<p>Some kid named Harris applies to Harvard. Harris's father Newt graduated from Harvard. Harris is therefore a legacy, meaning that he is given a leg-up in admissions. </p>
<p>HOWEVER,</p>
<p>Harris's father Newt was not known to be a particularly successful student at Harvard. Let's say he was a "bad apple," or a "rotten egg," or even "one smellya*s codfish" when he was there. And Harvard admissions knows this. </p>
<p>Would this negatively affect poor-ol' Harris, giving him a leg-down? Would it act as some kind of "antihook" for him?</p>
<p>seems like an awfully big assumption to think that harvard admissions has specific knowledge of the less-than-ideal actions of a random alum from who knows how long ago. unless you have some other reason to believe they would?</p>
<p>How, exactly, does “Harvard admissions know[] this”? Because there’s a massive program of misusing confidential records? Because in addition to reading essays, recommendation letters, transcripts, and school reports, not to mention supplemental materials – applicants’ screenplays, their Intel papers, their poetry that won a school prize – admissions has the manpower and time to research thoroughly the undergraduate careers of the parents of thousands of legacy applicants? Getting, of course, multiple cross-confirmations, because they wouldn’t want to label anyone a “smelly@ss codfish” just on one person’s say-so.</p>
<p>In short, no. They don’t have the time for that stuff. They probably run a list of legacy applicants by the alumni office for a heads-up on who is a big deal there, but if the dean and at least half the senior admissions staff don’t already know who the parents are, it’s not going to make a big difference to anybody.</p>
<p>It appears that the preference for legacies is slight. I’m not sure it’s given much of a thought by the admissions folks, since it doesn’t seem to count for much. I doubt they’re going to penalize a student because some decades previously, his father was a bit of a rogue (remember - not so much, according to the tale told here, to be thrown out).</p>
<p>Maybe at some schools, less so at others like the Ivys where legacy admission rates are 4x that of regular applicants. I do agree that being the legacy of an infamous alumni likely won’t hurt…unless of course he tried to burn the campus down or something of that nature. If he eventually graduated, his academics couldn’t have been that bad…</p>
<p>“Maybe at some schools, less so at others like the Ivys where legacy admission rates are 4x that of regular applicants.”</p>
<p>Not really. The advantage appears mostly to be about the overall educational background of one’s parents, not about a conscious thumb on the scale for the children of alumni.</p>
<p>In a thread around here somewhere, someone noted that Harvard had examined the admit rates for Harvard legacies, and then the admit rate for the children of Princeton and Yale graduates. The results were that Harvard legacies do a little bit better than Princeton and Yale legacies (who receive no preference in Harvard admissions), but that Princeton and Yale legacies are admitted at a not too dissimilar rate as Harvard legacies.</p>
<p>Thus, the fact that 30% of legacies are admitted (meaning 70% are rejected) doesn’t mean that the actual status of legacy improves one’s chances for admission from roughly 6% to 30%, but rather that children of Ivy graduates have a large natural advantage over other applicants, generally.</p>
<p>The legacy status appears to help incrementally beyond that natural advantage.</p>
<p>“Bad Legacy” would be an excellent horror movie name. The plot: An alum, driven to desperation by his son’s rejection from his alma mater, plots his revenge against the board of directors.</p>