Legacy Admissions Don’t Work the Way You Think They Do
7th July 2023
We might assume that legacy admissions help privileged students at the expense of underprivileged ones. But I would wager that legacy students, if eliminated, are far more likely to be replaced by other kinds of privileged students than by underprivileged ones. And in ways that are far less obvious, legacy students, with their deep social and cultural connections, are part of the reason less advantaged students get so much out of elite schools.
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Start by asking yourself what students get out of elite schools. I would like to believe that the most important benefit of these colleges is the exceptional knowledge that professors can deliver in the classroom. But if elite schools delivered special intellectual growth and professional training — what social scientists call human capital — privileged students would benefit greatly from them. And there’s no good evidence that they do.Instead, other forms of capital play a bigger role: symbolic capital (the value of being associated with prestigious institutions), social capital (the value of your network) and cultural capital (the value of exposure to high-status practices and mores). Graduating from an elite school pays off on all three counts: It affiliates you with an illustrious organization, offers you connections to people with friends in high places and acculturates you in the conventions and etiquettes of high-status settings.