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So while it is nice that MIT claims to not use legacy now, the process I experienced 20 years ago suggests that alumni still had influence then and even athletics mattered too.

Not to discount your experience, but I don't believe what you experienced would fall under "legacy" or "alumni relations." For those, you would either need to have had parents/family that attended MIT, or a close relation to an alumni. It doesn't appear either of those applied to your situation.

To me, using alumni to do interviews is just a form of indirection in regards to legacy admissions.

Who is better prepared to discuss MIT with alumni? A student with no idea about college or admissions, or someone who grew up with experience and knowledge of the institution.

The push back against legacy is that is gives an advantage and thus less meritocratic. In this interview situation, a legacy is still at an advantage, and from my experience, a significant one.

Again, I'm not sure this practice is still a part of the admissions process. My point is that non legacy were at a disadvantage when they had alumni interviews.

>A student with no idea about college or admissions, or someone who grew up with experience and knowledge of the institution.

Honestly, I think you're overstating things. That a parent attended a possibly distant school 25 years ago is a pretty indirect path to wowing an alumni interviewer.

Now, maybe it's different, if the school was a part of your life growing up. A good friend of mine's father has a doctorate from MIT and worked next door at a lab that used to be part of MIT and my friend tells me of sometimes being dropped off in Doc Edgerton's lab to be looked after. But that's hardly typical.

> To me, using alumni to do interviews is just a form of indirection in regards to legacy admissions.

I don't see why. I was interviewed by an MIT alum during my MIT application process back in the early 1980s, and he never asked me anything about my parents or other relatives. (I did not have any parents or relatives who went to MIT, and would have told him so if he had asked, but he didn't ask.) He only asked me about things I had done.

> Who is better prepared to discuss MIT with alumni?

The alum who interviewed me didn't ask me anything about MIT. He told me things about MIT. (One particular piece of advice he gave me was extremely helpful: he advised me to visit the MIT campus before I made a final decision about going there if I was accepted. I did that, and it made a huge difference.) He wasn't quizzing me about my MIT knowledge.

My understanding of MIT's rationale for using alumni to interview applicants is that the alum can provide input on how well they think the applicant would acclimate to the MIT environment. MIT can seem very harsh to a student coming from high school, where they were used to being at the top of everything academically, and finding out that at MIT, they're just somewhere in the middle of the pack. MIT, at least in my understanding, believes that alumni who went through that experience themselves can provide useful input on how an applicant might deal with it.

This isn’t legacy, though. There are certainly issues with college interviews, but it doesn’t sound like the specific issue here is related to whether your parents went to MIT.

It's extremely common at selective schools for alumni to conduct interviews which can be a two-way street. Certainly, the interview can factor into the admissions process although it's probably a small factor in general. And, yes, athletic achievement has been taken into account to some degree, especially significant achievement, by MIT for as long as I remember.

> ...the process I experienced 20 years ago suggests that alumni still had influence then....

You're making a point here that doesn't support your argument. "Alumni having influence" and "legacy status is considered" are not the same thing.

Yes, there are ways to use social class to your advantage, even if just the ease to walk into a mansion and converse fluidly with the owner rather than feeling at unease. There are no ways to fully eliminate the effects of this, but MIT is at least not explicitly doing so.

And there is a lot more to admissions than numbers. Athletics do and should matter - robust health is positively correlated with future success. And essays, recommendations, etc. also matter. And I would think that MIT is not ashamed to say so.

When I knew the MIT admissions director many years ago, he said they had an X-Y chart with academics on one axis and other achievements/soft factors on the other. There was basically a minimum academic cutoff and above that cutoff you could basically tradeoff academics for other criteria.

Are you suggesting that alumni interviews implicitly offer the opportunity for legacy candidates to reveal that connection (perhaps it might be part of how they became interested in MIT) and thus appeal toward the interviewer's in-group loyalty toward other MIT alumni, thereby increasing the likelihood of a positive interview outcome?

That doesn't seem entirely farfetched, nor does the idea of appealing to interviewer bias in general.

I did that MIT alumni interview in the mid-80s, so it's been a thing for them for at least that long. I still remember the big house in a pricey neighborhood and the interviewer. It seemed pretty free ranging, so it seems likely it was a "gut feel" on the interviewers part. I'm curious what their guidelines from MIT were.

For what it's worth, the alumnus I met had me come to some sort of gaming convention he was attending, i.e. it was pretty casual. I would think the more obvious criticism of using that network to interview candidates is it's a game of luck having a personality match - but then I suppose they hope by having historically got it enough 'right' it converges/is fairly steady state on the sort of person they want anyway.

For me it was at a big house in a wealthy suburb, and we talked one on one in the living room. There was no real guidance or explanation other than here is the time and place.

From what I could remember, the alumni interviewer was kind, I just couldn't articulate answers to his questions as I was unprepared and didn't know what to expect. With some insight on the process, I probably could have done better, but it doesn't really matter.

I ended up on a different path and am content with where it lead.

My larger point is that there are many little ways where legacy advantages can leak through even if you have an explicit policy of not considering it.

I think alumni interviews are such a possible mechanism of still factoring in legacy status or making this advantages stand out without it being on the application.

> My larger point is that there are many little ways where legacy advantages can leak through even if you have an explicit policy of not considering it.

I mean, if we are going down this rabbithole, your "legacy advantage" definition can be shoehorned into literally anything.

I moved to the US midway through high school, with very barebones english and zero understanding of how college admissions process works. I didn't know what SAT was until about a year before I had to take it. Is it a legacy advantage if someone grew up in the US and was familiar with the process ahead of time and was able to optimize for it?

Is having plenty of time to dedicate to studying, instead of spending your time helping parents [who lack any english] translate documents and help with tons of basic life things, like opening a bank account, a legacy advantage?

What about some wealthy first gen international students who have great tutors and know all ins and outs of the american college admissions processes? Is this a legacy advantage, despite their parents never having attended a college in the US (or, very often, not having attended a college at all)?

There is a clear definition of what legacy admissions is when people talk about it, and what you are describing ain't it.

from the article referenced by the link: https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/just-to-be-clear-we-do... :

"For those of you not familiar with the practice, “legacy admissions” means preferring the children of alumni in the admissions process. Why would schools do this? For the money, mostly, because if you make your alumni happy by admitting their kids, they might be more likely to give you money."

I agree that colleges should state simply and clearly how they evaluate student applicants.

But if they all did, students would probably need to start preparing in their sophomore year, if not sooner, to get the nice extra-curricular achievements to make their application stand out. I wasn't even thinking about what college I wanted to go to when I was a sophomore.