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I recall one of my college history professors nearly fifty years ago whose two daughters attended very selective boarding schools and wanted to attend his Alma Mater, a highly selective New England former men’s college now newly co-ed. His father and grandfather had also graduated from that college, the girls were both high achievers in school and had perfect SAT scores. In separate admissions cycles both were rejected. After years of being a loyal donor his response was, “Not another F-ing dime”.
Not every loyal alum’s well qualified kids get in as legacy.
John F., while that’s certainly true, you’re citing anecdotal evidence. “…at some of the most selective colleges, students with family ties make up 10% to 20% of the latest incoming class.” and, “The University of Notre Dame said legacy students have averaged 23% of the student body over the past decade.” and, at Harvard “From 2014 to 2019, the acceptance rate for legacy applicants was 34%, compared with 6% for applicants without legacy status…”
I love how the guy at the end of the article is leading a boycott on donations to some of these universities. What he doesn’t realize is that many of these universities are willing to underwrite or give up any revenue on first generation, people of lower socioeconomic status to increase diversity. By decreasing donations, he’s decreasing colleges’ ability to do such practices. This is the problem with extreme liberalism… they don’t actually think problems through thoroughly.
The trouble is, colleges conduct their admissions process behind closed doors in an extremely opaque manner, so it will be very difficult to know if they have really abandoned the practice. “A recent vote of Harvard students found that 60% oppose it.” Guess who is among the other 40%?
The reality of course is that they won’t abandon it. It’s too lucrative of a gravy train.
John F’s story captures it perfectly. People expect their children to get favored admissions, especially if they are hugely supportive alums. And most schools won’t be willing to run the risk of a drop in that support, especially during tough economies.
At best, the acceptance rate for children of elite families with multi-generation alums will drop from 34% to 30%. And they’ll report this 13.3% drop as “nearly 15% of a decline in legacy admissions is a promising start”. And then continue an aggressive PR counter-assault on DEI initiatives. Some of these kids are genuinely qualified: went to the best prep schools, had private tutors, trained in 5 languages, took a sabbatical to create and manage a microfinance platform in Lesotho at the age of 14, etc. But many of the ones who are basically guaranteed admission are of course the children of people with nine or ten-figure net worth.
This whole anti-legacy push is just a cog in the PR wheel for these schools. And the DEI grift is another cog.
The data showing a significant percentage of students at a school being “legacy” students, by itself, proves nothing. The relevant stat would be how many of these “legacy” students have qualifications that are below those of most (non-athlete) non-legacy students. My guess is that most “legacy” students are highly qualified and their presence at their parents’ alma mater simply reflects their preference to go where the parent(s) did, not any special admissions treatment. There are no doubt a few unqualified “special admits” (alumni relatives, athletes, politically connected), but I am confident they are a very small percentage of the student body.
As you point out, your take is pure guesswork. The schools don’t divulge this information at all. For Harvard: “Out of an all-time record 57,435 applicants, a mere 1,968 of Class of 2025 hopefuls were admitted. This translates to a stunningly low (even by Harvard’s standards) 3.43% acceptance rate.” Clearly they could have packed 5-10 classes full of students with perfect or near perfect SAT scores and GPAs, many of whom have started their own NFP organizations and have a bevy of other resume enhancers. So, tell me again how legacies didn’t get a huge advantage when they represented 34% (!) of the admits. And that’s to say nothing about the inherent advantage that wealth bestows on those students: premiere prep school, tutors for everything they need, including SAT/ ACT test prep, private “admissions consultants” to optimize your applications, etc.
Randy, I think the 34% represents the acceptance rate for legacies, not the percentage of total admitted. The article shows UND to have the largest legacy acceptance rate, at 23%. This is staggeringly high, but the median legacy acceptance is 12%, and we don’t necessary have a fixed definition for “legacy”.
One critical factor of being “elite” is that they must (to deserve the “elite” label) represent a very tiny top-most subset. 34% is hardly tiny. If it were the case that 34% were legacy admittances, many of those couldn’t be ultra-wealthy because there simply aren’t that many–it would fall into a lower tier of wealth.
Frankly, though, it wouldn’t surprise me if the 34% is derived through some fancy mashing together of numbers. I have a sneaking suspicion that the acceptance rate for actual legacies (both the extreme wealthy and the merely very comfortable four-generation admittances) is still closer to 90%. If you father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all got admitted to Yale (and–more importantly–were all generous alums), your standards for admittance are simply going to be much lower, regardless of any other demographic variables.
To say that it is rooted in racism is absolute bovine scat. Everything is not about race.
It has to do with keeping alumni loyal to the institution…and continuing to donate.
Dominic, this is what one would call “institutional racism”, not “scat”. Since white people have been in a privileged position for many, many generations, it’s easy to see why they represent the overwhelming majority of alumni and, not coincidentally, the ones most able to have wealth to make contributions.
It is absolutely about keeping alumni loyal and donating, however when those alumni are disproportionately white it becomes a racial filter. One of the biggest misconceptions of racism is that it is somehow requisite overt. By providing an advantage to the children of alumni who are known to be racially skewed versus the general population and new applicants these universities have embodied a policy that is the textbook definition of institutional racism. I’m not mad at them for their historical practice, but now that we know it’s created an unintended consequence they should make changes.
Kevin C. – much better stated than my comment.
Was it institutional racism when Notre Dame accepted minorities BEFORE most state schools? Or had minorities on their teams before most schools?
Try hard enough and you can spin the weather forecast into being the result of racism.
It’s fun watching people bandy about terms like “institutional racism” when applied to institutions that have been controlled by one political party for decades…typically the same political party from which the users of this epithet hold allegiance.
Reading is key, directly form the article:
“Historians have traced legacy preference to the 1920s as elite colleges sought to limit the number of Jewish students.”
Everything in colleges and Universities is donations and making money, primarily for their precious endowments. When the money starts drying up, and these institutions can’t get enough money for their elaborate lifestyles they will rethink this latest fad. The necessity for a college is becoming less and less. Except for certain professions and academic pursuits, college or university diplomas are little more than paper. Take it from me, I have three university diplomas; one BA and two terminal masters degrees. Other than the last which was required to get to be an architect, the others didn’t matter that much in terms of a job. Colleges and Universities will begin to resemble all government jobs where the vast majority of positions will be occupied by women and minorities; no white men need apply. The vast majority of new businesses and jobs will be created by people with no college diplomas, home schooled and it will be people with college and university degrees coming to them, with hat in hand, asking for a “job.”