as you go from the outermost to the innermost lane, each runner has longer distance to run than the runners in the inner lanes.  But we know all runners have exactly the same distance to run.  Whereas, in the case of admissions, all candidates compete on a straight-line path not oval.  But certain considerations such as politically connected, large donations, recruited athlete, affirmative action, legacy, under-represented geographic locations/ethnicity/whether LGBTQ or straight etc. will place such applicants at various distances closer to the finish line (admission offer) than applicants having no such qualifiers.  If we are to go by the plaintiff's arguments in Harvard University admissions case, Asian American applicants are placed behind the start line (similar to a track runner having to carry extra weights for the race).

Of course, not all legacies get admitted.  That doesn't mean legacy status doesn't get bonus points.  Just because a legacy student didn't get admitted to the legacy school but admitted to a similarly selective school in the area doesn't mean the legacy school didn't give bonus points to the student.  One can try to convince oneself by saying that legacy has no role in their or their children's admission but they can not fool their conscience.         [/quote]

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