User blog comment:Opaquanity/Each persons connection to the academy?(Beacon)/@comment-10390252-20130722115829

I'm not sure that it has been absolutlely proven that Yang and Ruby are blood sisters, only that Ruby was raised by the Xiao Longs for so long that she thinks of Yang's parents as her own.

As for the other two?

Weiss's folks are rich as in "we on't live in countries, we buy them" rich. She's obviously got a talent with Dust-empowered combat. Such a potential demand formal training to ensure you have the skills to avoid disastrous rookie mistakes. The best place to learn such skills is Beacon Academy and Schnees only go to the best places.

Blake is likely a Fauna or a Fauna-Human hybrid. There is clearly a lot of prejudice and growing political tension bertween the two races and I think two agendas have collided with her. Firstly, she wants "to find her own liberation". She's going to go to Beacon and, by graduating, prove that Fauna are the equals of Humans. Her application was doubtless smoothed through the cogs of the bureaucracy by politicians who are hoping to defuse the Fauna rebellion (i.e. the White Fang movement) by creating a 'poster girl' in Blake to show that the Fauna aren't really discriminated against. Probably the biggest challenge facing Blake will be to square those two circles so she really helps her people without becoming a symbol or seen as a fifth columnist.