The advantages that colleges offer legacy students extend well beyond admission preferences. Many colleges have various mechanisms for coaching legacies through the admissions process and for advising them about strategies for constructing successful applications, including notifying legacies of the edge that they can gain by applying early. Some universities have alumni councils that provide legacies with special advising sessions, pair these would-be students with current legacy students, and generally provide advice and mentoring for legacy applicants.
In cases where legacies are rejected, some universities offer legacy admissions counseling and help with placement at other colleges. Such students are often encouraged to enroll at a lesser ranked school for one or two years to prove themselves and then to reapply as transfer students. News & World Report and other media take into account only the SAT scores and high school grades of entering freshmen, a college can accept poor achieving legacies as transfer students without hurting its standing. Harvard caters to the children of well-connected alumni and big donors through the "Z-list." Z-listers are often guaranteed admittance while in high school but are obliged to take a year off between high school and Harvard, doing whatever they wish in the interim. Currently, the Ivy League institutions are estimated to admit 10% to 15% of each entering class using legacy admissions. In 2009, Princeton admitted 41.7% of legacy applicants—more than 4.5 times the 9.2% rate of non-legacies.
Similarly, in 2006, Brown University admitted 33.5% of alumni children, significantly higher than the 13.8% overall admissions rate. In short, Ivy League and other top schools typically admit legacies at two to five times their overall admission rates. Among top universities, the University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University are known to weigh legacy status heavily in their application processes.
In the college admissions process, "legacy" applicants are students with some kind of familial tie to a university. An applicant normally has legacy status at a college if a member of the applicant's immediate family attends or attended the college, but at certain schools it might also mean a grandparent, aunt or uncle, and cousin. Some institutions restrict their consideration to "primary" legacy, meaning children of alumni; others are happy to extend it in any direction, and include both undergraduate and graduate alumni. A legacy student is someone who has a close family member, normally a parent, who attended the same college. These applicants receive special consideration during the admissions process. At most schools, the legacy boost only counts for applicants who had at least one parent enrolled there, though some colleges may extend legacy status to grandchildren or even siblings of alumni.
A 2005 analysis of 180,000 student records obtained from nineteen selective colleges and universities found that, within a set range of SAT scores, being a legacy raised an applicant's chances of admission by 19.7 percentage points. For all their obvious similarities twin and siblings are treated as separate and individual people and applicants in the college admissions process. The other thing that may be different–and this is true when there are multiple students applying from the same school–is that the context in which the records are viewed is likely to be the same.
In the end, every applicant's file is reviewed on its own merits as the admissions office looks for people who will add to their campus community and serve their institutional needs. The scandal has put a spotlight on the college admissions process and sparked debate about the legal yet unethical ways in which wealthy students are often given advantages. One of the processes that has been called into question is legacy admissions — the preferential treatment of applicants whose parents or other relatives attended the college or university to which they are applying.
Legacy preference or legacy admission is a preference given by an institution or organization to certain applicants on the basis of their familial relationship to alumni of that institution. It is most controversial in college admissions, where students so admitted are referred to as legacies or legacy students. The practice is particularly widespread in the college admissions in the United States; almost three-quarters of research universities and nearly all liberal arts colleges grant legacy preferences in admissions. The preferential treatment of legacy students in the admission process at many American universities is a practice that has been around for almost a century despite the practice's anti-Semitic and xenophobic roots. In fact, the practice of legacy admissions began at Dartmouth in 1922, and soon after, other institutions adopted the practice as a means of reducing the number of recent Eastern European immigrants — a large majority of whom were Jewish — who were admitted. Today, universities maintain the practice more out of tradition and fear that without it, alumni donations will plummet, but its effect is no less damaging than it was at its bigoted beginnings.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of Dartmouth's use of legacy preference in admissions, Dartmouth should acknowledge the ridiculousness and inequity of this practice and end the use of legacy preference in admissions. In short, not only does legacy preference compound the advantages of the well-off; it also compounds the disadvantage experienced by low-income students. Even elite public universities such as the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia grant favor to legacy applicants. However, these two schools differ in how openly they advertise their legacy policies. UVA created its own Admission Liaison Program where children of alumni can attend special events, webinars, and even schedule a one-on-one transcript consultation with the director of the organization at any point throughout high school. In contrast, the University of Michigan's admissions website does not make any reference to legacy status—the only statement about legacy admissions in buried in an FAQ.
While Dartmouth is certainly not the only college that still considers legacy status in admissions, it was the first, and that gives it a unique opportunity to right its wrongs. Legacy preference does little beyond perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities by providing already privileged students with an even greater advantage during the college admissions process. If the College is committed to "build a diverse community of students," as stated in their values, they should put their money where their mouth is. The most appropriate way to celebrate the centennial of the invention of legacy preference is with its abolition. Some schools using legacy admissions express a number of motivations for maintaining them.
Are younger siblings at an advantage when they apply to a highly selective college that their older sibling attends or attended in the past? They must apply in the Early Decision or Early Action round — not in the Regular Decision round. At most highly selective colleges, if these younger siblings choose not to apply Early to the institution that their older sibling attends or attended, they will lose those sibling bonus points in admissions. And this all brings us to an editorial written by a current Brown student, Mark Liang, in which he powerfully articulates on the pages of "The Brown Daily Herald" why Brown should admit his younger sister. It's a terrific editorial that hangs a lantern on some of the inequities in the highly selective college admissions process and it's one that not so subtly speaks to the advantage of family connections to a university. Often in debates over legacy admissions, race-based affirmative action policies are also raised.
Some argue that affirmative action policies are the only reason some students are admitted to selective colleges, similarly to the idea that legacy students are only admitted because of their legacy status. Michael Hurwitz, a researcher at Harvard, studied the impact of legacy status on admissions at 30 colleges and found that legacy students are three times more likely to be admitted to top schools than non-legacy students. In his report, Hurwitz says that being the child of someone who attended a college as an undergraduate, or a "primary legacy," gives one the greatest advantage in admissions. At Stanford, "legacy" applicants are defined as the children of Stanford graduates at either the undergraduate or graduate level. With respect to philanthropy, Stanford does not document in admission files the donor status of all applicants' families. However, some applicants' files may contain a notation about their family's giving.
Does Sibling Legacy Help At Upenn In the large majority of these cases, the parents of the applicants arealsograduates of Stanford. Philanthropy plays a significant role in supporting the opportunities available to all students at Stanford, including the ability to attend the university through our program of need-based financial aid. Because private universities in the U.S. rely heavily on donations from alumni, critics argue that legacy preferences are a way to indirectly sell university placement. Opponents accuse these programs of perpetuating an oligarchy and plutocracy as they lower the weight of academic merit in the admissions process in exchange for a financial one.
Legacy students tend to be the white and wealthy, contributing to socioeconomic inequality. The undergraduate admission office values the legacy connections of applicants and encourages students to detail their university ties accurately on their applications. The admission staff and Office of Alumni Engagement work closely to document legacy applicants through the admission-review process.
During the initial application review, an applicant's legacy status is noted on the review sheet and admission evaluators are instructed to consider the affiliation. In addition, during the committee-review process, there is a separate committee that does an additional review of legacy applicants. Finally, the deans of admission for Emory College and Oxford College closely monitor legacy decisions throughout the entire process. At IvyWise we work with students – both legacies and not – to select the best-fit colleges and universities for their needs and goals, and develop an application strategy that best positions them to gain admission to their top-choice colleges. Recently, Amherst College announced that it would no longer favor children of alumni in the admissions process. In a typical year, 11% of incoming freshman at this highly-selective Massachusetts-based liberal arts powerhouse are legacies.
A few days prior to Amherst's announcement, Yale University began facing some internal pressure to reexamine its own policy as the Yale College Council Senate which passed a resolution condemning the continued use of legacy admissions. Students at Brown, Harvard, Tufts, and Swarthmore have been vocal in their own student governments/student newspaper op-ed pages. Whether any other of these institutions actually give the idea serious consideration and move in the direction of Amherst remains to be seen.
This discrepancy is troubling not simply because it shows a clear bias that universities have in favor of wealthy, white, legacy students, but also because it clearly illustrates why low-income students are so poorly represented at elite universities. White, wealthy, legacy students already have every factor in their favor during the college admissions process, and the fact that colleges feel the need to give them yet another hand up simply due to their pedigree further compounds the inequity. In college admissions, a "legacy" student is defined as someone whose parents attended and/or graduated from the institution to which the student is applying. Legacy students often receive a big boost in admissions at private universities in the U.S. However, many prestigious schools, such as MIT, do not consider legacy status at all. At Princeton University, legacy students made up 10% of the class of 2025– that's 150 students out of the 1,498 students who were offered admission.
As the university must make fine distinctions among large numbers of highly qualified applicants, the ability to consistently assess all information presented in the application becomes increasingly important. Rick Fitzgerald, a spokesman, told Inside Higher Ed that legacy status is used for only two purposes. He said that the college does want to acknowledge family relationships to alumni when communicating with parents of applicants about the admissions process. Further, he said that legacy status is an important factor in calculating yield, the percentage of admitted applicants who enroll. Legacy applicants who are admitted enroll at a higher rate than do other applicants. So it's important for enrollment planners to know whether those in the applicant pool are legacies, he said.
Other proponents of legacy admissions argue that doing away with legacy preference will cause donations from alums to plummet and, in turn, reduce institutions' capacity to help lower income students. However, this argument fails to acknowledge the fact that at institutions that have already done away with legacy admissions, there has not been any significant change in donations. In this sense, if colleges choose to reduce the financial support given to lower income students following changes in their use of legacy preference, this decision would not be due to a decrease in donations, but rather to other, unrelated factors. Munley, the former Grinnell official, told me that in his experience, the majority of legacy admits fare well enough. "Most parents who are alums of the school have a sense of the school and their own kids, and aren't going to be too pushy if their kid is completely not qualified," he said. (Most, he noted, but not all.) And a Harvard spokesperson told me that admitted legacies tend to have higher median test scores and grades than the rest of admitted students.
This doesn't make the admissions advantage that legacies are given defensible, but it's possibly another reason that the status quo of legacy admissions persists. While the school ended the practice in part to increase diversity among its student body, however, Holloway added that he was "not convinced" that eliminating legacy admissions was the only way to do so. He pointed to Northwestern's rising proportions of students of color and first-generation and/or low-income students as an illustration that legacy preferences and class diversity aren't mutually exclusive.
Among U.S. News & World Report's top 15 global universities, nine schools have either ended or never used legacy preferences including the University of Washington, University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley. For the record, there are some elite colleges that don't consider legacy, including MIT and Cal Tech. The University of California system hasn't given legacy preferences since the 1990s. Inside Higher Ed published an essay last week by Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, criticizing public universities that have preferences for legacies, the children of alumni.
The school currently gives the children of alumni an admissions bump, but from 1980 to 2010, the proportion of students in its freshman class with a parent who also attended dropped from 24 percent to 13 percent. After adjusting for inflation, Yale's endowment, which is funded in part by alumni donations, grew from just under $2 billion in 1980 to more than $16 billion in 2010, as expressed in 2010 dollars. Sixty-nine percent of college students say legacy college admissions isn't fair — including 58% of legacy students themselves — and only a small fraction of students want their future children to receive admission preference. No doubt, Liang's editorial is the finest editorial we've read in a college newspaper in 2017. And, as our readers know well, we read a whole lot of editorials on the college admissions process. His writing is pointed, acerbic, and the piece is not only well crafted but it also happens to all be true.
Of course, like at every highly selective institution, there is nepotism at Brown. Of course Early Decision candidates to Brown are at a distinct advantage over Regular Decision candidates. Of course money is a factor in admissions decisions — colleges are not truly need-blind. Fairfield University's legacy families consist of students and alumni whose family members - including parents, grandparents, and/or siblings - attended or currently attend Fairfield.
The University truly values our legacy families' continued involvement and contributions and hosts a number of special programs to help legacy families stay in touch with Fairfield and one another. Lawrence Lowell, worried that white Protestants would stop applying to Harvard if the school admitted too many Jewish students. As a result, the institution created a new admissions policy that considered qualities like family background and character, ushering in the era of legacy college admissions. While there are cases where applying as a legacy can boost your applicant profile, on the other hand, if your academic profile is not as strong as the middle 50% of admitted applicants, legacy status probably won't be enough to keep you from the "no" pile.
It's important to remember that legacy status can provide additional context to your application, but it's not enough to encourage admissions officers to look past poor grades, test scores, activities, and more. There are many nuances to the college admissions process, and one of the aspects that can be hard for students to navigate is whether or not applying to their parents' alma mater will impact their chances of admission. Legacy status in college admissions can be a confusing avenue to travel, but there can be some benefits – and drawbacks – to applying to college as a legacy. Of course, most legacy students still need to have competitive applications to be considered.
It's rare for legacy students to be admitted with a sub-par application. That being said, because their family attended a prestigious institution, legacy students often benefit from additional resources, making the admissions process bearable. A study of thirty elite colleges, found that primary legacy students are an astonishing 45% more likely to get into a highly selective college or university than a non-legacy. One study revealed that being a legacy was equivalent in admissions value to a 160 point gain on the SATs .
Certainly, admission is easier for children of alumni, whom colleges want to keep happy, and donating. Most elite institutions give preference to graduates' children, sometimes even to grandchildren and siblings. According to Pamela Paul, a reporter at The New York Times, admission rates for prestigious universities can be about five times greater than their overall acceptance rate.
"Among legacy applicants for Princeton's class of 2015, 33 percent of those offered a spot were the children of alumni. Harvard generally admits 30 percent, and Yale says it admits 20 percent to 25 percent. Although this can be difficult for twins specifically, each applicant is judged based on their individual qualifications.
I have experienced a number of twins/siblings in the admissions process. In some cases the students can be relieved because they now have the opportunity to grow and become their own person in another school and they have never had that opportunity. I am the father of twins and know that some twins need to have this time by themselves. There are also instances where twins are inseparable and have a great bond which helps them be the great people that they are. If this is the case for your twins, then you should make this a part of the college search process and choose school that both can obtain admissions and be giving the educational challenges they each require. But keep in mind that in the admissions process, they are reviewed and judged individually.
Schapiro estimated that about 10 percent of the undergraduate student body is made up of legacy admits when factoring in parental connections alone. As the practice rises in controversy, schools — including Northwestern — are often quiet about legacy admissions data, typically not publicly releasing hard numbers. Policies that overwhelmingly benefit white students also take away spots from students of color at elite institutions. With a limited number of seats in each class, admitting high numbers of legacy students means denying admission to qualified non-legacy applicants.
At Stanford, one of the most selective schools in the country, legacy students are three times more likely to gain admission. Similarly, at Harvard, legacy applicants are five times more likely to receive an admission offer than non-legacy applicants. A 1992 survey found that of the top seventy-five universities in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, only one had no legacy preferences at all; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also affirmed that it does not practice legacy admissions. Legacy preferences were almost ubiquitous among the one hundred top-ranked liberal arts colleges as well. The only liberal arts college in the top one hundred that explicitly said it did not use legacy preferences was Berea.
