alt Hacker Newsconflates a couple of things: the legacy tip itself and the fact that legacies tend to have stronger academic profiles to begin with (they come from advantaged households). A skeptic can fairly say "of course legacy admits do well, they're better applicants"
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rayiner • today at 1:49 AM
> they come from advantaged households
They also tend to be smarter because smarter people have smarter kids.
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> legacies tend to have stronger academic profiles
Maybe for Harvard, but I'm not sure a legacy for some random private liberal arts school nobody has ever heard of (or $STATE University) will be any more academically gifted than someone whose parents both went to college anyway.
Maybe we need to differentiate between "legacy of a school" and "legacy of a school with a historically high academic quality"