Admissions have changed a lot in the last few years, but we’re about to see a whole new wave of changes crash into some of our nation’s oldest institutions. If you’re reading this, we’re sure you know about the Supreme Court decision that banned schools from using race as a factor in college admissions in late June. This started a lot of discourse about race and privilege in admissions, which then of course led to discourse about legacy admissions. In the wake of the lawsuit, Wesleyan University announced they’re ditching the practice, but it didn’t end there. Last month, a new group of students announced a lawsuit against the college everyone loves to sue, Harvard – this time calling for an end to legacy admissions.
Since these two announcements, we’ve found our notification walls packed with Op-Eds and think pieces about the current State of College Admissions. It feels like not a day goes by without a new (well, more like recycled) take that seems to feed into some wild paranoia machine rather than explain anything in any sort of practical way. We don’t love that! So we’re here to decode it for you.
The current discussion about legacy admissions, and the basis of the *new* Harvard lawsuit, is that legacy admissions are not only unfair on the merits, but they heavily favor white applicants. Yes, that’s probably true.
We understand that putting the problem into words may wake some people up to the reality, but we also need to consider the fact that every Ivy League school (and all their non-Ivy counterparts, like MIT, Georgetown, Stanford, UChicago, etc.) are predominately white institutions. That would mean that their alumni would be, you guessed it, predominately white. Which means their children (and grandchildren and great-grandchildren) would also be predominately white. The lack of diversity in the legacy pool is a symptom of a larger problem. For example, Princeton (charted in 1746, for reference), the last Ivy to integrate, didn’t start admitting Black students until 1947. Their families have had two generations to get an edge – while white families with long Princeton lineages could go back as far as 12 generations.
The other factor that plays heavily into legacy admissions is class. Legacy admissions, while schools would hate to admit it, is mainly pay to play. If you went to Harvard, graduated, and never did as much as even attend an alumni event, your child is not at the front of the legacy line. If you went to Harvard, write them a few five-figure checks every few years, go to every alumni event you can, and do alumni interviews with applicants – even then, your child is not at the front of the legacy line. The alumni who write seven-figure checks? Regularly? Their children are benefiting the most from their parent’s legacy status. And look – we know it’s unfair, and we know the entire college admissions process is unfair, but we’re just reporting on the State of Admissions. And we have yet to see a solution that brings true equity into the occasion.
Let’s sidetrack from general legacy talk a bit to discuss Wesleyan banning legacy admissions. On it’s face, it’s bold. It’s sassy. It’s a statement. Underneath? It’s a little weak.
Wesleyan is a small, liberal arts college in Connecticut. It has a 19% acceptance rate, putting it right into the top-tier cut-off. It has a $1.48 billion dollar endowment – half the size of it’s peers, like Williams, Amherst, Wellesley, and Bowdoin. Not that $1.48 billion is anything to sneeze at, but compare that to Harvard’s $49 billion or the University of Texas’ $47 billion. We mention endowments because it gives us a hint into how much money alumni are putting back into the school after graduation. So, as you may have now correctly guessed, Wesleyan might not have the most active alumni network. And a less active (and less charitable!) alumni network means less children of alumni who are jazzed about following in their parent’s footsteps and becoming a Cardinal. See where we’re going with this?
Wesleyan already likes to position themselves as a progressive institution, so of course they want to take up the mantle on eliminating legacy admissions and lead other colleges down their fiery path of righteousness. In reality, they probably didn’t have many legacy applicants (accompanied by generous donations) in the first place. This is like if Starbucks announced they would never serve pasta again… like, okay, we didn’t think you were doing that at all?
We also want to acknowledge the fact that many schools have been majorly distancing themselves from legacy admissions for years. There are few schools that embrace legacies loudly and publicly, USC and Duke being the proudest. Even the Ivies that do accept a large number of legacies, like UPenn, Harvard (obvi), Dartmouth, and Cornell have done a lot to keep their legacy admit stats hush hush. That leads us to believe that colleges are aware that having lots of legacy admissions is, at best, a little shameful. Many colleges denote in their Common Data Sets that they do take legacy status into consideration – but at the same level they might take going on a tour of the campus or signing up for their newsletter. Legacy has fallen out of vogue, even before COVID gave students more options and opportunities.
Like we said in our Affirmative Action article, colleges are reactionary. Even though the Supreme Court’s decision won’t come into play until next cycle, almost every college has added a supplement that will allow students to write about race. Now that Wesleyan has banned legacy admissions and there’s a pending lawsuit against Harvard, we wouldn’t be surprised if other schools in the same category as Wesleyan announced the same.
So what does this mean for students who really, really, really want to go to school where their parents did? Right now, everything is fine. Nothing has changed so far, and we bet it will remain unchanged for a few cycles. HOWEVER, we work with legacies every cycle and we’re going to tell you what we tell them: give them reason to admit you without your legacy status. There are no guarantees in this world, legacy or otherwise, and all you can do is control what you do. That means you should be getting great, nay, amazing grades in the hardest classes your school offers. That means perfect SAT/ACT scores. That means building out your niche, your academic passion, early on in your high school career. That means incredible and impressive extracurriculars in that niche. If you couldn’t get in as regular applicant, you probably won’t as a legacy.
We hope we’ve cleared up any confusion you may have had about legacy admissions, and maybe you even learned a fun (or not so fun) fact along the way. If you’re a legacy student, these potential changes don’t mean you’re not going to get in, it just means you need to keep working hard.
Need help with your college apps? Have questions about the admissions process? Have zero clue on where to start? We got you. Reach out today.