[OCcardinal]

A couple thoughts:
1) The class being 13% legacies is not that high when you consider children of students who attended either undergraduate and graduate programs at Stanford are eligible. Not only are there more graduate students than undergrad, but on average they graduate at a faster rate than undergrads with all the 2-3 year graduate programs. When you consider that alums would have more than one child on average, 13% of the class being legacies means maybe 2-3% of legacy children end up attending Stanford.  Stanford spends a lot more effort trying to console alums whose children are rejected than promoting a culture of entitlement.  Further, when you consider how well off most Stanford grads are, how much they value higher education (plus their direct knowledge of how to build a resume that would be attractive to an admissions officer), and the fact that some admits are legacy athletes (e.g., Adam and Kirstin Keefe have had 3 children attend Stanford on sports scholarships), the fact that 13% of the class ends up being legacies seems reasonable.  And we shouldn't assume that legacy admits are necessarily underqualified. Consider Maya DiRado, for example.  She was a legacy admit who became a multiple-gold medal Olympian. Plus she did so well academically as an undergrad that she later earned a full Knight-Hennessy merit scholarship to cover her Stanford MBA tuition.
2) As for the study about rich enrollees, I find it unsurprising and do not find that it substantiates that Stanford is giving some sort of admissions preference based on wealth (outside of megadonors, which are relatively rare). What the study found was that "if two students have the same SAT or ACT scores but one student is from a family in the top 1% and the other is in a lower income percentile, the wealthier student has a much higher chance of attending — i.e., getting admitted to and enrolling at — a selective private school in California." It further found that at Stanford "Attendance for students from the top 0.1% is about 3.5 times greater than average [student with the same test scores]."  But there are two important things to consider when talking about Stanford.  First, so many good students apply to Stanford that the vast majority of students at every SAT/AP test score level are rejected.  Second, while test scores are important to admission at Stanford, once you meet a certain threshhold getting a higher test score will not incrementally increase your odds of being admitted.  What will make a difference is a more rigorous secondary school academic record (such as all the AP classes a top private school might provide) and/or unique skills or achievements (which are substantially easier to accumulate when you have wealthy parents investing in you).  Correlation does not equal causation and a study, like this one, that controls for some but not all factors that may impact admission (including the most important ones) leaves a lot to be desired.  At best you can say there is a pattern that is worth further investigation.  The study itself provides no conclusive answers.

[OCcardinal]

A couple thoughts:
1) The class being 13% legacies is not that high when you consider children of students who attended either undergraduate and graduate programs at Stanford are eligible. Not only are there more graduate students than undergrad, but on average they graduate at a faster rate than undergrads with all the 2-3 year graduate programs. When you consider that alums would have more than one child on average, 13% of the class being legacies means maybe 2-3% of legacy children end up attending Stanford.  Stanford spends a lot more effort trying to console alums whose children are rejected than promoting a culture of entitlement.  Further, when you consider how well off most Stanford grads are, how much they value higher education (plus their direct knowledge of how to build a resume that would be attractive to an admissions officer), and the fact that some admits are legacy athletes (e.g., Adam and Kirstin Keefe have had 3 children attend Stanford on sports scholarships), the fact that 13% of the class ends up being legacies seems reasonable.  And we shouldn't assume that legacy admits are necessarily underqualified. Consider Maya DiRado, for example.  She was a legacy admit who became a multiple-gold medal Olympian. Plus she did so well academically as an undergrad that she later earned a full Knight-Hennessy merit scholarship to cover her Stanford MBA tuition.
2) As for the study about rich enrollees, I find it unsurprising and do not find that it substantiates that Stanford is giving some sort of admissions preference based on wealth (outside of megadonors, which are relatively rare). What the study found was that "if two students have the same SAT or ACT scores but one student is from a family in the top 1% and the other is in a lower income percentile, the wealthier student has a much higher chance of attending — i.e., getting admitted to and enrolling at — a selective private school in California." It further found that at Stanford "Attendance for students from the top 0.1% is about 3.5 times greater than average [student with the same test scores]."  But there are two important things to consider when talking about Stanford.  First, so many good students apply to Stanford that the vast majority of students at every SAT/AP test score level are rejected.  Second, while test scores are important to admission at Stanford, once you meet a certain threshhold getting a higher test score will not incrementally increase your odds of being admitted.  What will make a difference is a more rigorous secondary school academic record (such as all the AP classes a top private school might provide) and/or unique skills or achievements (which are substantially easier to accumulate when you have wealthy parents investing in you).  Correlation does not equal causation and a study, like this one, that controls for some but not all factors that may impact admission (including the most important ones) leaves a lot to be desired.  At best you can say there is a pattern that is worth further investigation.  The study itself provides no conclusive answers.