Merit certainly exists, but people do not agree how it should be defined or measured. An extreme example would be a politician who has fanatical supporters (who see the politician with high merit) and fanatical opponents (who see the politician with negative merit). In other words, it is often a subjectively defined opinion as to what it is in any given context.
On the more mundane topic of college admissions, this thread is basically about the question “should legacy status be part of merit for the college’s purposes as it makes admission decisions?”. You can also construct similar questions replacing “legacy status” with other attributes that applicant has (“development relation”, “recruited athlete status”, “URM status”, “SAT/ACT scores”, etc.). Basically, any college with more applicants than it has space for (accounting for expected yield) must decide which of them have enough merit (as the college defines “merit”) to be admitted.
Some colleges may think that the “merit” of legacies is that of (a) the donation flow, and (b) maintaining connection to dynastic VIPs in business, politics, etc… This does not mean that such “merit” is earned by the applicants / students themselves, as opposed to being “inherited”.
To me, merit is something associated with an individual or a group of individuals. Whether the legacy admission policy has “merit” from a college’s perspective is something entirely different.
As I wrote above, the definition and measure of merit is not something that all people will agree on. One person may see merit where another person may see corruption.
The boost that a student gets from legacy admission pales in comparison to the boost they get for attending private high schools. I read an article recently about this and if I have time later I’ll post it to the thread. The numbers I remember were something like around 7% of high schoolers attend private high schools in the US but account for over a third of selective private university undergraduates. @MaximoGomez your kids go to a private high school and I expect they will do well with admissions. I personally think that these rich private universities that amass money left and right should not benefit from non-profit status, let’s say above a certain endowment. As a tax payer that is one area that I’d like to see addressed.
Of course, the academically elite private schools are also typically selective admission. Whether the better college outcomes are due to selection effect or treatment effect or both is not always obvious.
Yes, the apparent boost would be greater (also, some non-religious schools may also be focused on something other than academics). However, as noted above, it is not necessarily obvious how much is selection effect (i.e. students who are stronger academically or are legacies, etc.) or treatment effect (the school actually helps the students get into more selective colleges) or both.
I get your point. Correlation does not imply causation. That doesn’t stop all of us here on CC from claiming all sorts of causation in the holistic admissions process to highly rejective universities. I’m just pointing out that the correlation between attending private high schools is stronger than being a legacy candidate for admissions. The effect might indeed be additive, in which case double kudos to @MaximoGomez’s kids if they decide to attend their parent’s alma matter.
And another part is that they can select among the most talented public school kids. A small number of our talented local middle school kids end up at an elite high school. None were legacy, but all ended up in elite colleges as well.