Originally Posted by aeh
I don't believe MIT and CalTech consider legacies.
The Common Data set, supplied by the schools themselves, has this information -- look at the box checked for the "Alumni/ae relation" line of question C7. MIT does not, but for Caltech it is considered but is not "important" or "very important". I wonder if any school that considers legacy status owns up to its being not just "considered" but "important". Princeton is a school with a fairly high fraction of legacy students, but as with Caltech, it says that legacy status is merely "considered".

I don't think legacy admissions are necessarily a bad thing, especially in the context of the overall system. At many schools, my children will be penalized for their race and their parents' SES. Their potentially benefiting from a legacy preference at one school does not make me feel guilty.