"Advantaging the Already Advantaged?" Legacy Status in College Admissions

The issue of affirmative action has been popular since its first major public appearance in 1961, when John F. Kennedy used the term in explaining the Executive Order 10925 by which he demanded that "federal contractors…take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." By the 1980s the topic had made its way into the college admissions process, where it still remains as a bomb of controversy.

But there is a new spin on this concept of unfair advantages in the admissions processs: what seems to sit under the surface is what some are calling “affirmative action for the wealthy,” otherwise known as legacy status.

“Legacy status” simply means that a college applicant whose parent, sibling, or any other relative went to the school to which they are applying holds an advantage over those candidates without such family connections. In short, it is a benefit handed down through generations. And some insist that in this definition it is just a new form of affirmative action for an already privileged pool of students.

With this argument, are colleges really “advantaging the already advantaged,” or are we overanalyzing the whole thing and insulting students who are fully qualified without help from their parents?

Admissions committees, specifically those of large universities, plead two cases as to why the legacy rule is not only justifiable but ultimately beneficial for students. First is the financial advantage that comes with legacy students, as alumni are most likely to donate to a school that has been with the family across generations. According to an article published by The Crimson, Harvard University’s student newspaper, this economic byproduct is a significant reason for the slight favoritism given to legacy applicants.

But they say that it is nothing more than a small advantage for applicants who are well qualified in all the necessary fields regardless of their family connections. While the legacy status does help, it also makes reality very clear – students whose parents went to Princeton, for example, know well enough when they are not qualified for the school’s applicant pool.

Researchers disagree with this, saying that legacy status applicants are seven times more likely to be admitted to the country’s “elite” institutions of higher education than those without the advantage. And I have to say that I agree – whether we like it or not legacy favoritism is a nationwide trend, so wouldn’t that make a less qualified applicant with a legacy card in hand a bit more optimistic about his or her chances knowing that the favoritism is there?

Second, there is an argument circulating that alumni offspring are better suited applicants than those without legacy status because they are more likely to take advantage of the school’s resources about which they have been hearing from their parents since childhood.

But doesn’t this suggest that a school doesn’t change over generations, and that children are just like their parents? I for one am sure that I would not have fit in at either of my parents’ alma maters for the very reason that I want my own place, a desire that seems to be the very point of college for many (perhaps not all) college students. 

Overall, the whole issue is slapped with the stigma that legacy candidates are most commonly white, wealthy, elitist students who benefit from the choices their parents made years ago. This is perhaps the toughest point of the whole issue, because whether we like it or not that is who attended college in the generations before my own. That is changing now, and I hope I am not the only one who thinks of this as a good sign, but legacies build over time. And right now the collegiate pedigrees that do exist come from the families of white males.

In the end what we are told to believe, and what I hope I will at some point be able to believe, is that no school admits a student simply because he or she is a legacy. The other portions of a college candidate’s application – you know, the parts we spend our entire adolescence creating – are the major deciding factors between the small and big envelope. The fact that legacy status is such a popular topic comes straight from the way in which we have made it a social construct by giving it the attention we now argue it does not deserve, and as such we have put ourselves in the position to jeopardize our trust in admissions committees.