All this assumes that admissions is a formulaic process. The application probably still asks where your parents went to school. Admissions are still made of hum

All this assumes that admissions is a formulaic process. The application probably still asks where your parents went to school. Admissions are still made of humans that may be subject to biases. Faced with two equivalent candidates, one legacy and one not, it should be a 50/50 decision on which to pick. But in reality some cognitive bias will tilt the process in favor of one. My guess is it would be the legacy candidate.