Experts estimate that in colleges nationwide that use the practice, legacies account for 10 to 20 percent ofundergraduate student populations.
An analysis of Harvard admissions data, which became public through the affirmative action case, found that legacies made up about 14 percentof students accepted to the university between 2010 and 2015. The acceptance rate for legacy applicants during that period was 33.6 percent, about 5.7 times higher than the acceptance rate for nonlegacy applicants, the researchers found.
Harvard declined to comment for this story.
State legislation filed earlier this year, meanwhile, calls for the end of legacy preferences in admissions at public and private colleges in Massachusetts.
“You win a privilege lottery from birth and somehow that is supposed to get you into college,” said Massachusetts Senator Lydia Edwards, one of the bill’s cosponsors. “That is insulting for those of us who are first-generation students trying to get into college.”
Viet Nguyen, a Harvard graduate student who in 2018 helped start anationalgrassroots organization that nowadvocates for ending legacy preferences, said the Varsity Blues Scandal also spotlighted how prestigious colleges have historically favored wealth. The investigation revealed how exam administrators and coaches accepted bribes from wealthy parents for admission slots.
Legacy admissions “perpetuate cycles of wealth and privilege,” Nguyen said.
His grassroots group, Ed Mobilizer, which has a network of 35 chapters across the United States, launched an alumni donation boycott in 2021with the goal of asking alumni to e-mail the boards of their alma maters to say they will not donate until they end legacy preferences. About 6,000 alumni sent e-mails to the nation’s 30 most selective colleges, Nguyen said.
“There is strong momentum and I think a lot of universities in the next year will be reevaluating [legacy admissions],” he said. “For a long time it seemed like this was a practice that would never be knocked down. It was too entrenched in the system.”
Education Reform Now reported that about 100 colleges and universities have halted legacy preferences since 2015.
And public criticism of the practice appears to be growing. A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 75 percent of Americans believe that legacy status should not be a factor in college admissions, up from 68 percent in 2019.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule later this year on complaints filed by the nonprofit group Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The group argues the colleges’ admissions processes that consider race lead to stereotyping and discrimination. The schools have defended their admissions policies, pointing to the benefits of campus diversity, which they say could not be achieved without the use of affirmative action.
While legacy admissions is not on trial, justices questioned in oral arguments whether elite universities’ defense of race-based affirmative action is at odds with the use of the practice.
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