As representatives of students in Yale University’s undergraduate and graduate programs, we both strongly believe that legacy preference — the practice of giving an advantage during the admissions process to students with family members who are alumni — is immoral.
In the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action, there has been a growing conversation about whether college admissions processes are sufficiently meritocratic. Connecticut, like its neighbors in Massachusetts and New York, is one of several states currently considering legislation that will ban legacy admissions in public and private colleges. This month, in an 18-4 vote, the bill passed Connecticut’s Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee.
The full legislature should now pass this bill, both as a matter of ethics and to protect the integrity of higher education.
In the 1920s, elite institutions implemented legacy preference admissions to maintain religious and ethnic homogeneity and uphold the social exclusivity of prestigious institutions. Although admissions preferences for family ties may appear racially and socioeconomically blind, those who have historically had the opportunity to build generational institutional connections have been primarily white and wealthy students. Today, this practice continues to lead to similar outcomes. So, how does it work?
A recent study from Opportunity Insights revealed that legacy applicants to a group of 12 elite institutions are four times more likely to be admitted than non-legacy applicants with comparable test scores. Within legacies, advantages increase proportionately with the applicant’s socioeconomic background, with students in the top 0.1% being seven times more likely to be admitted than similarly situated peers. Nevertheless, over a quarter of Connecticut’s four-year colleges maintain legacy preference admissions.
Although we come from different sides of the country — Cambridge, Massachusetts and San Bernardino, California — we nevertheless share firsthand experiences with the impact of legacy admissions. Within a diverse public school in Cambridge, students with institutional ties disproportionately gained entry into Harvard — a group that, by and large, did not reflect the racial and socioeconomic diversity of our student body.
At the Office of Undergraduate Admission within the University of California, Los Angeles, students of color and students from low-income families often shared barriers they faced to educational access. Among these barriers, students cited income and language barriers, citizenship barriers, representation concerns, and legacy preference admissions as many of the reasons that college opportunities were inaccessible to them.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at Yale agree: it is time for legacy preference admissions to end. This year, the Yale College Council wrote to the Connecticut legislature, affirming its support for the prospective ban on legacy preference admissions. Likewise, Yale’s Graduate and Professional Student Senate has passed a resolution, “Calling on Yale to Discontinue Legacy Preference Admissions.”
We urge Connecticut legislators to act now. A college degree, particularly at selective universities, leads to incomparable opportunities throughout a student’s life. To ensure these advantages are well allocated, we must reinforce our highest and best principles of education — meritocracy, diversity, and access.
S.B. 203 is not a “fix-all” solution. However, the Connecticut General Assembly now has a rare opportunity to make progress.
Birikti Kahsai is a first year undergraduate student at Yale University and a Senator for Branford in the Yale College Council. Sam Haddad is a first-year student at Yale Law School and a Law Senator for the Graduate and Professional Student Senate at Yale.