College admissions have just entered the news in a big way following the Supreme Court's June 29th decision to end Affirmative Action in university admissions, but Affirmative Action isn't the only big college buzzword. You might have heard a bit about legacy admissions, and whether that phrase is familiar to you or totally new, we're here to clear up all your questions. What are legacy admissions? Why do colleges have them? How important are they? Are they fair? Are legacy admissions constitutional?
All will be revealed as we dive into the history, purpose, and future of this practice in university admissions. There's a lot to unpack here just at a basic level, but it doesn't make our job easier that the fate of legacy admissions is a little uncertain. But without further ado, today, we're looking at legacy admissions and what they mean for you.
What Are Legacy Admissions?
Thankfully, the concept is pretty simple. Some colleges and universities (though not all) give preference during admissions to applicants whose relatives are alumni of the college. In the most positive terms, this just means that at certain institutions, you'd have a leg up on the competition if one or more of your relatives have graduated from the school, and extra bonus points if those relatives are donors. Seen in a more negative light, you might be edged out of your top college in favor of another similar applicant whose parent or grandparent once attended the school.
You can see why this issue would be fairly polarizing. For folks with relatives at prestigious and hyper-competitive Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale, that bonus can mean a whole lot, and for first-generation college students or applicants whose parents never had the opportunity to attend these prestigious schools, the dice can feel a bit loaded. So now we know what they are and how some people might feel about them, but what do the universities get out of it?
Do Universities Really Show Preference For Legacy Applicants?
We figured it's only fair that we prove this is really the case before we proceed. First thing to note is that legacy admissions aren't completely black and white. It's not as if having alumni relatives guarantees you a spot at the school you apply to. In general, experts say that your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars still have to be in line with university standards (or at least close to it) and that being a legacy applicant is really more of an influence than a deciding factor.
But that little bump can matter a great deal, or at least the numbers suggest as much. Recent data brought to public attention in the Supreme Court's recent decision to end Affirmative Action showed that at Harvard, legacy applicants (that is, students with one or more alumni relatives) make up around 30% of the admitted students every year despite being only around 5% of the total applicant pool. Pretty shocking if you've never heard that before.
We should also acknowledge that not all schools practice any form of legacy admission, and some remarkably prestigious and competitive schools (such as MIT and Johns Hopkins University) don't consider it at all, either because they consider it unfair or because they simply don't believe that legacy status indicates student success.
Why Do Schools Have Legacy Admissions?
While there are probably many reasons for this practice that aren't as easily documented here, the most widely accepted one is pretty simple: it financially benefits the college. How so? For one, students with close alumni relatives to institutions like Harvard and Yale are probably in less need of financial aid. For two, preference for legacy applicants means that successful alumni are more encouraged to donate money to the school, because preference for the children of donors is another part of legacy admissions. If a successful alumnus feels confident that their donation will help their child get into the school, they're more likely to donate and to donate big. For three, legacy students are more likely to actually attend the school if accepted.
Are Legacy Admissions Fair?
Colleges that practice legacy admissions find plenty of justification for the practice from their perspective, and it doesn't necessarily end there. Some have argued that legacy admissions actually benefit the United States' global higher education dominance, comparing the generous and richly connected alumni network of schools like Harvard and Yale with the less communal and less donor-attractive schools like Oxford.
Legacy admissions practices, they argue, foster the sense of intimate community and connection amongst alumni that make schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford worth attending on top of their stellar academics. Moreover, the argument goes, the fact that legacy admissions are currently so heavily White reflects these schools' demographics from thirty years ago. If legacy admissions continue even after Affirmative Action, there is reason to believe that legacy admissions will look significantly more diverse than they do now, but that's just speculation. There are still plenty of criticisms to make.
Why Are Legacy Admissions in the News?
Now this is where we can really get into it. In July of 2023, three Boston-based groups advocating for racial minorities in the city (the Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England, and the Greater Boston Latino Network) filed a complaint with the department of education against Harvard University for its legacy admissions practices. The reasoning? We've already been over the obvious preference for legacy applicants in college admissions, but let's look at one more data metric: off the many legacy applicants each year to Harvard, around 70% of them are White, meaning that this group of applicants which are given an indisputable and significant advantage in Harvard's admissions are vast majority White.
In the days of Affirmative Action, this obvious advantage given to legacy students (and therefore affluent White students) could be counterbalanced by admission preference given to racial minorities, ensuring a diverse college campus even when legacy students are given a boost. But with Affirmative Action gone and legacy admissions still thriving at many of the nation's top schools, it's almost a certainty that minority admissions will decline as a result.
The practice's opponents argue that legacy admissions are an essentially racist admissions practice. Many agree and have gone so far as calling legacy admissions "Affirmative Action for the Rich".
Are Legacy Admissions Over?
The short answer is no. At the present moment, Harvard and schools like it can still practice legacy admissions to their hearts' content, and with the current political landscape, it seems unlikely that this recent complaint will yield an end to the practice nationwide. That said, some schools like Wesleyan University have taken it upon themselves to halt preference for legacy applicants in their own admissions practices, and many other schools may soon follow suit. As we discussed in our article on Affirmative Action, race-conscious admissions weren't forced on colleges from the government but rather begun by colleges themselves in order to diversify their student body, so the same could happen with legacy admissions. That said, legacy admissions have a more direct impact on a college's finances than Affirmative Action, so it's hard to say.
How Do Legacy Admissions Affect Me?
Unlike the end of Affirmative Action, we have a good sense of what legacy admissions can mean for you in the present moment, and it's very simple. If you have alumni relatives to the school you're applying to, you might have an edge on the competition. If you don't have any alumni relatives to the school you're applying to, you might be at a disadvantage compared to other applicants who do, but it will never disqualify you from admission altogether. Even with all of these caveats, you have to remember that it's going to vary tremendously by school. Some schools care a lot, some don't factor it in at all, and many others are somewhere in the middle. At the very least, having alumni relatives at a school can't hurt your chances of getting in no matter where you apply.
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