Asian-Style vs. Legacy Admissions

One of my pet peeves is Legacy Admissions: if the U.S. is to be a truly merit-based society, we need to get rid of this form of "Affirmative Action". Affirmative Action can be justified, but Legacy Admissions? These are people with an upper hand: their parents went to the prestigious schools they are applying to. Make no mistake, besides the fact that they are likely to come from better schools:

... Although university officials state that legacy preferences are used only as a tipping factor in admissions, the strength of the programme is actually quite strong. According to a study by two Princeton academics, Espanshade and Chung[1], legacy preference admits are given an equivalent of 160 point boost in their SAT scores (out of 1600) and can account for as much as a 300 point boost. However, this is actually a smaller advantage than for recruited atheletes or affirmative action, which give equivalent boosts of between 185 and 230 points.

Contrast that with how Asian Universities handle admissions -- you sit for an entrance exam and your admission depends on how you do on the test, period. Business Week has a nice article on how students from a small village in India are getting into I.I.T. : they study like crazy for years. This is replicated across all the top schools in Asia (University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Beijing and Beijing Normal University, Shanghai University, National University of Singapore, Seaoul National University, University of the Philippines, etc.): you pass tests to get in. Your parents can't help you get in, you have to perform. The founder of Infosys (the largest software company in India) had to send his kid to Cornell, because the kid couldn't get into I.I.T.

Heck even President Bush, a likely beneficiary of Legacy Admissions, now opposes it!