Legacy preferences at universities give a boost to children of alumni who apply for admission.
The ban, which would affect two of the country’s more selective public universities, the University of Virginia and William & Mary, is another indication that legacy admissions, which mostly benefit students who are white, wealthy and well-connected, are losing favor across the country. Virginia Tech, another prestigious public university in the state, announced last year that it would no longer take legacy status into account.
After the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions in June, several highly selective private schools, including Wesleyan University, announced they would eliminate legacy preferences. And New York University said it would remove a check-off on its application asking if prospective students were legacies.
They joined several selective colleges that had already eliminated or had never used legacy preferences, including M.I.T., Johns Hopkins, Amherst College and the University of California system.
The state of Colorado has banned legacy preferences in its public universities, and similar legislation prohibiting the practice has been introduced in Congress and in states including Connecticut and New York.
But many elite private universities — including Harvard, Yale, and Brown — continue to give preference to the children of alumni. Data recently released by the Department of Education found that nearly 600 colleges and universities consider legacy status in admission.
Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania are the subjects of federal Department of Education investigations into their use of legacy preferences and whether the practice constitutes a civil rights violation. The Harvard investigation began following a complaint filed by three advocacy groups.
@B1partisanSheepLibertarian3mos3MO
A big problem that I foresee is that children will be ineligible to attend the college that a parent attended no matter how stellar they are, since colleges won't want to risk having to prove that legacy wasn't a decisive consideration.
@MajorityTonyDemocrat3mos3MO
All they have to do is not look up a student's name to see if their parents went to school there. No or on the admittance forms does it say where did your parents go to school. If they take that factor out they won't know if the student is a legacy.
As an aside, I dislike the term "legacy student." What kind of legacy did these parents ever have for the school? Did they actually contribute anything to the school when they went there? The term "legacy" is misused.
@B1partisanSheepLibertarian3mos3MO
The end of legacy as a factor means the end of substantial contributions from some of the alumni. So someone is going to have to pay more, raise tuition, or look to enroll more full pay students and fewer tuition reduction applicants, who are qualified, except in the tuition payment department. Colleges and universities are business institutions and will have to do more with less or trim the acceptance of financially weak students. There are reality tradeoffs for everything. Also, it has become much more difficult to evaluate young people applying to college with grade inflation in high schools, diminished testing, and more pressure to meet the college budget.
@MinorityJakeGreen3mos3MO
I hope this bill passes. The closer we get to disregarding the power of legacy the better. Student athletes need a close look as well. When I went to UVA I had a class with an athlete who only showed up for syllabus day and the final.
The big problem UVA will have, though, is that it wants geographical representation from Virginia.
Northern Virginia, however, accounts for the vast majority of the applicants with the highest test scores in the state.
The idea that applicants are evaluated "on their story" is bogus, and anyone who went to TJ knows it -- they just draw a GPA line and admit everyone above it and reject everyone below it. Figuring out how to solve the problem of rural admissions is pretty similar to figuring out how to solve race-based admissions. Glad I'm not at the helm for that one.
@P4rtisanBenDemocrat3mos3MO
The only way through this is for hiring companies, government and other non-profit entities to expand some, not all, of their recruiting pool to some general admission schools. They can go to a more general admission state school and recruit a couple of its highest achieving students.
The primary reason for the hyper admissions focus at select schools has little to do with the education. Its all about access to the firms and agencies that recruit exclusively at these schools. The path to plumb Wall Street, Tech, Court Clerkships, Law and Entertainment jobs are through the selective schools.… Read more
We also need to emphasize to young people that there are plenty of paths to social success that aren't just Wall Street and the like. Working for a tooling company or a packaging company can lead to business and person success. We need more people going to work in places between the big metros too.
@ISIDEWITH3mos3MO
@9JK7XWK3mos3MO
i’m currently an 18-year-old dealing with the college admission process and I don’t think that my hard work throughout high school is equal to somebody just being born from a person who went to Harvard ban legacy admissions
@9JK74MSRepublican3mos3MO
Its more important because it effects the United States
@9JK4JX53mos3MO
I dont think they should ban it.
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