Wesleyan University drops Legacy Preferences in Admissions Decisions

[Anonymous]

Amherst, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT already don’t give Legacy preference in admissions decisions. Now add Wesleyan University to that august list. Of course, Harvard is anything but august as the Supreme Court decision abundantly makes it clear.

[Anonymous]

While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

URMs legacy advantage at top schools is negligible. Whites had hundreds of years of a head start. The pipeline is already baked in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

So be it. A URM person who is educated in highly selective private colleges that practice legacy preferences is supposed to have enough education and financial capability to offer decent developmental opportunities for their children. They shouldn’t need “Legacy Preference clutch” to be able to walk into such institutions as freshmen students. If they still need such boost, then they don’t belong in those institutions in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

URMs legacy advantage at top schools is negligible. Whites had hundreds of years of a head start. The pipeline is already baked in.

Exactly. The number of URM students helped by a legacy bump is minuscule compared to the number of wealthy, white students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

So be it. A URM person who is educated in highly selective private colleges that practice legacy preferences is supposed to have enough education and financial capability to offer decent developmental opportunities for their children. They shouldn’t need “Legacy Preference clutch” to be able to walk into such institutions as freshmen students. If they still need such boost, then they don’t belong in those institutions in the first place.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amherst, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT already don’t give Legacy preference in admissions decisions. Now add Wesleyan University to that august list. Of course, Harvard is anything but august as the Supreme Court decision abundantly makes it clear.

Morons.

[Anonymous]

Awesome! Get rid of all backdoors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I get that legacy admissions mostly helps white kids, this also prevents URM kids whose parents went to these schools get in on the system.

So be it. A URM person who is educated in highly selective private colleges that practice legacy preferences is supposed to have enough education and financial capability to offer decent developmental opportunities for their children. They shouldn’t need “Legacy Preference clutch” to be able to walk into such institutions as freshmen students. If they still need such boost, then they don’t belong in those institutions in the first place.

Agree.

The mediocre lax bros need the "Legacy Preference Clutch."

[Anonymous]

Harvard has such a crazy huge endowment that you wonder why they insist on legacy preferences. And legacy + faculty/staff advantage is huge at Harvard. I recently saw an article that 40% of students at Harvard are either legacy, faculty kids and/or recruited athletes. Pretty shocking

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard has such a crazy huge endowment that you wonder why they insist on legacy preferences. And legacy + faculty/staff advantage is huge at Harvard. I recently saw an article that 40% of students at Harvard are either legacy, faculty kids and/or recruited athletes. Pretty shocking

They shouldn’t need legacy preference to be able to walk into such institutions as freshmen students. If these legacy families still need such a boost, then they didn’t belong in those institutions in the first place.

[Anonymous]

I think it remains to be seen if this will open up the floodgates. I am sure there are a lot of schools that don’t want to go this route and are hoping that others won’t force their hands.

[Anonymous]

Maybe they need to establish quotas for the various categories - 5% for URM/SES; 5% for donors. Open up the rest to open competition. If White/Asian women do well and take up 70%, so be it. If it's Asian/Nigerian men, so be it. This bullsh*t needs to stop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard has such a crazy huge endowment that you wonder why they insist on legacy preferences. And legacy + faculty/staff advantage is huge at Harvard. I recently saw an article that 40% of students at Harvard are either legacy, faculty kids and/or recruited athletes. Pretty shocking

Helps balance out all the URM kids. Harvard is full of crap

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it remains to be seen if this will open up the floodgates. I am sure there are a lot of schools that don’t want to go this route and are hoping that others won’t force their hands.

I think that's true. Because of donors and full pay kids. Money is usually at the root of everything. But now that everyone sees what schools like Harvard have been doing - it's been a big sham all along - hopefully enough universities will sense that their reputations are at stake and will move accordingly to end legacy and other backdoor preferential treatment for the wealthy and preferred groups. Ultimately, a university's only currency is its reputation.

But they will resist this as long as they can.