I would say that purely merit based admission is impossible. For example, for Intel ISEF and similar contests, it is a huge advantage to have parents who are research scientists. Having experienced multiple Regeneron STS projects in our family/friends, I can’t understate how helpful it is to have parents in the field. Not only does this provide access to Mentors, Sponsors, Supervisors and Qualified Scientists (positions you need to complete a project), scientist parents can also give the kind of guidance, editing, and even teaching that a high school student needs to pull off this level of research.
@privatebanker your post was thought provoking. I think it’s healthy for me to examine different types of privilege and to let go of resentment.
Some have mentioned studies claiming that alumni giving would not fall if legacy considerations were revoked. I’m not sure about those studies because the one I looked up was done by the authors of a book called, “Affirmative Action for the Rich”, who are neither scientists nor unbiased. After all, that question is very difficult to study because you would have to go generations ahead. Many alumni become far more active and generous after their children or even grandchildren attend their alma mater. I would also say that the importance of legacy to alumni depends on the culture of the school. MIT (who dropped legacy) is very different from a small LAC or a state school ranked in the 40s.
Here’s an interesting passage from that study about how abolishing legacy would not negatively impact alumni giving:
“Prior to controlling for wealth, however, the results indicate that schools with legacy preference policies indeed have much higher alumni giving. These combined results suggest that higher alumni giving at top institutions that employ legacy preferences is not a result of the preference policy exerting influence on alumni giving behavior, but rather that the policy allows elite schools to over-select from their own wealthy alumni. In other words, the preference policy effectively allows elite schools essentially to discriminate based on socioeconomic status by accepting their own wealthy alumni families rather than basing admissions on merit alone.”
First of all, I don’t know how they arrived at their “suggestion” that legacy preference is not connected to alumni giving. Second of all, I’m assuming that the above refers to “Need Blind” colleges. Why would “Need Aware” colleges need the smoke screen of legacy for choosing full pay students? And in the end, colleges need full pay students. If these students are also legacies, they come with a deep appreciation of the environment of that college. If they applied ED (which is the only way legacy counts at many schools) they are 100% committed and thrilled about being there. It would make sense for colleges to seek kids who are going to be comfortable, enthusiastic, spirited, joining everything etc.
It would be interesting to see the transfer and graduation rates of legacies . . . But I think the bottom line is that colleges wouldn’t give them an extra consideration if they were not bringing extra benefit. Even if the benefit is just increased alumni involvement and money, how is that ethically different from athletes?
I guess what I’m saying is that legacy may not be any more unfair than consideration for donors or full-pay students. From what I’ve seen, legacies have to have the entire rest of the package also. I’d like to see less resentment towards kids with all the different hooks, and more research into why college is getting so expensive in our country.