Affirmative Action for Rich People

Applying to College
1

<p>I was reading a blog when I came across this post:</p>

<p>The anthology, Affirmative Action For The Rich, looks at legacy admissions at America's universities. The book was edited by Richard Kahlenberg whose long argued for class, instead of race, based Affirmative Action.</p>

<p>From Daniel Golden's essay, "An Analytic Survey of Legacy Preferences"</p>

<pre><code>"As overall admission rates have declined, the power of legacy preferences at some elite institutions has increased substantially. For instance, Princeton admitted 41.7 percent of legacy applicants in 2009--more than 4.5 times the 9.2 percent rate of non-legacies. That is a far greater disparity than in 1992, when legacy applicants were accepted at 2.8 times the rate of other candidates.

Elsewhere among the Ivies, Brown University admitted 33.5 percent of alumni children in 2006, compared to a 13.8 percent overall rate. The year before, Brown accepted 36 percent of legacies, compared to 15.1 percent of all applicants. The University of Pennsylvania admitted 33.9 percent of legacy applicants in 2008,about double its overall admission rate of 16.4."
</code></pre>

<p>Do you think students are being admitted because they are legacies, or because they have better academic preparation (i.e. privileged upbringing, extracurricular activities, tutor)?</p>

<p>Does the economy have anything to do with this, since-perhaps- the upper-middle class families can afford the ticket price?</p>

2

<p>The UPenn figure is skewed because legacies are only given preference in the ED round; what was the overall ED rate for UPenn for 2008? I would imagine it was similar…</p>

3

<p>Ivy legacies, I would guess, are usually highly motivated and have strong academic profiles. Apples usually don’t fall far from trees and when they do - they don’t apply. It’s a self-selecting pool I would imagine.</p>

<p>I’m not surprised or disappointed in this information here.</p>

4

<p>I would bet that very good schools don’t lower their standards much for Legacy Preference, But I’m not sure you can make the same statement for URM (this I can understand) and Recruited Athletes ( Why?/ Why? / Why?)… </p>

<p>As for “since-perhaps- the upper-middle class families can afford the ticket price?” - Do we still have a middle class in this country???</p>