THE IVY LEAGUE HAS LEGACIES. The Illini have a clout list.

Hundreds of applicants received special consideration in the last five years, according to documents obtained by the Tribune under the state's Freedom of Information Act. The records chronicle a shadow admissions system in which some students won spots at the state's most prestigious public university over the protests of admissions officers, while others had their rejections reversed during an unadvertised appeal process.

The list serves the same purpose as legacy admissions.

Since 2005, about 800 undergraduate students have landed on the clout list for the Urbana-Champaign campus. It's unknown how many would qualify for entry on their own, but their acceptance rate is higher than average. For the 2008-09 school year, for example, about 77 percent were accepted, compared with 69 percent of all applicants.That's in spite of the fact that patronage candidates, as a group, had lower average ACT scores and class ranks than all admitted students, records show.

I'll keep that in mind the next time somebody snarks about Northern Illinois being where Urbana's rejects go. Some of Urbana's rejects might otherwise have qualified.

High school counselors and admissions experts said letting clout affect admissions compromises the integrity of the university.

"Whether it's [a Rezko relative] or any other kid who takes a spot, he typically takes a spot of someone who is more qualified. That's the part that gets my blood boiling," said Jim Conroy, a New Trier Township High School college counselor. "This is not a private institution. This is yours and mine. Our flagship state university should not be part of any political shenanigans."

Keeping in mind that public higher education has been a political shenanigan. It is no accident that President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act establishing the land grant universities and chose a more northerly route to California for the Pacific Railroad. Blest be the ties that bind. Keeping also in mind that people who get the thick envelope from Harvard probably don't see their future degree as compromised if there are a few Kennedys and Cabots in the endowment entering class.

The response of university administrators is what I'd expect.

President [B. Joseph] White said it's not unusual for selective universities to receive input on applicants from interested parties, and it's important to have a system to track the requests. The additional information can help the admissions office make a more informed decision, he said -- though the university discourages applicants from sending letters of recommendations, saying on its Web site that "sending unsolicited materials can be distracting."

He declined to discuss specific cases, including the Rezko relative, but said: "I would never support admission of a student over better-qualified students simply because of connections and pressure."

Tony Rezko's kin just appeared, a nameless number on a list that was later misplaced.

But the Tribune review of about 1,800 pages of documents shows politically appointed trustees and lawmakers routinely behave as armchair admissions officers advocating on behalf of relatives and neighbors -- even housekeepers' kids and families with whom they share Hawaiian vacations. They declare their candidates "no brainers" for admission and suggest that if they are not accepted, the admissions system may need revamping.

I've learned that Urbana's economics faculty is currently the size of ours 23 years ago, in a university with twice our enrollment. You'd think this favor-trading would have paid off. (Perhaps it has: they'd otherwise have an even smaller economics faculty? We are currently at less than half our faculty 23 years ago, with comparable enrollments.) The clout-mongers have even learned the language of affirmative action.

For example, this spring an applicant described as having "terrible credentials" by the undergraduate admissions office was denied admittance. She sought help from Trustee Frances Carroll, who encouraged her to appeal the denial -- an option not mentioned in rejection letters or any university literature. Carroll forwarded the appeal to University Chancellor Richard Herman and sought his help. The applicant was admitted.

Then, to avoid drawing attention at the applicant's high school, where her acceptance could raise eyebrows, documents show the university planned to wait until the end of the school year to notify the applicant.

Carroll said the Lincoln Park High School senior, whom she didn't know, had a 3.2 grade-point average, participated in many extra-curricular activities and deserved a spot at U. of I. Carroll said she likes to help disadvantaged students who may not understand the system.

Next we'll discover special hard-currency stores where the nachalstvo can get books, closed-class permits, and special tutoring. All part of the system, comrade.

Patronage has become such an entrenched part of the admissions process that there's even a name for the applicants with heavy-hitting sponsors: "Category I."

While some trustees and lawmakers said they didn't realize there was a separate category for their requests, the records showed they needed only to forward a name and a few vital statistics to have the student placed in it.

And many did so without reservation.Trustee Kenneth Schmidt referred to his repeated forwarding of applicant names as an "epidemic" in one 2006 e-mail and asked the chancellor when he could "check up on my crop en masse." Schmidt did not return a call from the Tribune.

Abel Montoya, who oversaw Category I applicants for about five years until he left the university in October, said he watched as denial decisions were overturned.

In a 2008 internal memo, Montoya refers to some Category I applicants as "students who can't get in on their own credentials."

Montoya told the Tribune: "I don't really know the reason or rationale why some decisions were changed. I just knew that it came from someone above, and I wasn't in the position to ask questions."

Mr Rezko knows Mr Blagojevich, who will defund you, which he did anyway, and Mr Obama, who will fire you and put your university in receivership, when he finishes destroying the car companies to save them. Keep a low profile, tovarisch.

At Urbana, however, the rationale is straight out of third grade.

The university denies that Category I candidates receive extraordinary treatment.

But the man who oversees the undergraduate admissions process acknowledges the system's flaws.

"I do try to work very hard to maintain the integrity of the admissions process," said Keith Marshall, associate provost for enrollment management. "The whole Category I process is a bit of a challenge to me, but I don't believe it is unique to this university."

There is good news: the faculty is still able to provide quality control.

The system has affected the quality of the student body, records show. In 2006, the Law School's admissions dean argued that admitting a Category I applicant would require the admission of two additional students to offset the impact it would have on the school's ranking.

"There is no track record of success and when [the applicant] is faced with the rigor of our program there is absolutely no reason to expect anything other than failure," wrote Paul Pless, the law admissions dean.

The faculty has a lot of quality control to do: the story does not disclose whether that student is still in law school.

The article continues with multiple examples of legislative interference, although with 160 cases in an applicant pool of 26,000, the foreclosure of other students' opportunities might be of second-order smallness. On the other hand, once the athletic department's requests and the diversity managers' requests combine in the mix, there is a critical mass of underprepared and disengaged students at Urbana.