<p>curious14 – while I think there are many, many advantages to being the child of a well educated parent in applying to competitive colleges, “legacy status” has almost zero effect.</p>
<p>Have a look at books written by adcoms. Look at posts on this site by adcoms (for ex. just from memory, do a search on all posts written by AdOfficer). Adcoms are by and large drawn to the social service aspect of elite college admissions. Finding, developing and encouraging under represented kids all over the country to aspire to, and wortk toward qualifying for elite college admissions. </p>
<p>If there were any bias in the system, it would be AGAINST legacy, snotty, entitled, rude kids of rich parents who think they can just put the app in (or pay their college counselor to do the whole thing) and have a better than 50/50 shot of getting into “daddy or mummy’s school”.</p>
<p>Legacy shoe-ins are probably less than 10 out of H’s incoming class of 1600 (I just love that numbe, don’t know why exactly). A less than 1% effect is not really worth writing or thinking about. Better to spend mummy and daddy’s money on an ex Olympic fencing instructor for private lessons, fly all over the world for competitions to hone your skills, and apply as a fencing athletic admit.</p>