[MiroF]

You're the first person to use the word "peasants" to refer to non-legacy applicants and I in no way think there is some sort of "intellectual" superiority or elite class of people in the US (well, economic elite - but not intellectual).

All I wanted to clarify is that these legacy processes only really come into play once you have already hit some minimum threshold of merit, and there are different backdoors for super rich/connected applicants that require no such threshold.

Tests are not the same thing as intellect - they are often structured in a way that is unfair to people with low incomes (for instance: the more times you pay to take a test, you can then select the top scores). All of these are pathways that would still exist without legacy.

You're construing my comment as taking a stance that it wasn't - but in case it wasn't clear now, legacy admissions are unequivocally bad. Privileging class status in admissions is obviously bad.

[fountainofage]

Could you edit your original statement with this clarification? It's not at all obvious or clear, and I think it says quite the opposite - you are emphatically stating it's ok for that legacy / non-legacy gap because legacies have way higher test scores, which seems a very dubious claim given how unbelievable the score gap would have to be to account for a 30% difference.

[MiroF]

I don't think I'm emphatically stating it, but I can see how you would read it that way. I added a clarifying reply, but it is too late for the comment to be edited.