Ever since I arrived (well, returned, in this country, I have heard about how “easy” it is for minorities and the poor to get into Ivy League schools, and these are almost always accompanied by a third hand account of some African American boy who was accepted to Harvard or Yale who couldn’t do simple addition and subtraction. Basically, groups that have been historically privileged feel underprivileged when the privilege is reduced somewhat. So I tend to ignore complaints that Rich White kids are feeling discrimination, because they no longer have automatic preference in everything.
There may be a preference for URMs and First-Gens, but they are evidently not benefiting poor URMs and FGs much, otherwise, there would be more poor students in elite schools, and the number would have been increasing, since Elites are claiming that the number of URMs and First-Gens are on the rise. However the percent of students from the lowest 20% has not changed since 2000 (below 5%). Harvard, for which it’s 3%, claims that 15% are first gen, and that 13% are URMs. Even if we look at Harvard’s bottom 40% it’s still no more than 8% of their undergrads. So either their definitions of URM and First-Gen are EXTREMELY wide, or kids from these families most often need to be at least middle class, before they are accepted.
However, the main problem is not the elite schools. It’s the fact the we, as a country, do not believe in investing in good education. Education is considered a luxury, and mostly a way to indoctrinate our youth in our values. So public education is barely funded, and that funding is constantly being slashed. The poor communities are required therefore to fund their own education, which they cannot, so their education is extremely poor. By the time it comes to college application, poor kids are so far behind that they cannot even think to compete for places in an elite school, including relatively cheap public schools like UCB, UCLA, or UMichigan.
The income disparity among students in elite universities are not the main problem. They are a symptom, though they also help a perpetuate the problem. However, if we change the way we fund elementary and secondary education, and actually start caring about providing affordable and high quality education to our kids, the income disparity in elite universities would be a lot lower and matter a lot less. If we fund higher education as we should, it may disappear or become irrelevant, since there would be more money available for good students who could not afford a private college, and public colleges would get the funding they need to compete with private colleges.
Regarding legacies, well, they benefit schools financially, and the people who donate because they have three generations going to the same school have the financial clout to keep it in place. I don’t think that it will disappear any time soon, so fighting against it is a waste of time and money. It also is limited by the need of colleges to maintain high GPAs and SAT/ACT scores. Too many legacies with stats that are lower than the average non-legacy will start bringing those down.
Regarding athletes, unlike with sports at large public schools, I do not understand what deep purpose they serve which justifies their preference, so my biggest issue is “why?”. I am honestly ready to be convinced of the benefits that they bring to an elite school.
As for “self-serving”. I can tell you that we actually are doing pretty well with the system as it is. We’re doing even better because my daughter is awesome in many ways besides being an excellent applicant for every single one of the colleges in which she was interested. Financially, we are one mind change of my wife’s away from being part of the top 5% (PhD in CS from top-10 CS program, in one of the hottest fields in industry, well experienced, well known, and well respected). I am way beyond my undergrad, which I didn’t even do the the USA, but I actually would have been a legacy for Columbia (my dad did his PhD there). So, it will not benefit me or my family the slightest if top schools started accepting more low and middle income kids.