At many prestigious universities, admission offices regard the “legacy” of a potential student highly. In other words, if an applicant is the child of alumni, this will increase the chances of admittance. Legacy students have been added to the topic of affirmative action due to its preference for white students. Historically, many Universities have had white alumni; therefore spawning generations will have white legacy students. Many argue that affirmative action allows universities to have the ability to permit legacy students to have increased credentials for gaining admittance. Meaning, affirmative action allows for point systems based on criteria that are out of the control of applicants. This in turn discriminates against minorities. So in essence, not only does affirmative action discriminate against whites, but it also discriminates against minorities, countering its whole goal. Legacy students provide a system where universities can potentially gain more donations from alumni by admitting their children. This act, though may provide monetary gain, inhibits students who have high potential but lack parents who were fortunate enough to go to college. At many universities, legacy students constitute 10 to 25% of students. That is possibly 10 to 25% of students who did not actually have the academic qualifications to attend the school where academics are key. This system creates a society where the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. It goes against the American ideal of moving up in economic class. Allowing students to gain a degree at a prestigious university just because their parents did is not going to increase the overall intelligence of society and promote the common good. It will simply be a waste of an education that could have been given to someone who deserved the opportunity and had potential.
This is an interesting post! As a legacy student that is also a minority student, I have some opinions about the issue raised in this blog.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, while it makes complete sense that students should be admitted into colleges based mostly on their grades and achievements, legacy students constituting 10-25% of the student body in my opinion is a completely healthy statistic.
Yes, colleges and universities need donations from alumni. But they also need other statistics such as a certain GPA of incoming students, test scores, etc. While legacy plays a part in many college application processes, it most likely does not trump the academia and extracurricular of the student. If a student is not what the college is looking for in terms of grades, SAT, clubs, sports, etc, but they are a legacy student, the chances of them getting admitted over a student who does show all of the qualifications except being a legacy student are very slim.
I think statistics do tell a lot about affirmative action, but does it account for the fact that many legacy students might know better how to prepare for the college their parents went to, so they have a higher chance of getting in? For example, a legacy student at MIT probably knows certain extracurricular or academic awards that MIT likes to see in students since their parents that are alumni had those achievements, so in high school they might have excelled in those areas, which would transitively gained their admittance into MIT.
While I hope I make a certain point about the situation at hand, I do recognize the admittance of extremely wealthy legacy students into really good schools that don't deserve it. However, that percentage is extremely small and most likely can be found in more private college and universities as opposed to public institutions.
Great post! It was very thought-provoking!