Legacy Preferences Persist at Highly Selective Colleges

The number of institutions that give applicants a boost if their parents graduated from the same college or university has declined significantly in the past decade, according to a new report by Class Action, an advocacy and research organization that critiques elitism in higher education.

Legacy preferences have dipped across almost all types of institutions, writes the report’s author, senior fellow James Murphy—except for wealthy, highly selective private institutions.

Of the more than 1,700 four-year institutions Murphy analyzed, about half considered a student’s legacy status in their admissions processes as of 2015. But in 2024, the most recent year for which data was available, only 23 percent continued to do so, a decline of more than half. When counting all the institutions of higher education in the country, including community colleges, that number drops to just 7 percent.

But the more selective a college is, Murphy writes, the more likely it is to consider legacy status. Among the 89 institutions that admit 25 percent of applicants or fewer, 57 percent had legacy preferences in 2024. For those with acceptance rates between 26 and 50 percent, 33 percent considered legacy. Among those with acceptance rates between 51 and 75 percent, 27 percent considered legacy.

On the other hand, such preferences are rare at public colleges. In half of states, no public colleges utilize legacy in admissions.

Murphy writes that legacy admissions likely persist at highly selective institutions because “too many elites look at their privileges as their rights,” even as the majority of Americans agree such preferences are unfair. He notes that some institutions appear to be making an effort to conceal their use of legacy status as the practice becomes less popular; some institutions that previously publicized the percentage of their incoming classes that were legacy now no longer do so.

“At a moment when the wealthiest colleges and universities are somewhat unjustly being accused of being out of step with normal American values, their continued use of legacy preferences makes it clear that the accusations are not completely off base,” the report’s conclusion states. “Eliminating legacy preferences will not fix all that is wrong in college admissions, let alone higher education, but it would send a clear sign that elite institutions understand what normal people believe are the rules of fair play and want to play by them, too. Unfortunately, this is not a signal that many of these institutions want to send.”