Isn’t it possible that Stanford, Harvard-Westlake, other privates were at the minimum complicit in the passage of this law? These are not institutions without profound state-wide clout. There’s no easier excuse to alumni with feelings of entitlement than “the State made us do it”. Having no monetary penalty has the paradoxical effect of making suing the state more difficult because any lawsuit would have to specify damages. What is a school on the “wall of shame” to say? That publicizing its long history of legacy preference that was already public knowledge somehow now damages the school irreparably? There’s no lawsuit there.
There is a lot of evidence that private schools are at best ambivalent about alumni hooks. Look at all of the private schools who have announced the end of legacy admissions nationwide even in the face of alumni wrath. That doesn’t include the Johns Hopkins style fade-out over years that could easily be happening with no announcement whatsoever. Here are two articles about Yale’s committment to Legacy admissions. Ambivalent?
That is an interesting take. I suspect schools with very high yields (Stanford, for example) are a bit ambivalent about plain-vanilla legacy but do want the $$$ donor/legacy type admits.
I would think highly selective schools with lower regular decision yields would welcome highly academic legacy applicants as a yield/demonstrated interest tool, and yet, my understanding is that they tend to admit legacies in the ED round. Perhaps more legacies get admitted in RD than I’m aware of.
We have also seen examples of LACs (which tend to have low regular decision yields) that have announced legacy preference bans, and yet they have athletic rosters with recruited bench warmers who are legacies - where there’s a will, there’s a way, it seems.
If you look at the income distribution of Harvard alumni as presented in Chetty’s article (and the NYT website), and compare it to the income distribution of incoming legacies (at least before Harvard added the “prefer not to say” option), you can see that the the vast majority of legacies attending Harvard are in the very top income percentiles. Moreover, more than half of the students who were in the top 1% were legacies.
I don’t know that there ever was an admissions advantage for legacies per se at any college. The entire point of a legacy advantage is that it increases the the donation rate from these families with long-term “relationships”.
People were talking about how familiarity with the system helps legacies, and I think that this is one of the ways. Until a few years ago, nobody outside a very small group of people, ever talked about how these colleges were accepting the kids of donors, even if these kids were not as qualified, or even were only marginally qualified. Only after the Varsity Blues and other admission scandals did people realize how much of this was going on.
However, alumni always have known that being donors would help their kids, and knew who to approach, and how much they needed to donate (or to promise to donate) to ensure that their kid was accepted.
This won’t change when legacy admissions are banned, however, it will change now that all wealthy families know that donations are a back door to admissions. Somebody like Larry Ellison who attended UIUC would not have known that donating would help his kid in admissions, while Bezos, though he was upper middle class rather than very wealth, attended Princeton, and would have known. So Larry Ellison’s kids attended USC, back when admission rates were in the mid 30%, and it wasn’t considered that prestigious, while Bezos’s kid is attending Bezos’s Alma Mater, Princeton.
I have considered this but I think schools lose out more on alumni being less likely to donate with an outright ban on boosting legacy admissions than the desire to use the state as a shield for a policy they wish to implement. Many of these schools were already reducing legacy admissions but at the same time probably still collecting donations from alumni with the hope that it would boost their children’s chances so I don’t think they have much to gain from this ban.
I wonder what are the implications this policy may have on which legacy kids get in? Take, for instance, an extremely qualified student but whose parents don’t donate huge buildings. Could they now be less likely to be admitted so that the child of a wealthy donor that meets the admission bar but who probably wouldn’t be selected without the donations is admitted to prevent the possible triggering of a “too many legacies at this school” threshold? It’s possible that such a ban may lead to legacy kids being less likely to get into their parent’s alma mater vs. regular kids unless they are the children of big donors or other special interest groups.
I think schools would like the greatest power they can wield in how they craft their classes so a ban like this could pose to be a small thorn in their side even with the upshot of having a shield in place now for why they denied many legacy kids, especially as they have for years done the latter without any shielding.
I wonder how often they got angry phone calls from alumni small-to-moderate donors whose kid(s) didn’t get accepted? If this is a thing - I don’t know that it is, but I wouldn’t be surprised - this ban could at least shied them from that a bit since they can just blame the state and thereby hopefully avoid both the phone calls and the soured relationship.
The benefit of being able to easily deal with upset alumni, which is something that these schools have had to manage for years and probably have become rather adept at it, has to be weighed against the loss of money that some legacies may no longer provide since to some I expect part of the donation is the idea that this is not just their school but a school for their families including future generations. I am not sure the first benefit would be enough to offset the second.
The legacy applicants who impressed the admission readers on their own, without considering legacy or donor status, would be admitted.
Legacy students will still be overrepresented at highly selective colleges, because they do tend to have various advantages in building up their college admission credentials generally, and tend to be more immersed in the specific college’s culture and the like from their parents (i.e. more likely to have a high level of interest if they apply). But the marginal legacies who just have plausible stats but not much else besides legacy status would be the ones no longer admitted.
A good friend of mine who is on the Board of Trustees of a decent private LAC thinks that Stanford and USC will not be materially affected in how they can raise money and shape their classes. He thinks it is the small privates that will be hurt if they are trying to build generational loyalty in their alumni base. It’s not that the admissions boost is necessarily needed, but most people like to be “insiders” with their little privileges.
Maybe they are in 2 or more categories? An athlete and a legacy. John Elway’s and Ed McCaffrey sent kids to Stanford who were athletes and double legacies as both their wives were also Stanford grads/ athletes. A kid could have a parent who went to Harvard and also played hockey or lacrosse.
I think this touches on a valid point. You may call it “little privileges” but it is true that a proud alum with a child at his/her alma mater inevitably feels more grateful. And colleges do like to have loyal alums who are ambassadors for them (as well as potential donors).
One thing to remember is that legacies are not so white anymore. Since colleges started admitting more non-whites, POCs also have potential legacy children. I have heard one or 2 of my non-white acquaintances express regret that they may be losing the “legacy tip” just when their kids are ready.
As noted earlier, the 36% figure is based on grouping all relatives as legacies, not just parents. It includes aunts/uncles, 2nd cousins, etc. One website article listed it wrong, apparently believing that legacy means any relation, and several people copied or quoted that article.
One of the articles using 36% figure phrases it as, “Legacy students made up 36 percent of the class of 2022* , according to a Harvard Crimson survey.” The Harvard Crimson survey they are referring to is the Class of 2022 Freshmen Survey. The full stats from the referenced freshmen survey are repeated below:
One Parent (Legacy) – 11%
Two Parents (Legacy) – 4%
Total Legacy – 14.5%
Any Relative – 36.8% (14.5% Legacies and 22.3% Not Legacies)
~14.5% of class being a legacy (having 1 or more parents who attended Harvard College) is also consistent with the lawsuit sample, which lists the following figures.
More to the point of the thread, the above references also provide some clues about what groups are most likely to compose admitted Harvard legacies. Stats are below:
47% of legacies have income of >$560k, 12% of non-legacies have income of >$560k
22% of White admits are legacies, ~5% of non-White admits are legacies
35% of legacies attended a public HS, 61% of non-legacies attended a public HS
47% of deferred admits (Z-list) are legacies, remainder are primarily Dean/Director list
Paint me cynical but I think it’s rather naive to think the legacy kids who get admitted are those that impress the admissions officers rather than the ones who may be marginal but whose parents donated a building. Based on the data from the recent Chetty study it seems like legacies tend to be on average more qualified than the non-legacies so I don’t think they are letting in many marginal legacies unless they fall under the special category of big donor, renowned or influential parent etc. In fact, I would not be surprised if the other legacies who may be very strong appllcants and are being admitted to other Ivy-like schools help boost the statistics of marginal legacy admits.
What would be interesting is to see if this law leads to a drop in legacy admits but also a change in the stats of legacy admits.
Developmental admits are not in the same bucket as legacy students. This law isn’t going to change that. If your family is a major donor, admissions is already aware without a legacy box checked.
Do we really think that’s going to happen for major donors? At the university near me (not in CA), there is a single donor who has given over $700 million to the school over the decades. Their name is on everything from buildings to athletic facilities. I can’t imagine if their grandkids apply that they aren’t getting in, even if they are only marginally qualified.
An 8-figure donation doesn’t require even a marginal application, legacy or not. The bar is much lower: ‘they won’t fail out and won’t hurt our 4-year graduation rate’
I know plenty of USC and Stanford alums, and most are doing well (think upper middle class), but not 5% or much less 1%'ers nor in the position to be making that kinda donation. For example, they in teh $10-20k/yr category, so they can get football tix (USC). It’s their legacy kids who might have a more difficult chance under this new law, but as I noted up-thread, USC has a large Spring admission class, and that’s where/how the marginal legacies get admitted. Stanford is fall only, so perhaps a more significant impact.
Yes, exactly my point. If there is a threshold for special interests and that threshold is tripped, the school may not be penalized but it’s likely for stories in the media to circulate about how these schools are still admitting too many legacies and donors etc.
To prevent bad press, the schools may need to be much more selective about which legacies they admit. One can believe that it will be the more marginal admits that will be denied while the more impressive legacies would be admitted. I would say that’s probably mostly true with the exception of those marginal admits which are in special categories such as big donors, renowned parents etc. They will likely displace the more impressive legacies but not the most impressive legacies since I doubt there are that many marginal admits in these categories but it would be interesting to compare the statistics of the legacy group before and after this law. I wouldn’t be surprised by any outcome - could be the stats remain the same, increase or decrease and I can see an argument for all three scenarios.