The unjust legacy of legacy admissions
About one hundred years ago, three elite universities — Harvard, Yale and Princeton — first put into place the practice of legacy admissions. Their actions were followed closely by several other prestigious institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University. Giving preference to the children of alumni was meant to favor the established, wealthy white population that was most likely to contribute to the universities’ endowments. According to NYU sociology postdoctoral associate Nadirah Farah Foley, these new legacy admissions policies were prompted by the influx of immigrants, many of them Jewish, whom universities viewed as a threat to the student population.
The pretext given by universities for this exclusionary behavior was that favoring children of alumni preserved the character of a school, preventing those who did not understand its traditions from trampling on them through what universities perceived as their ignorance of American manners, professionalism and etiquette.
A parallel debate emerged in the last few years, revealing that universities consistently mark down Asian applicants because of their “personal qualities such as ‘likeability,’ ‘courage,’ and being ‘widely respected,’” according to the New York Times. This debate quickly became a lawsuit that will be brought to the Supreme Court in 2018.
Whatever the rationale behind the practice of legacy admissions today, its impact remained the same throughout its history — a combination of maintaining the elite culture of the school and its endowment, a large trust fund fueled by charitable alumni donations. A New York Times study done in 2017 revealed that across 38 elite universities, there were more students from the top 1% than the bottom 60% of the income distribution curve, in large part due to the staying power of legacy admissions. Wealthier students continue to swell colleges’ bottom line through alumni donations.
Practices that either directly or indirectly harm the chances of non-privileged students and the fairness of the admissions process should no longer be socially acceptable.
Amid the Black Lives Matter movement, more schools began to pay attention to the injustice of their admissions system. In 2014, Johns Hopkins University announced that it was dropping legacy status from admissions considerations. In the following six years, marginalized populations increased from 15% to 25% while new students with legacy ties dropped from 12.5% to 3.5%, dispelling the notion that legacy students were somehow better applicants regardless of their legacy status and showing indisputably that legacy admissions practices actively take away spots from minority applicants. Amherst College, a school with one of the most loyal alumni networks in the country and a legacy population of 11%, followed suit just this past fall.
Even setting the racial implications of legacy admissions aside, it is clear that the practice is discriminatory when it comes to another important indicator of diversity: socioeconomic status. A study on anonymous tax records show that the median family income of a USC student is $161,400, with 63% of students coming from the top 20% of the income distribution. For context, this is $56,500 and 15% more than UCLA.
When more than three of five students come from the richest quintile of society, it shows that the admissions process is significantly centered around the money students were born into — if you didn’t win the socioeconomic lottery, your chances of getting into USC drop significantly.
USC’s class of 2025 is made up of 13% legacy students, exceeding even Johns Hopkins’ 12.5% and Amherst’s 11%, two universities that stand out in their commitment to their alumni and legacy network.
USC’s attitude towards legacy admissions is inconsistent with its larger commitment to a more representative student body. As expressed through recent admissions efforts, 23% of the class of 2025 are students who are the first in their family to attend college and 24% of the class are eligible for Federal Pell Grants, a very competitive federal package awarded to low-income families, taking the record from the class of 2024 as being the most diverse class in USC history. But USC must do more to combat unjust admissions.
So, which USC do we want? The one that favors the children of the rich and the well-connected or the one that opens its gates to a wider group of students? USC is likely clinging to the outdated practice of legacy preferences out of a desire to maintain the strength of the Trojan Family, the school’s vast network of alumni concentrated in Southern California that is one of the University’s biggest selling points. In 2015, Dean of Admission Timothy Brunold said “We see the status as being important” with the children of USC alumni having a higher acceptance rate.
However, students who would receive the benefits of legacy admissions would in fact have certain advantages, regardless of whether or not legacy status was considered in isolation. Studies published in Forbes, CNBC, and The Washington Post, have shown a direct link between income and SAT score, suggesting that students in established families whose parents attended elite universities and earn a combined $100,000 annually are twice as likely as low-income and first-generation applicants to score above a 1400 on the SAT, a score necessary to be competitive in USC’s application process.
Despite it’s self-proclaimed commitment to diversity and inclusion, and despite the overwhelming data that legacy practices actively take away spots from ethnically and socioeconomically marginalized groups – USC continues to stand by this outdated and fundamentally discriminatory practice.
It is time to abandon this tolerance of institutional inequality. Seduced by the donations that legacy admissions bring in, the admissions department has chosen to look the other way. But, as part of the Trojan Family and part of the greater Los Angeles community, we cannot turn a blind eye to the injustice of legacy admissions.