Does Legacy Matter in Admissions?
Elton Lin
With all its essays, criteria, and complexities, the college admissions process is a thorough one, meant to delve deep and really evaluate the merit of students hoping to join the ranks of their dream schools. But as much as colleges claim to be a meritocracy, the college application process is often holistic, which means many colleges consider non-merit-based factors of an applicant as well. The most infamous of these is the legacy status.
For a college applicant, being a “legacy” means that you have family who previously attended the college to which you’re applying. The required degree of relation you must have with this family member to be considered a legacy student varies from school to school. For example, some institutions only confer legacy status onto children or siblings of alumni, while other colleges’ define “legacy” more broadly, encompassing grandchildren, aunts and uncles, and even first cousins, as long as they are or were students.
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding legacy preferences. After all, legacy status is non-merit-based, and for better or for worse, legacy status still gives many college applicants a boost in the eyes of college admissions.
But how substantial is this boost, really? It depends. On one hand, for colleges that do consider legacy, the boost can be a sizable one. A study conducted using admissions from thirty prestigious, highly-selective colleges found that “primary” legacy applicants—that is, applicants who had a parent who previously attended the college—were a whopping three times more likely to be accepted than their non-legacy peers. The numbers add up, too; Harvard, as one of the more famous elite colleges that still considers legacy in its admissions process, has a Class of 2022 that consists of more than 36% legacy students. Another study even crunched the rates of admissions and pointed out that the numerical benefits of legacy status almost equated those of a 160-point test score increase on the SAT.
On the other hand, there’s only so much that legacy preference can do for a student. Going back to the case of Harvard, there is certainly a large slice of the freshman class pie given to legacy students, but at the same time, the legacy advantage only goes to applicants who are already highly-qualified and highly-desirable in college admissions board evaluations. Larry Bacow, the current President of Harvard University, states:
The legacies are an extraordinarily accomplished group of applicants… their applications tend to be, you know, well put together… So, it’s a self-selected pool, which as a group, by almost any metric, looks very, very good relative to the broader applicant pool. But I don’t deny that we like many other institutions, when it’s a toss up, tend to look harder at somebody whose family has had a long connection to the institution.
A study from Duke University found, too, that of Harvard’s legacy applicants, two-thirds of them were rejected despite their familial connections. So for the many elite colleges like Harvard that do consider legacy status, it can be a huge bonus—but only if your application is already impressive on its own terms.
Why do schools like legacy applicants so much? Legacy students represent bundles of benefits. For one, legacy applicants inherently show a high degree of demonstrated interest. Having a familial tie to the institution indicates a likelihood that the student has an emotional investment in attending the school. (If you’re curious about demonstrated interest, why it matters, and how applicants can show it, read our previous articles on the subject here and here.) Among other things, this means that colleges can accept legacy students and expect a boost to their yield rate, or the proportion of accepted applicants who actually end up attending the college, rather than turning down the offer. A higher yield rate reflects well on colleges, representing them as more elite and desirable, and sometimes giving them a bump up in official college rankings.
Accepting legacy applicants also bolsters the college community, encouraging families to stick with the institution with which they have a history. This leads to more alumni emotional attachment to the college, which colleges hope will lead to a higher likelihood that alumni will donate to their institution in the future, and in bigger sums.
Which schools especially care about legacy? Which don’t? As we’ve mentioned earlier, while many schools take legacy preferences into account, not all schools do. A significantly larger portion of private institutions than public ones consider legacy status in their admissions process, for example. It’s split in elite colleges as well—Harvard, Georgetown, and Stanford may have legacy preferences, but MIT is staunchly against the practice, as is CalTech. For your use, below is a brief table of notable colleges that do—and don’t—consider legacy status in their college admissions:
| Colleges That Consider Legacy | Colleges That Don’t Consider Legacy |
|---|---|
| Boston University | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Carleton College | The University of California System |
| Carnegie Mellon University | Washington State University |
| Harvard University | Northeastern University |
| Rhodes College | Michigan State University |
| Princeton University | Cooper Union |
| Brown University | California Poly, San Luis Obispo |
| Williams College | Georgetown College |
| Bowdoin College | United States Military Academy |
| The Claremont Colleges | University of Oxford |
| Stanford University | University of Cambridge |
As you’re applying for colleges, consider which schools may consider your application with legacy preference, and look up whether the colleges to which you’re applying consider legacy at all, and how they define “legacy”. If you don’t have legacy status for your dream college, don’t worry—as much as legacy can give certain students an edge in college admissions, the meat of your application will always be your personal merit, with legacy merely being the icing on the cake.