<p>I’m not talking about Edina, although my son has friends there (and I do), so I should hear Edina’s news soon. Yes, Edina High School students usually fare well in Harvard admission (and there are quite a few Harvard legacy students attending Edina). </p>
<p>Yes, I think the colleges largely tell the straight word about what their process is. But they don’t go out of their way in regional meetings here to emphasize the point that a sizeable part of the applicant pool gets in with “hooks.” I’m more convinced, now that I’ve raised the issue and read the replies here, that the favored (“hooked”) applicants are as numerous as has often been said about Dartmouth and comparably numerous (adjusted for total enrollment) at other Ivy League colleges. The sources mentioned since I raised the question are nearer in time to today and nearer to the data than earlier sources I had heard about, so I’m more convinced than I earlier was. </p>
<p>Returning to the OP’s question, I don’t think there is quite a sure-fire way to get into any Ivy League college, especially Harvard, but I think the legacy advantage consists at least as much in knowing what the probability-increasing things to do during high school are as it does in direct, overt legacy preference. One reason I say this is that I have seen a statement by another CC participant that the base admission rate for Princeton or Yale legacies in Harvard admission is as high as the rate for Harvard legacies. Harvard would, I would hazard the guess, only systematically favor its own legacies as legacies, but if it has preferences for certain levels of sports involvement or certain kinds of secondary education, those preferences would also improve the chances of other Ivy-League-legacy applicants, insofar as the parents of those applicants know how to advise high school students to do that which raises their chances of admission.</p>