<p>^ LOL. I’m complaining, and it’s not because of “class envy” or because my kids didn’t get into an Ivy. My D1 got into her first choice school ED, without benefit of a legacy preference, thank you very much. She didn’t apply to any school where she would have been a legacy, though there were some good ones. I suggested to her at one point that she might think about applying to some of her legacy schools, but she just didn’t care for the schools, for one thing, and beyond that she thought the whole idea that she might have some kind of advantage because I went there or another family member went there kind of appalling. Honest. She’s always had her radar pretty finely tuned to what she deems to be social injustice, and she absolutely detests anything that smacks of class privilege, regardless of whether she’s on the beneficiary side of the privilege line or the side that’s getting the short straw. Her response was what got me thinking about the unfairness of it. And that interest was further piqued not by “urban legends” about this or that kid who didn’t get in—because that happens all the time, to legacies and non-legacies alike. It was the data, albeit somewhat meager, presented in the WSJ article, that suggested the legacy advantage was, statistically speaking, in fact much larger than I had ever realized, relying as I had up until then on the DOMINANT “urban legend” that legacy doesn’t really matter in the end—an urban legend belied by the only statistics I’ve seen on the subject, because the colleges themselves won’t reveal more.</p>
<p>Again, the point is not that “unqualified” legacies are being admitted into elite schools. Those schools have more qualified applicants, legacies and non-legacies, than they know what to do with. No, the unfairness lies in what is means for the unequal chances of admission among otherwise equally qualified people, with those holding the inherited status of “legacy” being awarded a thumb on the scale in their favor, increasing their odds of admission at the direct expense of reducing the chances of admission for those not blessed by accident of birth with that hereditary status. And that, it seems to me, strikes right at the heart of the principle of equality of opportunity that many of us profess to believe in.</p>
<p>Look, tilting the scales in favor of legacy is NOT like affirmative action for URMs, which is partly designed to correct for past racially exclusionary policies and practices, and in part to promote diversity within the student body. I should think that, other things equal, the more legacies in your student body, the LESS diverse you become. It’s not like recruiting the flautist for the orchestra or the quarterback for the football team or the film star—those are skills or talents that the school finds desirable to have in the mix in the student body. Being a legacy is not a skill or talent, it’s not an element of merit considered broadly and multi-facetedly and holistically, it not an element of diversity like being a URM or coming from an underrepresented state or some exotic country. It’s nothing but an inherited status. It’s not even an inherited TRAIT, like having brown eyes or being able to do that tongue-rolling thing; it’s an inherited social STATUS, for gosh sakes. It’s the closest thing we have in this country to being Lord So-and-So or Lady Such-and-Such. It has nothing at all to do with making the student body better, more interesting, more multi-talented, or more diverse. Its only purpose, and its only effect, is to perpetuate privilege. And I think it kind of stinks.</p>