To @ucbalumnus and @DadTwoGirls
CalTech never considered legacy status in the first place, ever.
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That is simply not true. Caltech considered legacy for a long time, until, and including, the 2018-2019 admissions season. In all of Caltechās Common Data sets until then, āAlumni/ae relationā was in the āConsideredā column. They only finally dropped it for the 2019 admissions season.
Etc.
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I do not know why CalTech reports as such in their Common Data Sets, but CalTech already reported in admissions surveys in the 80s and 90s that they do not give legacy preferences.
They were arguably the first and only top school to not consider legacy connections.
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Re: ā[legacy preference] favors wealthy, white applicantsā
Perhaps that is part of the intent. For marketing purposes, the elite private colleges may not want White enrollment to drop too quickly, since that could make them less attractive to some future White applicants, donors, and elite employers that preferentially hire from them. They may also want to retain a predominantly high SES student cohort to remain attractive for those elite employers.
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Could you please refer me to those admission surveys? Iām curious.
Moreover, Caltech would hardly be the only college that provides contradictory claims about legacy admissions. Many colleges have both claimed to not consider legacy, and then claimed otherwise, or have been shown to have preference for legacies when anybody takes a closer look. The fact that Caltech had legacy preference as a factor on their CDS forms until recently tell me that, whatever their spokespersons claimed, legacy advantage existed at Caltech.
Perhaps Caltech did not consider legacy in the 1980s-1990s, but considered it the 2010s when it reported so in their CDSes.
In a 2018 the president of Caltech said explicitly,
Caltech does not give preference or place quotas on any group or class of individuals, nor does it grant sports scholarships or consider legacy preferences in the admissions process.
Prior to this period in the 2010s, the common public perception was that Caltech does not consider latency. Many 3rd parties explicitly stated that Caltech does not consider legacy including peer reviewed journals, USNWR, and the MIT website.
Itās interesting that the CDS conflicts with these statements. A CC member who works in college admissions has said that their collegeās CDS does not match what the college actually considers in admissions decision. As I recall her explanation was that the admin filling out CDS was not knowledgeable in this area. Perhaps something similar occurred at Caltech. It could also be a difference in definitions of what āconsideredā means. āConsideredā does not necessarily mean a significant admission preference.
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The law (text linked in post #15) does specify that it applies to private non-profit schools that receive state funding. Note that Cal Grant (state financial aid grants) can be given to students attending private schools in California. So a private school can choose not to accept Cal Grants if it really wanted to continue legacy preference while complying with the law. But it would have to make up the money with its own financial aid grants if it wanted to continue being as attractive financially as before to students on financial aid.
Since those admissions surveys were probably conducted through snail mail, it would probably be difficult to find them. However, I did find CalTechās 2002-2003 CDS: https://finance.caltech.edu/documents/14898/cds2003.pdf
They did not consider alumni relations. Iāll keep looking.
Like what others said, these CDS are usually filled out by some administrators rather than the admissions folks. UChicagoās CDS essentially just says āconsideredā for everything, which is a total joke.
Additional readings/sources:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1296&context=mlr
You forget that academia in the USA has been a bastion of belief in genetic determinism. While people who ran places like Harvard have used that as an excuse and a justification for keeping it as an exclusive club for their friends and family, places like Caltech have been full of people who saw it as a basic āfact of lifeā. I can see Caltech admissions actually believing that the fact that having a parent who graduated from Caltech is additional āevidenceā that the kid has the ability to succeed at Caltech.
I donāt know whether it was every used, and Iām certain that nobody in Caltech admissions will ever admit if it was used. If they didnāt officially track or keep that info, weāll never know. In any case, itās no longer on the CDS.
I will disagree with your that
I think that it would be MIT (written by @MITChris ).
Perhaps Caltechās was also an error, caused by the move to a new format of CDS in 2004-2005. However, unlike MIT, they never actually addressed it, and seemed to have quietly changed it back in 2017, more than a decade later.
Whatever that means, though, Caltech hasnāt had legacy admissions and will not be affected by the California ban
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Thanks for the link. However, do note the following from the link you provided:
Shadowen and Tulante, using almost exactly the same language later used by Golden and Kahlenberg, also write that āWe also found data showing that alumni of CalTech, which grants no preferences, donated $71 million in 2007, versus $77 million donated in 2006 by alumni of legacy-granting MIT.ā (emphasis mine) Here they cite (at 371) the āMIT Reports to the President (2005-2006).ā While that report does indeed demonstrate MITās alumni donated $77 million in 2006, it says nothing about legacy admissions.
Note that the above states that Caltech did not have legacy admissions in 2006 while MIT did though this seemed to be an erroneous statement. Now he further goes on to elaborate:
Update 10/10/23: Since publishing this blog post, I have learned from Mr. Shadowen about the sources he relied on for this conclusion that MIT granted legacy preferences. In particular, between 2004-2008, the MIT Common Data Set (CDS), which is published by our office of Institutional Research (IR), erroneously reported that MIT Admissions offered a legacy preference. Weāve corresponded with IR, and neither they nor we have any idea when or why this error was introduced, since there is no internal record of Admissions either having a legacy preference or communicating one to IR. Additionally, my review of our internal training materials ā as well as my conversations on the matter with multiple former senior admissions officers whose experience at MIT Admissions goes back to at least the 1960s ā gives me confidence that we have not offered a legacy preference in at least the last half century, and likely longer. IR has since corrected and annotated the relevant archival CDS files; we are grateful to Mr. Shadowen for bringing the error to our attention.
It is indeed unusual for a school like MIT to have no preference for legacies. But one of the things that makes MIT special is the fact that it is meritocratic to its cultural core. In fact, I think if we tried to move towards legacy admissions we might face an alumni revolt. There is only one way into (and out of) MIT, and thatās the hard way. The people here value that.
It seems that the CDS can be rather erroneous, especially with regards to this time frame.
Frankly, while there may be reasons for legacy admissions, it doesnāt seem likely that either MIT or Caltech would benefit from legacy admissions the way in which the Ivies or other elite institutions do. They have different cultures and often their children do not share their interest in STEM. Hard to get by with a gentlemanās C in either of these schools.
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I am not aware of CalTech or MIT ever having legacy preferences in the past.
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