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One reason that Harvard and the other ivies like legacy students is that they’re who grow up to be big donors.

Edit: I’m willing to assume that Harvard’s admissions and development offices know what they’re doing, considering that they’ve been wildly successful for centuries.

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If this is true (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences#Economic_im... suggests it's disputed), the effect is probably marginal, and in any case, Harvard has the largest academic endowment in the world. It seems unlikely that it needs legacy admissions to stay afloat.

They don’t. Most major private institutions don’t. However why tap into your endowment when people will give you money?

The other big thing is that these schools want to admit people they know will matriculate (they don’t want to over enroll or under enroll). Presumably, legacy applicants are statistically more likely to matriculate and hence there is a preference.

When I was applying to schools, I remember reading that the policy UPenn used for legacies was that only those who applied early decision got any sort of statistical advantage over other candidates. If you weren’t ready to commit via early decision, your odds were the same as the general population.

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