Legacy Admissions Is Still Under Attack

In January 2020, Johns Hopkins University revealed that it had answered the call to end legacy admissions. In a courageous publication, President Ronald Daniels detailed the need for fairer admissions based not on academic pedigree but with an eye toward socioeconomic and racial inclusion. A year and a half later, Amherst College announced a similar elimination of its legacy policy. Now, in early 2023, readers may be wondering, who’s next?

Many readers may be surprised to learn that although few prominent institutions have ended legacy admissions, many lesser-known institutions have recently managed to do just that. Since 2015, 102 universities and colleges that once considered graduate relations in admissions no longer do. However, for a large swath of the colleges and universities that have refused to budge, activists have lined up advocate for admissions reform.

Over the past several years, students, faculty and reformers have risen up against legacy admissions in an unprecedented fashion. Fomented by changing politics winds, remarkable social movements and a wave of student empowerment, they set out to topple what many believe to be an inequitable admissions policy. Impressively, the calls for change have been resoundingly widespread. Student papers have run op-eds or editorials calling for the end of legacy admissions at Bowdoin College; Brown, Cornell, Emory, Harvard, Tufts and Yale Universities; and the University of Michigan, to name a few.

At Cornell, Tufts and Yale, students passed resolutions to eliminate legacy admissions at the level of Student Senate or assembly. At Tufts, the Faculty Senate nearly unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the end of such unfair admissions practices. Nevertheless, for all this flurry of action, activists have little to show for it.

While many expected high-profile colleges and universities to end their legacy policies in the wake of the decisions at Johns Hopkins and Amherst, it has been nearly 18 months with little progress. Despite the fact that legacy admissions was established to exclude Jewish and recent European immigrant applicants, and despite mounting evidence that legacy admissions harms racial and socioeconomic diversity, institutions have continued to resist pressure to reform their admissions criteria.

One reason for their resistance is the impending Supreme Court ruling on the cases brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Administrators may be hoping that if the Supreme Court bans preference based on legacy status, they’ll have their dilemma solved. They’ll be able to shed a discriminatory admissions practice without upsetting donors. The cost of such a strategy, however, is significant. Institutions miss out on the opportunity to distinguish themselves as progressive and inclusive, forgoing the positive press they would otherwise receive.

Not all of universities’ hesitancy can be explained by the recent Supreme Court case. Much of it is due to perceived pressure from alumni—not only financial but often relational. Universities rely on alumni in a variety of areas: recruiting, networking and fundraising but also serving as role models for prospective students and as international ambassadors in their profession. The possibility of alienating these human resources in exchange for fairer admissions and more diverse student bodies is likely a calculation deemed too risky by many. Perhaps the most important reason that many have remained on the sidelines is the lack of consensus by a critical number of universities to jettison legacy admissions altogether.

Changing the calculus are activists, many of them students, who detest the moral sacrifice of admissions for perceived material gain. However, with few universities succumbing to pressure, reformers have turned to alternative pathways to make admissions fairer.

The most recognized challenges to legacy admissions have been legislative. Following Operation Varsity Blues, California first drafted legislation aimed at more transparent and equitable admissions practices. Originally, the bill proposed a ban on state financial aid for institutions that used legacy admissions. However, it was subsequently watered down to just report the number of legacy admits per university.

Subsequent bills aimed at curtailing legacy admissions have been numerous. The most successful of these has been the state of Colorado’s ban on legacy admissions, which took effect in 2021. Nevertheless, other states, including New York, Connecticut and most recently Massachusetts, have similarly introduced bills calling for the end of legacy admissions. Most notably, congressional Democrats in February of 2022 unveiled a bill to defund universities of federal dollars that considered legacy preferences in admissions.

Legislation aside, students have also turned to broader organizations to push their agenda. In November of 2022, students attending the American Medical Association interim meeting successfully passed a resolution with the AMA Medical Student Section aiming to scrap legacy admissions. That resolution will now proceed to the AMA House of Delegates this June. A month later, students drafted and brought forth an even stronger resolution before the Massachusetts Medical Society calling for the end of legacy admissions. It was adopted with overwhelming support and is beginning to be implemented.

Senila Yasmin, a medical student at Tufts University and co-author on both aforementioned resolutions, believes this is only the start of a broader societal movement against legacy admissions and other unfair admissions practices. “Change comes from within, and as members of professional societies like the AMA and MMS, medical students have a unique opportunity to advocate through resolution writing. I am optimistic that we will soon see a nationwide push to remove legacy admissions by not only the AMA but from other organizations at both the medical and undergraduate level.”