Opinion: It's time CA universities kill legacy/donor preferential admissions

Following a pivotal SCOTUS ruling that put an end to race-selective school admissions, a Harvard and Brown University study identifies how to organically increase socioeconomic diversity at colleges: eliminate legacy and donor admissions, which currently constitute 13.8% of Stanford and 13.1% of SCU students.

The study, conducted by a team of Harvard and Brown University researchers, examined admissions data from a group of 12 "Ivy-Plus" colleges—the eight Ivy Leagues, plus Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University, and the University of Chicago. The study found that students from the 1 percent were much more likely to be admitted to these elite colleges, even when controlling for standardized test scores. It concluded that this admissions gap is primarily due to three main factors: admissions preferences for children of alumni, athlete recruitment, and the weight placed on nonacademic criteria, like extracurriculars and teacher recommendations.

"The three key factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas SAT/ACT scores and academic credentials are highly predictive of post-college success," the study authors note.

While the study found that attending an Ivy-Plus university instead of a state flagship university didn't dramatically increase students' average future earnings, it nonetheless found that attending an elite university increased a student's likelihood of entering the 1 percent by 60 percent, almost doubled their chance of attending an elite graduate school, and tripled their likelihood of working at a prestigious firm.

As an alternative to current practices, the study proposed that colleges eliminate legacy preferences, athlete preferences, and the emphasis on nonacademic criteria like extracurriculars and teacher ratings. 

This article originally appeared in Reason. Read the whole thing here.

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