Legacy Applicants 7 Times More Likely to Get Into Elite Colleges
sDespite the dissembling and the public relations spinning by America's elite colleges and universities, we have known for a long time that a student applicant to Harvard has a massive advantage toward getting in if a Winthrop or Caitlin has a parent who went to Harvard. Yes, that's right--knowledge is power, and power gets the knowledge. A recent dissertation study now documents that advantage. From the Times:
A new study of admissions at 30 highly selective colleges found that legacy applicants get a big advantage over those with no family connections to the institution — but the benefit is far greater for those with a parent who earned an undergraduate degree at the college than for those with other family connections.
According to the study, by Michael Hurwitz, a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of