At Harvard, according to a filing in the current case against the university, alumni children — known as legacies — comprise 21.5 percent of accepted white applicants, compared to 7 percent of Hispanic admits, 6.6 percent of Asian Americans, and 4.8 percent of African Americans. Thus it can be difficult for universities to justify keeping these preferences in the absence of countervailing boosts for under-represented minorities.
Harvard and other elite universities typically justify legacy preference, when they talk about it at all, as a legitimate reward for alumni loyalty and volunteer work. They portray it as merely a tiebreaker between applicants of equal merit. Court filings, including Harvard’s internal reports, show otherwise. The university’s Office of Institutional Research found in 2013 that alumni parentage bestows an admissions boost equivalent to that for African Americans, and larger than those for Hispanics, Native Americans, and low-income students. Among applicants given the two highest academic rankings, Harvard accepted 55 percent of legacies, compared with 15 percent of non-legacies.
Overall, across six years, Harvard accepted 33.6 percent of legacy applicants, versus 5.9 percent of non-legacies