(01-23-2022 01:31 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(01-21-2022 12:48 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  ... and I would think that as a double-legacy, that would carry more weight than the differences between academics at Rice and Tulane.... (if that were the reason for the decline)... you never know.

As I've said before, people should not really think of elite college admissions as a case of being "accepted" versus "rejected" or "declined".
For all practical purposes, it is a lottery. When you buy a lottery ticket, and someone else wins the jackpot, you don't say "Darn, the lottery commission rejected me." You just chalk it up to luck.
Admission to Rice and similar schools is similar: for every spot, there are 9-10 highly qualified applicants who are no more meaningfully distinguishable from each other than one lottery ticket is from another. If you're not one of the "winners", it's not because your "ticket" was inferior someway, or because the "commission" has questionable judgment; it's just that someone else got lucky and you didn't.
I know that human beings are predisposed to resist the notion of essentially random processes, but again, as a practical matter, that's what it is.

And I think the issue under discussion here is whether that randomness should be eliminated or reduced in the case of a legacy applicant. What about a double legacy who happens to be a person of color?