[isopede]

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.

[pbui]

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.

[pdonis]

> 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.

[ghaff]

>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.