READ: 4 MIN
Colleges love to virtu-signal to the world that they are doing the “right thing” - especially when it comes to satisfying high school counselors. First, it was the parade of announcements about extending test-optional admissions to ensure greater equality in the college admissions process. Our jaded view is that test-optional admissions are really about generating more applications from students who believe they have a shot at their dream school despite so-so test scores. But that’s just us. Now, it’s the move of some schools to do away with so-called legacy preference during the admissions process. This decision is a bit bolder and we don’t see this decision catching on nearly as quickly as test-optional admissions did (partially because it’s unlikely to generate many more applications and therefore isn’t as valuable to the college). But legacy admissions are almost universally disliked by the public and so schools have gotten some goodwill when announcing their intent to do away with it.
If Amherst really wanted to make an impact on its class, it could do away with recruited athletes
The latest to announce that they will eliminate any preference for legacy students is Amherst College. Perennially ranked as one of the top liberal arts colleges, this decision sounds meaningful on the surface. But a review of Amherst’s admissions stats shows that legacy preference already likely plays a small role in admissions decisions, which is perhaps why it wasn’t hard to give up. For one, legacy admissions at places like Amherst don’t elevate low-quality kids into the admit pile. The legacies Amherst and other top colleges take are already typically qualified academically. It’s been said that “ties go to the legacy,” which we think is fairly accurate. But beyond the similarity in stats among legacies and non-legacies, consider just how many kids are likely to be affected by this decision:
Amherst’s average class is about 470 students. And typically the class is 11% legacy or about 50 students. Already, 11% is a modest legacy percental (both Notre Dame and Stanford approach 20%). Even if half of those legacies wouldn’t have gotten in without that preference, that still leaves only about 25 kids per year that this policy impacts. That’s 25 kids that could make the class more diverse, which is certainly positive. But if Amherst really wanted to make an impact on its class, it could do away with the other, much more significant part of its class with preferred status: recruited athletes. To be clear, we’re not against the preference for recruited athletes. Being good enough to play a sport in college takes dedication and talent that is impressive in its own right and we’re not part of the crowd that thinks athletic talent shouldn’t be valued in the admissions process. But since we’re virtu-signaling, how many more people might be affected if we were to do away with this preferred tag. Well, Amherst, despite being a small school, fields as many teams as do schools much larger in size. In fact at Amherst, nearly 180 out of each class of 470 come in as athletes. That’s nearly 40% of the class that plays an NCAA sport. Now, not all of those kids are recruited athletes. There are walk-ons for sure, but the vast majority of those students have gotten some help in the admissions process because of their ability to play a sport. In fact, this is the very reason why early decision at Amherst is so difficult for non-hooked students. The majority are coming in as either athletic recruits or as some other desired hook (first-generation, underrepresented minority, etc.).
So, while we appreciate that Amherst has made a stand against legacy admissions, we’re not sure it will make that big a difference at the school. In fact, it might even help Amherst improve the school’s sports rosters, given that there was some overlap between recruited athletes and legacies, which it now does not have to consider.
