True or false: Admitting legacies to colleges and universities is, a) unconstitutional b) unethical c) smart business practice or d) legitimate, because legacies perform better at certain elite institutions?

The answer — at least according to a panel discussion about legacy preferences in college admissions convened at New York University Thursday morning — is actually e) all of the above.

Jeffrey B. Brenzel, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale University made the case that legacy preference at Yale College is diminishing and what remains is grounded in financial reality. Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and Daniel Golden, an editor at large at Bloomberg who wrote “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates” argued that the practice of giving advantages to alumni is both widespread and harmful.

Mr. Kahlenberg, citing research from his book “Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions” made the case that getting into good schools matters — 12 institutions making up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population produced 42 percent of government leaders and 54 percent of corporate leaders.

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Celebrities get a disproportionate share of attention in American life — even, it seems, when it comes to financing a college education.

Jason Merritt/Getty Imageswill.i.am

Though millions of scholarships from innumerable sources are available to students every year, with potential award money totaling in the billions, the relative few attached to boldface names still tend to stand out, even if they have restrictive conditions for eligibility or narrow aims.

But that is not necessarily a bad thing.

“We have data that suggest that students are much more likely to pay attention to a scholarship when they see a name they recognize, and those awards tend to get many more clicks on our site.” said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FastWeb, an online scholarship-matching service. “But those scholarships can be an entry point for students to become aware of all the other scholarships available to them.”

Mr. Kantrowitz said that, in general, not enough students applied for scholarships they were capable of winning, simply because they were unaware of their existence or unwilling to put in the work to apply. “The goal is just to get students to start searching in the first place,” he said.

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For those families running the college admissions gantlet for the first time, the use of waiting lists can be among the most bewildering aspects of a process that offers no shortage of bewilderment.

How can a college (or a college admissions blog) possibly explain to an applicant that Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh has offered 5,025 students places on its waiting list this year, for a freshman class that will likely be less than a third that size, or that the number of applicants extended similar invitations at Cornell (2,988) is nearly equal to the number of students in the current freshman class (3,179)?

At least part of the answer can be found in a front-page article in The New York Times last April on the waiting list at Duke (3,382 applicants, nearly twice as large as the incoming freshman class). In it, the dean of undergraduate admissions, Christoph Guttentag, was quoted as comparing his task to that of an artist finishing an ambitious work — and the waiting list to his materials.

“I have no idea what I’m going to need to finish sculpting the class,” he said. “From an institutional perspective, it’s important that I have some flexibility.”

Another part of the answer, though, lies with applicants themselves. With so many students hedging their bets and applying to so many colleges, the colleges themselves can’t quite be sure at this time of year — as the May 1 deposit deadline looms at most — who will say yes.

In the chart above — which, we emphasize, is a work in progress and inherently limited in scope — we present waiting-list figures from a sampling of more than 60 colleges and universities that responded to queries from The New York Times’s Choice blog.

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While most applicants to the nation’s selective colleges have been weighing their acceptances (and salving the wounds of their rejections) since April 1 or earlier, more than 10,000 applicants to the University of Michigan had to wait until last Thursday to receive their notifications. That delay, in turn, left those who were accepted with fewer than two weeks to compare Michigan (and perhaps its offer of financial aid) to other institutions.

Though the university has been releasing batches of decisions over the past four months, a surge in applications this year after Michigan’s move to the Common Application appeared to slow its ability to communicate all offers to prospective students

Ted Spencer, associate vice provost and executive director of undergraduate admissions at the Ann Arbor campus, said Michigan brought on extra staff members in anticipation of the jump in applicants connected to the Common Application. Nonetheless, the late notifications — to nearly 1 of every 3 applicants — are in sharp contrast to dozens of other institutions that released decisions ahead of schedule in late March.

While the university declined to say just how many students applied, it did say applicant flow was up 20 percent over last year — which would mean that nearly 38,000 students applied this year. And yet, there were signs that fewer students may have been accepted this year, considering that Michigan’s yield last year, or the percentage of admitted students who ultimately enrolled, jumped unexpectedly — exceeding expectations by 400 freshmen.

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Earlier this week, NPR’s “To the Point” asked “Who’s Applying to Harvard and Who’s Getting In,” with the program focusing on the surge of applications to the two or three dozen elite colleges and universities.

The host, Warren Olney, was the latest person to wonder why applications to Harvard have increased 50 percent to nearly 35,000 annually — even as it accepted about 2,200, a little over 6 percent, in April. Joining him were Andrew Ferguson, author of “Crazy U,” (and who discussed the book with Choice readers), Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (who’s also talked about education with this blog), and The Choice’s Jacques Steinberg, who pointed out:

Some schools spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on slick marketing campaigns begging kids to apply for the privilege of being rejected, and yet the colleges will tell you there are so many kids who get this material, apply, get in and go who would have never known to do so had they not received it.

Listen to the admissions discussion (which begins about 7 minutes into the broadcast) and share your thoughts in comments, below.

This week, Bruce Poch, a veteran of the admissions world who worked at Wesleyan and Connecticut College before serving, until recently, as dean of admissions at Pomona College in California, has been answering questions submitted by readers of The Choice. The series concludes today.

Readers may continue to submit comments using the comment box on the original post, or the one below. Questions, and answers, may have been edited. — Jacques Steinberg

With regard to value: what I discussed with my wife was the long-term costs. While a state school may seem like a bargain on the front end, there’s a better chance of that education dragging out (more than 4 years) than a smaller liberal arts college where the classes are smaller, with personal attention as well the ease of getting the classes you need.

I started out at a state school, and getting your classes was a course in itself. After transferring to a smaller school, my path was clear and my goal easier to attain.

Although more expensive per year, it was less expensive in the long run.

I’m using this approach with my son, and he better not ruin my theory. (LOL)

—Brian

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In a column for this weekend’s Education Life supplement, I write about ReadiStep, a new standardized test from the College Board that is intended, at least in part, to familiarize eighth graders with the style of questions they’ll eventually find on the PSAT and SAT.

In the piece, which is now available online, you’ll find a range of opinion on the merits of this exam, which has been administered to about a quarter of a million middle-school students this year, most of them in Texas.

“Where does it stop?” asks Louis J. Kruger, a critic of the exam and an associate professor in the school psychology department at Northeastern University in Boston. “If you can prepare them in eighth grade, can’t you prepare them even earlier than that? There’s already considerable stress and anxiety today in public school students in regard to being assessed.”

And yet, I had no trouble finding school officials and parents in districts in Texas who were all for the idea of a middle-school assessment that might hint at students’ potential (at least thus far) to handle college-prep high school work and college-entrance exams, to say nothing of college itself.

“If you want to be good at it,” said Margo Gigee, director of advanced academics for the Pearland Independent School District outside Houston, “you have to practice.”

After you’ve read the article, I hope you will return to this post to register a comment using the box below.

All this week, Bruce Poch, a veteran of the admissions world who worked at Wesleyan and Connecticut College before serving, until recently, as dean of admissions at Pomona College in California, is answering questions submitted by readers of The Choice.

Readers may continue to submit comments using the box on the original post, or the one below. Questions, and answers, may have been edited. — Jacques Steinberg

We have offers from two state schools of high caliber, one slightly better than the other, and an offer from an in-state highly respected liberal arts college that is offering a package that is $2,000 per year better than either of the state schools.

Can either the private college or the better state school offer be used to “negotiate” with the other state school?

Can we ask the other state school about changing the loan to a Perkins loan instead of the Stafford Loan (the other schools are offering both)? Will the state schools be willing to consider a change in employment and offer more aid?

This is our first (of three) children entering college, and we do not really understand the nuances of the process.

—A

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All this week, Bruce Poch, a veteran of the admissions world who worked at Wesleyan and Connecticut College before serving, until recently, as dean of admissions at Pomona College in California, is answering questions submitted by readers of The Choice.

Please note: Mr. Poch is no longer accepting questions for this feature, but his responses will continue through Friday.

Readers may continue to submit comments using the comment box on the original post, or the one below. Questions, and answers, may have been edited. — Jacques Steinberg

It’s so strange to have put all of this time into a process that ultimately leaves the decision with you. This is the biggest decision I’ve made so far in my life, and I feel like a lot is at stake.

I’ve narrowed it down to Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania) and Stanford University (California), but I’m caught now. Do I have to sacrifice the close, personal connections I would have with faculty and students at a small, liberal arts school, to go to a bigger name school, which could have far more opportunities in store for me, or am I misinterpreting the cultures?

—An Iowa Senior

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Matthew Staver for The New York Times Kelly Dunham, coordinator of the counseling department at Cherry Creek High School, with Michael Thompson, a freshman.

Ms. Dunham is the counseling department coordinator at Cherry Creek High in Denver, whose students are blogging their college admissions process in a series on The Choice.

What do I do? Where do I go? How do I choose?

By now, virtually every high school senior who has applied to college for this fall’s freshman class has received a decision — accepted, denied or placed on the waiting list. Those same seniors now have until May 1 to notify those colleges of their decision: accept or not accept, or, in some instances, remain on the waiting list or not.

For some this is easy, particularly if they have a strong first choice. But for many others, a final decision is thus far elusive, and they go back and forth between colleges daily.

What to do? I recommend the old-fashioned way. Take each college and make a pro-con list, preferably on a large flip chart, and hang the results around a room (the student’s bedroom or another room in which much time is spent).

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