If children of graduates are more qualified _naturally_ then why does Harvard _need_ it to be _policy_ that they take legacy status into account? MIT and Caltech seem to do fine with legacy-blind admissions.
I'm not from the US so don't really know what I'm talking about - but my impressions from this side of the pond are that MIT and Caltech seem to have rather different reputations from Harvard?
Legacy applicants are X% more qualified naturally (well educated parents, etc), and get Y% from the admissions. Given the numbers for Harvard, MIT, etc, there are plenty of qualified applicants for each spot.
I would imagine that both MIT and Caltech have a higher acceptance rate for legacy for this reason. However a side effect of them not keeping track is that we will never have the breakout of those rates.