Merit Over Lineage: The 2025 Case Against Legacy Admissions
The Supreme Court’s ban of race-conscious affirmative action preceded the legal review of legacy-based college admissions in late 2024 into early 2025. While both decisions, on a superficial level, seem distinct from one another, statistics have come to show that legacy preferences foster racial discrimination — and lack a valid educational argument. In 2023, SFFA v. Harvard communicated the court’s view that schools must utilize “race-neutral alternatives” before considering race in admissions. Thus, the subsequent argument arises that if admissions officers can no longer take race into account for decisions, they must be barred from looking into “lineage” as well. To elucidate, historically, 70% of Harvard’s legacy applicants have been white; maintaining this preference after banning affirmative action would actually widen the race gap. It’s also been demonstrated through 2025 admissions statistics that legacy applicants are admitted at a rate that’s nearly four times higher than that of non-legacy applicants (with undifferentiated test scores and grades).
Such statistics have strengthened the idea that legacy-based admissions foster discrimination, and certain legal mechanics only bolster this argument. According to Title IV of the Civil Rights Act (passed in 1964), any institution that is a recipient of federal funding can therefore be held liable for policies that effectively have a “disparate impact” on minority/racial groups that were under protection from the Act. This accountability is applicable even if a policy wasn’t created with the intention of being racist, which made way for massive investigations in college admissions over the years (such as that of Harvard, which revealed the majority of its legacy admits were white). Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s justification in SFFA v. Harvard was that admissions should be entirely “colorblind,” and legacy status cannot be maintained, even as a “plus factor,” because it historically favors the same demographic of wealthier, predominantly white students.
The acceptable practices in terms of college admissions have already been evolving on the state level, most notably the ban of legacy or donor preferences at private universities like Stanford and USC, which went into effect in September of 2025. Also in late 2025, California, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia have all passed laws banning or restricting legacy-based admissions into colleges. In terms of the federal government, the MERIT Act serves as a bipartisan bill that Congress has been discussing (from 2023 to 2025), which would effectively attribute a college’s accreditation (or authorization/status) to whether or not they had legacy preferences with admissions. A major defense by many schools in an overall act of protection of legacy admissions is that donors must be accounted for, and legacy admissions essentially reimburse them. However, through recent data collections, the donor argument has revealed itself as a generational excuse that institutions have been using to justify their legacy admissions. In other words, as shown through Johns Hopkins University’s phasing out of legacy admissions beginning in 2014, it has reportedly had no decrease in alumni donations and giving. As a matter of fact, total incoming contributions and grants saw an increase from 2018, when they totaled around $2.16 billion, to 2021, when they totaled $2.45 billion. Similarly, Amherst College ended its legacy policy practice in 2021 and has yet to maintain a robust amount of donations.
Beyond the positive effects that have been shown in individual colleges as a result of phasing out/terminating the practice of legacy-based admissions, broader studies demonstrate similar narratives as well. In 2010, a study of the top 100 universities found no significant or definitive statistical evidence of a relationship between legacy preference policies and the total giving from alumni (when controlling for factors like wealth). Furthermore, this demonstration, in debunking the theory that removing legacy admissions causes a lack of donations (or a weaker donor base), opens the way for a whole new demographic of low-income, highly achieving students that are often overlooked in the admissions process. As shown by Johns Hopkins University in a similar study, the roles of students admitted via legacy and Pell-Grant eligible students were entirely reversed. In 2009, for example, the university had roughly 12.5% of its students admitted via legacy, and 9% of Pell-Grant admitted students. However, in 2023 (after legacy admissions had been almost entirely phased out), legacy students had dropped to 3.5%, and Pell-eligible students reached 21.6%. In addition, at Hopkins, the number of first-generation students more than doubled, being only 8.9% in 2010 and reaching a staggering 20.3% by 2024. Amherst College experienced a very similar shift, as following its 2021 policy alteration, legacy enrollment dropped from around 11% to roughly 6%. This change occurred in just two years of admissions and paved the way for many more diverse applicants and high-achieving students from different backgrounds.
Further modern analysis on college admissions and the role of legacy applicants in the overall admission of students from other backgrounds has also come to show that putting an end to legacy admissions can strengthen donor appeal (and the subsequent donor base), and even the university’s brand. In addition to the depicted increase in the strength of Hopkins’s donor base after it phased out legacy applications, many alumni reportedly feel more proud of — and therefore more inclined to support via donations — their university if it prioritizes merit over legacy. On a similar page, inviting a more diverse range of applicants after no longer giving precedence to legacy applicants urges more novel philanthropy. Massive, primarily diversity-focused gifts often result from a school’s shift away from legacy; a notable instance of this philanthropy was shown through Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins in 2018. This donation was especially for the financial aid of non-legacy students whom former legacy preferences served as a detriment. Johns Hopkins University has seen even further positive development in 2025, as it has seen a recent successful transition into a tuition-free establishment for undergraduate students from families with annual incomes of less than $200,000. In full, the fostering of a post-legacy college admissions environment has already exhibited many tangible instances of not only managing but thriving nationwide, and reaping the benefits of new policies in the form of value-based fundraising, a novel student demographic, and stable (and even increasing) donations.
Bibliography
Columbia Undergraduate Law Review. “Legacy Admissions: An Insidious Form of Racial Discrimination.” Accessed December 20th, 2025. https://www.culawreview.org
The Atlantic. “Why We Ended Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins.” Accessed December 21st, 2025. https://www.theatlantic.com
National Geographic. “Why do colleges have legacy admissions? It started as a way to keep out Jews.” Accessed December 21st, 2025. https://www.nationalgeographic.com
Institute for Higher Education Policy “Legacy Looms Large in College Admissions, Perpetuating Inequities in College Access.” Accessed December 27th, 2025. https://www.ihep.org