Would not have thought this needed to be laid out but this is as good an articulation of it as I’ve seen. Someone will point out that native intellectual abilities also have an inherited component and so what about gifted students, etc. ….
I’m guessing the lion’s share of people who really care about this are the graduates of elite institutions who secretly feel like they won something by being admitted to their alma mater and don’t want to lose one of the related fringe benefits.
I admire your kid’s position, and get why you are proud of her for saying that to a relative in that context. But, last I checked, at least under current Brown policy, it would have something to do with it. If she had a kid who applied to Brown, it would confer some advantage. They still do legacy admissions, especially for kids of alums. My comment is meant as a comment on the current reality at Brown, not on your kid’s values which I greatly respect.
While my own opinion is I really don’t care one way or the other if private universities do legacy, which is clearly something they do purely for self interest. I get why lots of people I deeply respect do.
Pretty easy: eliminate it in the admissions process. Johns Hopkins did it. Carnegie Mellon dropped it. Most or a good portion of the NESCAC LACs don’t use it. MIT I don’t think has ever used it. Most state schools don’t use it.
It’s a controversy because, as someone pointed out, it’s not a good look. Country club.
If the controversy is due to society at large taking a more critical eye to a practice and there’s no good reason for the practice, then drop the practice.
Yeah, I mean it’s not the hill on which I’m going to die either. I just see the dance people do when trying to rationalize it, often people who are otherwise very skilled at making their points in a logically coherent manner. It comes off like one of those things that people just sort of low-key barely acknowledge is there but they don’t want to examine it too closely or talk about it too much. Like the crazy aunt in the closet.
I suppose if somebody feels strongly enough about it, they could sue USC because they/their kid feels that they/their kid should have been admitted, but didn’t because another student got a legacy admit.
Wouldn’t be worth it to me. I think applauding and supporting the schools that have eliminated it and leveling criticism at schools that continue it will do its work in the long run, IMO.
I hear you. For me, I don’t think I try to rationalize it. It seems straightforward to me. The schools think admitting legacies is better for them do it (see USC and Stanford thumbing their noses at state money and public opinion), and those that don’t drop it. Is it unfair? Obviously. Is it what I would choose if I ran a private school? No. But, I really don’t care if a private university decides it is worth it to them. Public universities it’s a no for me though
For the record, I am one of the mythical black alums often discussed in these topics, and have a h.s. senior who is a double legacy at a school that still does legacy and she is not applying there because it is not the right place for her. I have no self interest in legacy staying.
And let me say again, I completely understand the minority community taking a skeptical stance on the timing of the elimination. Completely get it and I’ve often made that very point in these discussions.
But moving on from a historical practice often involves a blunt shift in policy which then often leads to a bumpy transition. For the schools who do it for the donation revenue that is tied to the practice, I’m sure that part of the transition would feel painful.
Just to put a finer point on the timing aspect, it is not just that many black alums (I don’t want to speak on other communities I am not an active member of) feel that they just got to the point where there are a visible number of them with soon to be college age kids, but the anti-legacy push is on the heels of the affirmative action bans, so some folks see a double whammy that very much feels to them like a full set of factors that are conspiring to keep their offspring AND people like them, out of these schools in a way that has not been seen in a generation.
I do not see the legacy piece that way, but a lot of folks I respect and admire do, and I cannot say they are wrong in either that feeling or in the reality of what the changes will likely mean in terms of admissions and enrollment outcomes.
Indeed, your student would have a self interest in removing legacy preferences at other colleges which would slightly improve non-legacy applicants’ chance of admission.
How do you feel about it? I can’t say I have a handle on the whole pro-legacy crowd but my impression is that there is more than just a token number of people who are pro-legacy who are also staunchly anti-affirmative action. So, “content of character not color of skin” but also “content of character and content of my DNA”.
100% on all counts. If Yale drops legacy because it is not in its interests great. I was pretty much against it when I was an undergrad in the early 80’s when legacies were over 20% of the entering class and some that I knew were just not as sharp as the non-legacies (others quite brilliant). Today at 11-12%, if Yale were to get rid of legacy, not sure how much of a reduction in legacies we would see. Further, you would be replacing 1 relatively privileged highly qualified student with just another, so no difference in creating more social mobility.
Why is that necessarily the case? And if it is, then what to do with all the Ivy League apologists who insist that this is a real issue for them from a development perspective?
And I have to ask again, why the focus on the scale of impact? It doesn’t seem all that compelling to me. If it’s not that big of a number, it wouldn’t seem all that controversial.
Fair point. I just don’t care enough I guess. I don’t begrudge private schools doing something like legacy admissions in their self-interest. If my kid doesn’t get into that school, so be it. There could be myriad reasons why that is the case. And there are plenty of schools she is applying to where she will get an excellent education. Some of those admit the vast majority of applicants. So, I can’t get worked up about it. I generally oppose governments forcing private schools to abandon it. But have no issue with public pressure to abandon it for moral, equity or fairness reasons.
Not sure what you’re asking for my feelings on. That said, there are certainly a lot of pro-legacy, anti-affirmative action folks.
I am not pro-legacy, but I am against governments trying to ban it (I know CA technically did not ban it they just stripped funds from schools that do it, but close enough for me). I don’t find what’s happening with Affirmative Action and Legacy to be tied to one another in a meaningful way, or at least not in one that makes logical sense to me from any moral, fairness or equality standpoint anyway. My strongest feeling I guess is that both should be permissible in private schools, but I would not be worked up if an individual school decided to keep or jettison either based on its interests and what the public is demanding.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for government intervention. Just what you think about the idea that people who don’t think race/ethnicity or related considerations are appropriate in admissions but feel strongly that legacy status is.
The point is that the schools retaining legacy do see a value in retaining that preference, whether it is for development, alumni engagement or some aspect of campus culture. That is their judgment to make unless that preference violates some law. People may see that as a negative force in perpetuating privilege for the few, but I think most of the selective colleges that practice legacy admissions also actively seek diversity. You can see the change in demographics over time and in many cases the generosity of need based financial aid.
If you believe that holistic admissions schools are building a class based on “buckets”, then its pretty logical to assume that freeing up a space taken up by a legacy will just open up a space for a similar candidate whose parents did not go to that school.