[OCcardinal]

But I disagree with jacketree that the numbers we know indicate a big legacy effect. It's probable that legacies as a group versus non-legacies would have better academic credentials. Legacies also probably have a much higher yield rate than non-legacies. Those factors combined would be expected to result in a higher percentage of the class being legacies as compared to random selection even if there was no advantage given for legacy status or even a slight penalty.

Exactly.  One of the things that makes it difficult to judge impact is we don't know how many legacies actually applied.  If there were zero bump (either as a result of the academic/economic advantages the legacy likely grew up with or as a direct result of a legacy) then 287 legacy admits implies 7175 legacies applicants (at a 4% admit rate).  However, I've heard more than one talk where someone in Stanford admissions said the admit rate is about double for legacies.  If that's still the case that would imply about 3500 legacies apply each year. 

You may think, how can there be 3500 legacy applicants a year when Stanford undergrad class sizes are only about 1700?  But children of graduate students (which outnumber undergrads significantly) are also legacies. And since a lot of graduate programs are only 2-3 years long, you end up with a LOT more potential legacies coming out of Stanford graduate programs than undergrad.  Now consider that there will likely be more than 1.0 kid per distinct graduate and it doesn't seem that unreasonable to assume at least 3500 legacy applicants are in the pool of 55000 or so applicants each year.

Now consider the nature of those Stanford legacies. For example, 12% of Stanford undergrads are varsity athletes.  To be admitted as an athlete to Stanford you need good athletic genes, a strong focus on academics, and parents who know how to play the recruiting game.  Who fits that profile? Children of Stanford varsity athletes, for one. People like Christian McCaffrey, Elise Evans or Caitlin, Michaela and James Keefe.  Was their status as a legacy the deciding factor in being given a scholarship offer?  Doubtful.  Certainly not for Elise any way.  She was the #1 recruit in her class.

Then you go back to the simple advantage of having a parent who has had an elite education, likely has a good job, and knows what it takes to build a high school resume that is attractive to Stanford's admissions office.  Their kid is also probably more focused on the Stanford application than the average student in the general applicant pool.  They are probably more likely to have Stanford as their top choice and to apply early admission, putting a lot more time into it.  And their parents are probably reading their essays (meaning they are less likely to accidentally write "I've always been interested in Brown because...").  

If after all that, only 8% or so of legacy applicants are getting admitted, you can understand why the admissions office spends most of its time trying to console disappointed alumni parents.  (When my kids applied to Stanford I got a letter each time basically saying "We know you are an alum, but your kid's very likely not going to get in, so when that happens, please don't get mad at your alma mater.")

Stanford admissions says legacy status only matters in breaking ties.  Only the admissions office knows how many of the 287 or so legacy admits each year are of the "tie goes to the legacy" variety.  Based on the above, I can't imagine it is that many.  And as a practical matter ties shouldn't be that common.  Stanford doesn't rank students by GPA and test scores and admit from the top down.  It's building a community.  That will be a community of athletes, musicians, classics enthusiasts, or whatever.  I suppose it is possible to have two nationally prominent string bass players with the same GPA/test scores, academic rigor, and quality of essays/recommendations, with one being a legacy and the other not, but that type of situation simply can't be the case with every legacy admit.  

So I really don't think eliminating legacy preference would shrink the amount of legacy admits much.  Maybe from, say, 8% to 6 or 7 percent (which would be 35-70 admits a year).  The cost of "opening up" those 35-70 admit spots means you are taking away a tool that Stanford considers valuable in building its community.  That could be money, but that also could be things that directly benefit current students, like interest in volunteering for the Stanford Parents Club. This proposed law ultimately would substitute the state's judgment as to what is most beneficial for the students at private colleges like Stanford for the university's judgment.  

If you view legacy admissions strictly from the perspective of the applicant pool (and not the university or campus community's perspective) I can understand why it would be considered objectionable.  If any applicant is given an advantage that is not 100% based on merit then that means someone else deserving of admission won't get in. For those, say, 35-70 students who may have missed out on attending Stanford in a given year, it certainly would be a big deal. But if that truly is the number we are talking about, that doesn't really justify a big policy change.  

For the non-legacy applicant, it is easy to imagine lack of legacy status as being the reason for a rejection.  But it's almost certainly not the reason.  Eliminating legacy admissions isn't going to increase Stanford's admit pool by 10,000.  It's still going to be ridiculously hard to get in.  Thinking of legacy admissions as the barrier is like going to a shopping mall two days before Christmas and seeing an open handicap spot and thinking, "If only they hadn't made that a handicap spot, I could have had a great parking space!"  But no, that spot would have been long-filled before you got there.  

And so who would actually fill those 35-70 legacy spots?  The majority would logically end up being very much like the Stanford legacies who are filling those spots now - children of well-educated, financially-secure parents, who helped them build a good high school resume and prepare good applications.  A good percentage may even be from students attending boarding schools (that typically have admissions rates much higher than 4% at the top colleges). There might be a few first generation or students from poorer communities, but from what I understand those students already have a hook that is not unlike being a legacy so wouldn't be losing out in the tie-goes-to-the-legacy scenario.

A lot of the above is admittedly conjecture. I've seen a few studies that tried to suggest that legacy admissions edge out a material amount of students from disadvantaged backgrounds that are clearly more deserving. But I've never found the methodologies convincing and I haven't seen clear evidence that that is the case at Stanford specifically.  I also don't accept the premise that Stanford is so unique compared to other good colleges that some nebulously-defined concept of "merit" must be absolutely adhered to in admissions as a public policy matter.  If Stanford, in its judgment, has determined having those incremental legacy admits is a net benefit to the campus community then I do not feel I'm in a place to second-guess them.  I'm not running Stanford, and neither is the state of CA.

[OCcardinal]

But I disagree with jacketree that the numbers we know indicate a big legacy effect. It's probable that legacies as a group versus non-legacies would have better academic credentials. Legacies also probably have a much higher yield rate than non-legacies. Those factors combined would be expected to result in a higher percentage of the class being legacies as compared to random selection even if there was no advantage given for legacy status or even a slight penalty.

Exactly.  One of the things that makes it difficult to judge impact is we don't know how many legacies actually applied.  If there were zero bump (either as a result of the academic/economic advantages the legacy likely grew up with or as a direct result of a legacy) then 287 legacy admits implies 7175 legacies applicants (at a 4% admit rate).  However, I've heard more than one talk where someone in Stanford admissions said the admit rate is about double for legacies.  If that's still the case that would imply about 3500 legacies apply each year. 

You may think, how can there be 3500 legacy applicants a year when Stanford undergrad class sizes are only about 1700?  But children of graduate students (which outnumber undergrads significantly) are also legacies. And since a lot of graduate programs are only 2-3 years long, you end up with a LOT more potential legacies coming out of Stanford graduate programs than undergrad.  Now consider that there will likely be more than 1.0 kid per distinct graduate and it doesn't seem that unreasonable to assume at least 3500 legacy applicants are in the pool of 55000 or so applicants each year.

Now consider the nature of those Stanford legacies. For example, 12% of Stanford undergrads are varsity athletes.  To be admitted as an athlete to Stanford you need good athletic genes, a strong focus on academics, and parents who know how to play the recruiting game.  Who fits that profile? Children of Stanford varsity athletes, for one. People like Christian McCaffrey, Elise Evans or Caitlin, Michaela and James Keefe.  Was their status as a legacy the deciding factor in being given a scholarship offer?  Doubtful.  Certainly not for Elise any way.  She was the #1 recruit in her class.

Then you go back to the simple advantage of having a parent who has had an elite education, likely has a good job, and knows what it takes to build a high school resume that is attractive to Stanford's admissions office.  Their kid is also probably more focused on the Stanford application than the average student in the general applicant pool.  They are probably more likely to have Stanford as their top choice and to apply early admission, putting a lot more time into it.  And their parents are probably reading their essays (meaning they are less likely to accidentally write "I've always been interested in Brown because...").  

If after all that, only 8% or so of legacy applicants are getting admitted, you can understand why the admissions office spends most of its time trying to console disappointed alumni parents.  (When my kids applied to Stanford I got a letter each time basically saying "We know you are an alum, but your kid's very likely not going to get in, so when that happens, please don't get mad at your alma mater.")

Stanford admissions says legacy status only matters in breaking ties.  Only the admissions office knows how many of the 287 or so legacy admits each year are of the "tie goes to the legacy" variety.  Based on the above, I can't imagine it is that many.  And as a practical matter ties shouldn't be that common.  Stanford doesn't rank students by GPA and test scores and admit from the top down.  It's building a community.  That will be a community of athletes, musicians, classics enthusiasts, or whatever.  I suppose it is possible to have two nationally prominent string bass players with the same GPA/test scores, academic rigor, and quality of essays/recommendations, with one being a legacy and the other not, but that type of situation simply can't be the case with every legacy admit.  

So I really don't think eliminating legacy preference would shrink the amount of legacy admits much.  Maybe from, say, 8% to 6 or 7 percent (which would be 35-70 admits a year).  The cost of "opening up" those 35-70 admit spots means you are taking away a tool that Stanford considers valuable in building its community.  That could be money, but that also could be things that directly benefit current students, like interest in volunteering for the Stanford Parents Club. This proposed law ultimately would substitute the state's judgment as to what is most beneficial for the students at private colleges like Stanford for the university's judgment.  

If you view legacy admissions strictly from the perspective of the applicant pool (and not the university or campus community's perspective) I can understand why it would be considered objectionable.  If any applicant is given an advantage that is not 100% based on merit then that means someone else deserving of admission won't get in. For those, say, 35-70 students who may have missed out on attending Stanford in a given year, it certainly would be a big deal. But if that truly is the number we are talking about, that doesn't really justify a big policy change.  

For the non-legacy applicant, it is easy to imagine lack of legacy status as being the reason for a rejection.  But it's almost certainly not the reason.  Eliminating legacy admissions isn't going to increase Stanford's admit pool by 10,000.  It's still going to be ridiculously hard to get in.  Thinking of legacy admissions as the barrier is like going to a shopping mall two days before Christmas and seeing an open handicap spot and thinking, "If only they hadn't made that a handicap spot, I could have had a great parking space!"  But no, that spot would have been long-filled before you got there.  

And so who would actually fill those 35-70 legacy spots?  The majority would logically end up being very much like the Stanford legacies who are filling those spots now - children of well-educated, financially-secure parents, who helped them build a good high school resume and prepare good applications.  A good percentage may even be from students attending boarding schools (that typically have admissions rates much higher than 4% at the top colleges). There might be a few first generation or students from poorer communities, but from what I understand those students already have a hook that is not unlike being a legacy so wouldn't be losing out in the tie-goes-to-the-legacy scenario.

A lot of the above is admittedly conjecture. I've seen a few studies that tried to suggest that legacy admissions edge out a material amount of students from disadvantaged backgrounds that are clearly more deserving. But I've never found the methodologies convincing and I haven't seen clear evidence that that is the case at Stanford specifically.  I also don't accept the premise that Stanford is so unique compared to other good colleges that some nebulously-defined concept of "merit" must be absolutely adhered to in admissions as a public policy matter.  If Stanford, in its judgment, has determined having those incremental legacy admits is a net benefit to the campus community then I do not feel I'm in a place to second-guess them.  I'm not running Stanford, and neither is the state of CA.