It has a surprisingly strong effect as schools get more prestigious / exclusive. At schools like Harvard, which have in incredibly low admission rate (something

It has a surprisingly strong effect as schools get more prestigious / exclusive. At schools like Harvard, which have in incredibly low admission rate (something like 5% of qualified applicants get an offer, I think?), legacies get a massive bump. https://admissionsight.com/harvard-legacy-acceptance-rate/ https://admissionsight.com/harvard-legacy-acceptance-rate/ says it's 25-35% of students who're legacies at Harvard. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w263... is analyzing the admissions data that got released from an earlier lawsuit against Harvard about Asian American admissions bias, and says that although being a legacy isn't as good as being a recruited athlete, it still gets you admitted at about 5x the rate of non-legacies.