<p>Brown is no different from the other Ivies and many top-tier schools: being a legacy is no guarantee, but it helps. Being the legacy from a family that gives money (especially lots of money) helps even more. For better and for worse, the relationship between the admissions office and the development office has grown very strong in recent years.</p>
<p>For a sad, scary, maddening read, take a look at Daniel Golden's book "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates." Golden is a Harvard grad and an education reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He uses different schools -- Harvard, Duke, Notre Dame, Stanford, etc. -- to make different points. The chapter on Brown is focused on the children of celebrities. The book seems very well researched. As an alumni admissions interviewer for my alma mater, I found it very upsetting.</p>
<p>Despite my feelings about these matters, though, I am still thrilled my son will be in Providence in the fall!</p>
<p>Legacies at all the ivy-leagues and the schools of ivy-caliber like Stanford + MIT etc. have a distinct advantage. It's undeniable.</p>
<p>I've heard from ad-coms themselves that Legacies will only edge people out of ties. That makes it sound like it's not a big deal, but if you consider how many damn ties there must be in the ivy-league admission process, you've gotta wonder to yourself: it must be really good to be a legacy.</p>
<p>Put yourself in the shoes of an ad-com. Looking over the stats of students, with everyone having amazing test scores - stellar extra curricular activities - and top notch grades. There must honestly be droves of applicants that are like that. And then some have that legacy badge, and ad-coms defer to those students first.</p>
<p>I'm not saying legacy kids aren't smart. I'm sure they are. I'm just saying they have an undeniable advantage in the admission process, just because ties must exist so frequently.</p>
<p>There are a lot of points that could and need to be addressed in this thread that are overlooked which make good arguments for legacy admissions.</p>
<p>For starters, let me address something very quickly in wolrab's post-- the practice of seeking children of celebrities has greatly decreased at Brown over the last 5-10 years but that policy of the 90s has had quite a bit of overhang in both reputation and students who want to attend. Not saying the book is wrong, it's not, but it's slightly biased to slightly older policies, IIRC.</p>
<p>Now just to throw something out there. I am a strong proponent of AA. I've made arguments right here on CC why there is reason to consider diversity beyond socioeconomics in college admissions. However, there's another side of that coin. Let's begin at dcircle's point-- while 34% or so of legacy applicants do get into Brown, that number relative to the 12 or 13% who get into Brown out of the general pool drops precipitously when comparing for other key demographic differences (parent's level of education, socioeconomic status, etc). Second, there's a few great reasons to let more legacies in. Brown is able to function largely on the donations from it's most successful alumni. Brown families donate more than a Brown graduate, period. Brown, and any other top institution, could not function were it not for the generosity of alumni and simply as a means to stay afloat and maintain its reputation, Brown is almost required to at least attempt to increase this flow of money through whatever means necessary. Third, legacies offer a critical, critical component to the university's environment-- institutional memory. In a school where students have so much power and where students truly are the universities greatest resources, one of the most tragic events is that all of these wonderful, invested, engaged students leave in four years. There is no institutional memory amongst the student body-- no sense of where Brown was and often a skewed sense of where Brown is going. Legacy admits help to increase institutional memory on campus. They bring to the student body stories of the culture of Brown throughout the years and serve as a way to acculturate the matriculating class into the Brown community. This is a critical service which occurs almost exclusively through the transmission of information from upperclassman and legacies. The Brown lore and community is alive and thriving in part because of the legacy push.</p>
<p>For those of you rolling your eyes thinking I'm full of crap and just a legacy myself, I'm a first generation college student. Neither of my parents have four year degrees. However, there are advantages to having legacies and their presence in the community is perhaps undervalued by the bitterness of a tough college admissions process.</p>
<p>Sometimes there's an inter-dimensional time warp as I'm typing and my evil twin arrogantrhythm posts instead of me and the results are quite unnerving.</p>
<p>When it's actually me posting, I tend to be quite profound :-P.</p>