Future of Legacy Admissions

Level 5 - Ivy League

Welcome back! In a previous post, we discussed what Legacy Admissions were and how they generally work in the admissions process.

If you missed that one, you can read it here:

Legacy Admissions Explained

In this article, we’re going to focus on something a little different - The Future of Legacy Admissions.

Why Are Legacy Admissions Threatened?

At the moment, there are currently two major changes that are challenging the use of alumnus status as a factor in college admissions:

• Diversity/Affirmative Action Challenges

• Financial Considerations

If you want to just know our predictions of what comes next, you can skip this section.

Diversity/Affirmative Action Challenges

This is probably the biggest threat to legacy admissions.

Statistically, legacy students are accepted at much higher rates than non-legacy students, and this is even worse for diverse students.

For an illustrative view, consider that Harvard’s legacy acceptance rate (~33%) is higher than the percentage of the student body that identifies as black (~12%).

For years, many have argued that legacy admissions harm students of color by rewarding traditionally white, wealthier students with an unfair advantage in getting accepted over minorities and first-generation applicants.

While that argument has not swayed many, the current litigation around affirmative action policies has caused some renewed interest.

Let’s break this down: