Have College Admissions Stopped Valuing What Really Matters?

Test-blind. Holistic admissions. Zoom interviews. The past few years have brought massive changes to the college admissions experience. Public pressure to recognize the intrinsic biases of admissions committees has led universities across the country to adopt new metrics for judging applicants. From California to Maine, at institutions ranging from 1,000 student Liberal Arts Colleges to 50,000 student state flagships, the traditional way of getting into college is gradually falling by the wayside. Activist groups have championed these changes as helping to bring equity to a process that has for so long helped sustain a cycle of classism that throws up barriers to progress. But in the midst of rapid change to a time-honored institution, one group has been left behind: legacy students¹.

In a sea of 10-acre plots and six-car garages, a plague has set into the land. Prep school students across the nation have opened their emails to find heart-wrenching letters of rejection shattering the dream of Princeton eating clubs and Yale secret societies. What happened? How did we get here?

In a bid to be “more inclusive” and “less elitist,” universities have tossed out centuries of carefully-crafted criteria that ensured that those who deserved it most got into college. With the removal of legacy as a criteria for admission, how will those children of alumni get their deserved seat at these storied institutions? More than the depth of one’s transcript or their personal statements, we must bear in mind that the greatest indicator of one’s academic merit is their ability to be born to parents who also happened to go to these elite schools. There is no better predictor of a student’s success at university than whether or not their parents attended the same institution². By removing this crucial consideration, many of the most deserving students are being left behind as those with “actual merit” are taken in their place. In fact, I would go so far as to claim that were he to apply today, the United States’ 35^th president John F. Kennedy might not have gotten into Harvard³. It is an unfortunate development that schools today would no longer overlook a five-sentence personal statement copied straight from an application to a different school⁴ while ignoring the perseverance, hard-work, and grit necessary to be born into one of New England’s most influential families.

This might raise the question: if colleges have thrown away this perfectly sufficient and in-no-way biased index, what has replaced it? Taking the place of this historical tool for collegiate analysis are new, committee-based review boards that look at a variety of different metrics to create a “well-rounded” image of who a prospective student is⁵. Taken into consideration are a student’s GPA throughout high school, their standardized testing scores⁶, extracurricular activities, essay quality, and more. Legacy status has fallen from glory to be (mostly) second to these other qualities. Now, to even get accepted as a legacy, one must still demonstrate academic merit. If only there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them⁷.

Sources:

1 - Made up

2 - Completely fabricated

3 - Utterly untrue

4 - This one is actually true… somehow¹

5 - Idk, might be true, might not be. This is satire, which means I can throw away all journalistic integrity

6 - Unless a school is test-optional / test-blind²

7 - Stolen Repurposed from the NBC writing team³

Sources for sources:

1 - JFK’s college essay

2 - Difference between school testing policies

3 - Goodreads