Wesleyan University drops Legacy Preferences in Admissions Decisions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Well Harvard is finding itself in a pickle isn’t it

[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.

I know an AA legacy who is attending.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I know an AA legacy who is attending.

Please--the ultimate "exception that proves the rule".

[Anonymous]

Great news! Hopefully more schools will follow suit.

I think my alma mater (Penn) will move in this direction soon based on how they've been rewording things on their website. And I think that's a good thing even though my child will lose that hook - it feels more fair.

[Anonymous]

The thing about Wesleyan is that it was diverse before many other similar schools were diverse. So at this point most legacy kids would have parents who graduated in the 90s when Wes had a reputation of being more diverse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great news! Hopefully more schools will follow suit.

I think my alma mater (Penn) will move in this direction soon based on how they've been rewording things on their website. And I think that's a good thing even though my child will lose that hook - it feels more fair.

I think a lot of elite schools have been quietly and gradually narrowing the legacy preference for awhile to the biggest donors, without advertising that explicitly. That keeps donations flowing and their biggest donors happy, is a rationale the middling and small donors can get even they don't like it (e.g., a legacy preference only for the "most committed" alums, which is a vague standard), and helps explain why a lot of schools not on the "no legacy preference" list nevertheless have been turning down many legacies lately.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

I know you are on the same side, but how does this "balance out" the URM kids? First, I think you mean *affirmative action* URM kids (yes, some would get in w/o that consideration). Do you really think they are also at 40%???

I also like to repeat that study because people seem to have an exaggerated idea of how many URM actually benefit from affirmative action and actually take up your precious spot at Harvard. The ALDC (Athletes, Legacy...) students eclipse this number.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361

Forty-three percent of white students were found to be ALDC at Harvard. More importantly, a whopping 75% of those ALDC white students would not have been admitted without that leg up. if you do the math, that means about 32% of white students at Harvard should be getting those affirmative-action-do-you-really-belong-here stares.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great news! Hopefully more schools will follow suit.

I think my alma mater (Penn) will move in this direction soon based on how they've been rewording things on their website. And I think that's a good thing even though my child will lose that hook - it feels more fair.

I think a lot of elite schools have been quietly and gradually narrowing the legacy preference for awhile to the biggest donors, without advertising that explicitly. That keeps donations flowing and their biggest donors happy, is a rationale the middling and small donors can get even they don't like it (e.g., a legacy preference only for the "most committed" alums, which is a vague standard), and helps explain why a lot of schools not on the "no legacy preference" list nevertheless have been turning down many legacies lately.

I believe this is true at most schools now. Legacy doesn’t mean anything unless you’re giving at least seven figures.
Then it matters - at least a little bit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great news! Hopefully more schools will follow suit.

I think my alma mater (Penn) will move in this direction soon based on how they've been rewording things on their website. And I think that's a good thing even though my child will lose that hook - it feels more fair.

I think a lot of elite schools have been quietly and gradually narrowing the legacy preference for awhile to the biggest donors, without advertising that explicitly. That keeps donations flowing and their biggest donors happy, is a rationale the middling and small donors can get even they don't like it (e.g., a legacy preference only for the "most committed" alums, which is a vague standard), and helps explain why a lot of schools not on the "no legacy preference" list nevertheless have been turning down many legacies lately.

I believe this is true at most schools now. Legacy doesn’t mean anything unless you’re giving at least seven figures.
Then it matters - at least a little bit.

Agree. This is the already the case at non-Ivies, like Northwestern, duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, USC, Rice etc….

Legacies are expected to be serious donors to matter.

[Anonymous]

The Case for Legacy Admissions: WSJ today

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-for-legacy-admissions-harvard-institutional-trust-loyalty-alumni-42991af3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The Case for Legacy Admissions: WSJ today

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-for-legacy-admissions-harvard-institutional-trust-loyalty-alumni-42991af3

please. A bunch of wealthy people using poor people as an excuse to give themselves affirmative action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The Case for Legacy Admissions: WSJ today

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-for-legacy-admissions-harvard-institutional-trust-loyalty-alumni-42991af3

Trump says he did all that he did for the gullible people who voted for him. Should we accept that as a great reason to drop all charges and stop all investigations against him?

[Anonymous]

My daughter received a legacy keychain during her tour of the college I attended. That is all she should have received.

[Anonymous]

More schools will be doing this because it is a relatively cosmetic change and good PR; it barely moves the needle. Athletes have a far greater impact: what about admission preferences for Wesleyan’s 900 or so athletes, the vast majority of whom are white? Reserve plaudits until Wesleyan, Amherst and their brethren do something about the real issue. This is a mere distraction from more fundamental change, so don’t fall for it.

[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.

“Whites” didn’t have hundreds of years of a head start. A minority of wealthy, elite whites did. 60% of adult whites do not have a college degree. And of the 40% who do, many are first generation or went to a public college. The legacy pipeline applies to a small grouping of colleges and an even smaller grouping of applicants. Compare that with AA, which advantaged or disadvantaged virtually every college applicant on account of their race.