A legacy is something left by those who went before us. It might be a reputation. It might be an inheritance.
And for some kids filling out applications, it is a leg up in the college admissions process. At least, it was.
For generations, prestigious universities made a sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken agreement with their graduates. Be a part of this school’s family, and the doors are open to your family when the time comes.
According to Education Reform Now, 787 schools have legacy preferences, favoring the children of alumni. It’s a privilege so common as to be a stereotype of the Ivy League. Harvard University’s legacy acceptance rate is almost 6 times what it is for the average applicant.
Legacy is in the spotlight since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that spelled the end of racial considerations for admission. However, it isn’t a new topic. Potentially unfair advantages for alumni children have been noted for years. Education Reform Now noted 28 schools that discontinued the practice between 2015 and 2022.
Now, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh are discontinuing the practice. Pitt claims to have stopped it in 2020.
For public schools or middle-ground hybrid including state-related Pitt, legacy admissions aren’t that big of a factor. Newsweek put public college legacy admissions at about 6% versus 42% for a private school. At Harvard, it’s 45%.
Some Pennsylvania state schools do have a legacy factor, but it isn’t strictly about acceptance. Penn State uses it for placement; it can be a deciding nudge to get into the more competitive University Park campus over a Commonwealth Campus location.
Eliminating or phasing out legacy admissions does seem like the easiest way to address change. It is more class-based than racial. It also keeps with the merit-based sentiment many felt after the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal that caught the wealthy and famous parents who tried to lie, buy and cheat their children’s way into good schools.
But is addressing legacy admissions as important as addressing the biggest hurdle to a higher education — the cost?
Pennsylvania sports some of the most expensive price tags for a college education in the country. In the Big Ten, Penn State is only eclipsed by private Northwestern. Carnegie Mellon’s cost for students after financial aid is still $70,000 for commuters; for freshman starting in the fall, the requirement to live on campus makes it $83,697, and that’s just one year.
The real legacy admission is that legacies might be the people who can afford to attend. The only way to fix that is to address the crippling grip of tuition and student loan debt.
