<p>Unless your parent donates 100 million+ to the school, you won't be able to get in with bad grades and bad SATs. They have enough über-wealthy people with good grades and SATs.</p>
<p>No. I know of plenty of people rejected from schools where both their parents were legacies...and they were smart. Nowadays I assure you that college admissions are incredibly unpredicatable---with one abominable exception: even if you're an *******, if your parents donate millions of dollars to the school, you will get in.</p>
<p>In addition, most top schools decide candidates based on a committee (at least, many do). That means that knowing your regional officer can only get them to bring you in front of the committee.</p>
<p>^Along with that, this is just one of the many "unfair" things in life...the list can be endless. You'll just have to rely on your best abilities and try to excel the best as you can lmao (I hope you'll excuse the cheesiness here...I had to).</p>
<p>I say this as a non-legacy/non-rich/non-URM/non...whatever, most things that's "advantageous".</p>