Intended audience: Rob Pangborn, vice president and dean for undergraduate education; Clark V. Brigger, executive director of undergraduate admissions
13 years of work for one life-altering letter. Across the United States, high school seniors pour their hearts and souls into their college applications, only to send them away to be torn to pieces by admissions counselors at universities. SAT scores, extracurricular activities, letters of recommendation, and personal statements are used to create an image of the ideal application. Yet for some students, one other factor is analyzed within the context of the application: legacy status. Legacy status is granted to an applicant who has had a parent or grandparent also graduate from the university. While many first generation and lower income students are left vying for a spot at top-tier universities, legacy students are secure in their status, knowing that their acceptance letter to come will be a mere formality due to their lineage. Since the early 20th century, the legacy admissions policy has been used to create a clear distinction between applicants to higher education institutions throughout the United States. This policy needs to be abolished due to its convoluted history of discrimination, its tendency to eliminate socioeconomic diversity on campuses, and its trivial effect on alumni donations.
History of Discrimination:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/harvards-incoming-class-is-one-third-legacy.html
· Started in the 20th century to exclude certain, “less desirable” applicants
· Wanted to exclude immigrants
· Wanted campus populations to be “homogenous”
· Ex: Princeton adopted the policy to decrease the size of its Jewish student population
o Wanted to end its “Jewish problem”
Tendency to eliminate socioeconomic diversity:
· More students from families in the top 1% than there are from the entire bottom 60% (in terms of social class) at schools such as Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn, and Brown
· 29% of the class of 2021 at Harvard had a relative who had attended Harvard before them; this percentage is larger than the number of students in the class whose parents lacked a four-year college degree
· 40% of students nationally receive a Pell grant, but that only includes 16% of Ivy League students
· Include statistics on the demographics of students who apply as legacy
Trivial effect on alumni donations:
· Analyzed alumni giving from 1998 to 2007, and found “no evidence” that legacy preference policies correlated to an increase in donations
· Alumni at universities that grant legacy status only gave $15.39 more
· At universities that eliminated legacy policies, there was no drop in alumni donations
Sources:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/New-Pressure-Put-on-Colleges/10158
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/harvards-incoming-class-is-one-third-legacy.html