The Real Reasons Legacy Preferences Exist

Applying to college as a legacy is like having a superpower. It has been estimated to double or quadruple one’s chances of getting into a highly selective school, and has been found to be roughly equivalent to a 160-point boost on the SAT. At the most selective institutions in the United States, it’s typical for 10 to 15 percent of students to have a parent who also attended.

These estimates are, of course, rough; colleges generally don’t share specifics on the advantage they give to legacies—or, sometimes, on how they define the term (it can refer to children of alumni or, more broadly, to other relatives of alumni)—so research on the subject has been limited.

Still, given that admissions at selective colleges are more competitive than ever—last week, several of them —it’s clear that a preference for legacies benefits alumni and their children. But what does this tradition—which is —do for colleges? And,