A backlash's growing against another elite college practice: ‘Legacy’ admissions

“Legacy applicants have done nothing meritorious to earn this advantage," wrote Edward Blum, education analyst Richard Kahlenberg and economist Peter Arcidiacono, a political independent, to the Education Department recently, urging officials to track legacy in admissions and analyze the impact. Blum, a conservative, spearheaded the lawsuit against Harvard College that helped lead the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action in 2023, while the other two men testified against the practice.

Their efforts add to an accelerating bipartisan push to ban legacy preferences in admissions as America focuses more on who gets into college and why. The scrutiny on a hereditary leg up has intensified since the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, which ended most race-based admission preferences and prompted new questions about other nonmerit-based special treatment.

Now, the debate around legacy preferences—and in some cases, advantages for children of donors—is heating up further given that President Trump has placed meritocratic admissions at the center of his higher-education agenda.

‘Tie-breaker’

Schools that still use legacy preferences are concentrated among private universities, including all eight schools in the Ivy League. That is despite the sharp decline in the practice overall, with about 25% of schools now giving such preferences, down from half in 2015, according to a study by Education Reform Now, which advocates expanding access for underrepresented students on college campuses. Since the 2023 Supreme Court ruling, the number of schools using legacy preferences is down 18%.

Students who claim legacy status and whose families are among the wealthiest 1% of Americans are about five times as likely to be admitted to an Ivy Plus college as nonlegacy peers with comparable grades and test scores whose parents didn’t attend the college, according to research from Harvard University Professor Raj Chetty and his lab, Opportunity Insights. (Ivy Plus schools include the Ivies and other top institutions.)

Some schools say legacy admissions help with fundraising, foster a sense of community and build loyalty. “We think it’s an important part of who we are as an institution that creates a community that persists long after somebody graduates," Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber wrote recently.

On its website, Princeton says “the legacy preference operates as a ‘tie-breaker’ between equally qualified applicants."

“The overwhelming majority of alumni children who are admitted—all but about 30 a year—would be accepted without consideration of their legacy status," the school says.

But more lawmakers and college presidents say they can no longer defend it.

‘Accident of birth’

In 2024, California, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia joined Colorado in enacting laws that restrict legacy preferences. “Admission to Virginia’s universities and colleges should be based on merit," a spokesperson for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin told reporters before the governor signed a bill banning legacy and donor admission preferences at the state’s public universities, which include the University of Virginia and William & Mary.

California’s law, which applies to private, nonprofit colleges that benefit from state-funded student financial assistance, took effect last month. (University of California system schools had already halted the practice.)

Legislatures in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Minnesota, New York, Washington, D.C., Maine and Massachusetts have introduced similar legislation this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In March, Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) calling for the end of admission preferences for children of alumni and donors. Kennedy said the bill “would make sure that higher education institutions make decisions about who can attend their schools based on merit."

Trump is pushing American universities to ensure they have banned race and sex preferences, and has threatened to tie federal funding to compliance.

Opponents of legacy admissions are urging the White House to include elimination of this practice as part of the president’s agenda.

“There is a huge hypocrisy in failing to examine legacy preferences, which have nothing to do with merit and everything to do with accident of birth," said Kahlenberg, a longtime advocate for eliminating both racial and legacy admissions preferences who testified as an expert witness against affirmative action in the Supreme Court case.

Blum, Kahlenberg and Arcidiacono, the Duke economist who also testified against Harvard in the affirmative-action case, jointly sent their recent letter to the federal government.

“Legacy status tells a college nothing about a student’s distinctive abilities and accomplishments," Blum said in an interview. “It is to be hoped that the administration will add this to the very worthy reforms to which colleges should adhere."

A spokeswoman for the White House declined to comment on why the administration hasn’t included legacy in its demands to schools or in its Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education—a set of standards put forth by the Trump administration in return for preferential federal funding. But a person familiar with the compact said the government remains open to ideas.

In Congress, Sen. Todd Young (R., Ind.), the former chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, spoke out about the practice recently. “As we look to restore merit to the process, we should also be requiring federally accredited institutions to eliminate admissions based on legacy or donor status," Young said.

How do such benefits work? Faced with far more applications than slots, prestigious colleges winnow the pool of prospective admits through consideration of their academic records, test scores, activities and personal attributes. Schools that consider legacy preferences give applicants additional credit in this matrix if a parent, or sometimes another close relative, attended the school.

Americans increasingly oppose this practice, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, which found that 75% of adults believe that whether someone’s relative attended a school shouldn’t be a factor in admissions decisions, up from 68% in 2019. Opinions on legacy admissions were similar regardless of political affiliation, and the practice is especially entrenched in the more left-leaning Northeast.

Not all elite schools reward legacy applicants. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently became the first school to reject Trump’s compact.

Its president, Sally Kornbluth, added that the school prides itself on rewarding merit and wrote that, for instance, “MIT has never had legacy preferences in admissions."

Write to Douglas Belkin at Doug.Belkin@wsj.com