The Waning Influence Of Legacy College Admissions And How To Stand Out

Following the tailwinds of the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in June 2023, systems that give children of alumni preferential admissions treatment are under increased scrutiny. Whether the policy gets officially struck down or not, it is increasingly likely that all eyes are on legacy admissions as the next policy under fire. Over the past two years, what used to be a plethora of factors that holds sway over a candidate’s admissions chances has shrunk considerably. As standardized test scores, race and ethnicity, and now perhaps legacy preferences wane in importance, how should students think about standing out in the admissions process?

What is legacy admissions

Legacy preferences or legacy admissions refers to the practice where children or grandchildren of alumni are more likely to gain admission into a particular school. A 2018 survey by Inside Higher Ed reported that 42% of private universities and 6% of public universities practiced this policy. Of the more than 700 colleges and universities that consider candidates’ legacy status, it is the institutions with an admit rate of less than 25% where the practice is most common. A recent study by Harvard economists found that legacy applicants were nearly 4 times as likely to be admitted than non-legacy applicants with similar test scores and grades.

This begs the question – why does such a large percentage of institutions – especially selective ones – practice legacy admissions? A study published in 2022 by MIT professor of management Emilio Castilla found strong evidence that the practicing institution benefits economically from admitting legacies. The research team further concludes that legacy candidates tend to “have wealthier parents who are materially positioned to be more generous donors than non-legacy parents”, and that they also tend to be more white than non-legacy candidates. In fact, the Crimson reports that nearly a third of Harvard’s student body is related to Harvard alumni, and that “around a third of legacies report parental income of more than half a million dollars, whereas only an eighth of non-legacies do.”

How is legacy admissions being reconsidered?

Since the Supreme Court issued a ruling in June 2023 against affirmative action, legacy admissions took the limelight as the next topic of debate within the contentious college admissions landscape. Yet, this is hardly the first time legacy preferences were scrutinized this closely. In the 1980s, certain Asian American groups accused Harvard’s legacy admissions policy of being a form of anti-Asian discrimination. This resulted in a ruling by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in 1990 that declared Harvard’s preferential treatment of alumni as motivated by legitimate, non-bias-related reasons.

With race dominating the center stage of the college admissions debate in 2023, legacy preferences reared its head anew. Just days after the affirmative action ruling was declared in June 2023, three Black and LatinX civil rights groups filed a complaint against Harvard alleging that the University’s legacy and donor preference policies in the admissions process violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By July of the same year, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights officially opened an investigation in response to the civil rights groups’ federal complaint. This is in line with a wave of selective colleges doing away with legacy admissions. Johns Hopkins eliminated this practice early on in 2014, and other renowned liberal arts colleges including Pomona, Amherst, and Wesleyan followed suit. According to Education Reform Now, over 100 higher education institutions have ended legacy admissions practices since 2015, and 75 % of Americans and 89 % of college admissions directors do not support the use of legacy preferences, an increase in both cases from pre-2019 polling.

Has the formula to standing out completely shifted?

Amidst all these seismic shifts in the landscape of elite college admissions, students around the world are wondering what’s in store for them in future admissions cycles. What matters now that so many of these factors that used to be important are waning in influence? The answer is actually relatively simple – with this significant reduction in the number of evaluative criteria, the black box of college admissions just became slightly less opaque. The three criteria that emerge as the best ways for students to stand out are the following:

1. Academic excellence
2. Intellectual authenticity
3. Narrative building

It should not be a surprise that academic grades continue to occupy one of the top spots in admissions criteria. No amount of extracurricular activities and leadership positions can make up for a rocky academic foundation. Elite institutions often take grades and a high GPA for granted when screening applicants, and it’s important that students do not lose sight of this crucial building block.

Intellectual authenticity is rising in importance across all elite college admissions around the country. Now more than ever, institutions are increasingly looking for qualitative measures of academic “genuineness.” This may come in the form of what Stanford calls “intellectual vitality,” a quality captured by the following statement on their admissions website, “We want to see the kind of curiosity and enthusiasm that will allow you to spark a lively discussion in a seminar and continue the conversation at the dinner table.” In the words of one former Stanford admissions officer Dr. Irena Smith, there simply is no formula for creating this authenticity – it either exists in the application file or it doesn’t. She further elaborates that the object of a student’s intellectual passion is of no matter, because any topic, no matter how niche, can become a focal point for curious minds. She told interviewers once that one of the most impressive and memorable extracurricular activities she ever saw a candidate discuss was how they became a world champion of the video game Dance, Dance Revolution. It was the student’s infectious passion for the game, their dedication to the craft, and their exuberance that ultimately moved the admissions committee.

The third element is one that is often overlooked by teachers and families alike. An application is never strong simply because individual elements within it are compelling. An application can only be strong when there is a throughline, a narrative arc that ties all the disparate elements together. This thread might be a sport, a social theme, an intellectual obsession, or it might even be an elaborate metaphor. The narrative itself may not be explicitly spelled out anywhere in the application, but it is this thread that holds all the essays, grades, and extra-curriculars together. One of the students I’ve worked with in the past had these three main activities on his list: pediatric medical research, volunteering at an autism day care, and the submission of a cartoon animation to a competition. At first glance, these may seem like completely disjointed pieces of the puzzle, but when he was able to identify early childhood development and children’s media as a throughline in his profile, his extracurricular list suddenly came to life and felt a lot more coherent. Building a compelling narrative is hard work, and it requires a high degree of introspection and self-awareness. Yet, without it, the application falls flat as nothing more than the sum of its parts.

While recent debates are certainly anxiety-inducing for college-bound teenagers, it should also be a relief that the system is becoming more transparent and less arbitrary. Whether legacy admissions as a policy is officially struck down or not, the stronghold it used to have in elite admissions will only continue to wane. I look forward to future admissions cycles where students hone their academic excellence, intellectual authenticity, and narrative building skills in their pursuit of their college dreams.