Help someone other than kids of Ivy League grads
Could I have gotten into Harvard?
It seems unlikely, given my mostly underwhelming high school record. My grades were fine but nothing special, and captain of the cross-country team only gets you so far.
I would have had one thing going for me, though, that maybe could have tipped the balances — my father went there. I’m a legacy. Not an important one — it’s not like there are buildings named after him on campus. Still, it makes a difference.
Though Ivy League schools cling to their reputation as the most exclusive schools open only to the highest achievers, some numbers show otherwise. A 2020 study showed among white students at Harvard, some 43 percent were classified as either legacies, children of people who work at the university, or athletes. The percentages of Black and other minority students who fall into those categories are much lower.
It has the effect of favoring white students. “Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students, with the share of white admits falling and all other groups rising or remaining unchanged,” the study finds.
The state of Connecticut appears to have been paying attention to these issues, as a recent proposal in the state Legislature would reject the ability of colleges and universities, public and private, to consider legacy status when admitting students. Harvard, of course, would not be affected, but Yale and a host of others would be, and they have reacted to the proposal with alarm.
Most complaints boiled down to arguing the state shouldn’t get to dictate who private colleges admit. There was talk of impinging on academic freedom and references to “slippery slopes,” which is usually where debates go when you don’t like something but don’t have a great argument against it. This isn’t that bad, in other words, but wait until you see what’s coming next.
The underlying issue is that colleges depend on alumni to contribute money in their high-earning years, and college officials worry they’d be less likely to if their children couldn’t follow them to their alma mater. It’s impolitic to say that, and may not even be true, so we get slippery slope arguments instead.
In the unlikely event such a law passed in Connecticut — or a national version, which has also been proposed — Yale would be fine. Yale would be fine with anything less serious than the planet falling out of its orbit, and even then might find a way to persevere. Other colleges in the state, though, could be in trouble if those donations started drying up.
The other public policy issue this touches on is affirmative action, where colleges and universities can use race as one among many factors in determining admission. The U.S. Supreme Court last month agreed to hear a case that could result in the end of this policy nationwide, even as it has been credited with helping close racial income gaps.
A decision won’t arrive until next year, but affirmative action is widely considered to be in deep trouble. The most commonly cited argument against it came from the chief justice, talking about a different case in 2007: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” John Roberts said.
It’s a noble enough idea — judge people solely by what they have to offer. But it takes as a given that everyone starts in the same place. It ignores the huge obstacles Black and other minority students often have to overcome on their path to college. Also, a diverse student body does a better job of representing the world as it actually is.
If, as is likely, affirmative action is shut down while legacy admissions continue, it would be yet another step away from real equality.
There are arguments that none of this matters, that someone who doesn’t get into Yale or Harvard can achieve great heights someplace else. True enough; there are successful people from all kinds of places. But you don’t need to look hard to realize that a degree from those places opens many doors unavailable to the rest of the world, and that our most powerful institutions — for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court — are dominated by Harvard and Yale products.
Maybe those doors could have been opened to me. I didn’t apply to Harvard; late in high school I knew, for a lot of reasons, that I was going to UConn.
And it was fine. I’m glad I went there. Given how standards have increased at our flagship state university, it’s not even certain I could get into the current version. (I’m also a legacy at UConn, though the school says it doesn’t consider that for admissions.)
But if the issue is whether people like me, from relatively comfortable backgrounds, should get a leg up attending top universities compared to someone with no connections, for whom such an opportunity would be life-changing, it’s really not a question. Maybe the laws won’t change, but top schools could do everyone a service and drop the policy on their own.