In 2014, Johns Hopkins University got rid of legacy as a factor in admissions, hoping to increase its student diversity. Six years later, its president, Ronald J. Daniels, wrote about the decision in The Atlantic. In sum, it worked.
Over the past decade, the percentage of Pell-eligible students at Johns Hopkins rose from 9% to 19%, and the percentage of students on financial aid climbed to over half of the student body, from 34%.
Now, more than a quarter of Johns Hopkins undergraduates are from minority backgrounds, up more than 10 percentage points since 2009. Conversely, the proportion of students with legacy ties to the university dropped from 12.5% to 3.5%.
Efforts to end legacy preferences “are not a panacea for the structural inequities that plague our society,” Daniels wrote. “But they are necessary if American universities are truly to fulfill their democratic promise to be ladders of mobility for all.”
In his article, Daniels points to a 2007 study that found legacy applicants were three times more likely to be admitted to universities, giving students likely to be wealthy and White an extra advantage. He also links to legacy-related data revealed in last year’s federal court case against Harvard University, or Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard University. The case is about the consideration of race in admissions. The data showed that students from a Harvard-educated family were five times more likely to get into the school.
Johns Hopkins isn’t the only elite university to do away with this controversial admission criterion. It’s following in the footsteps of institutions like the University of California System, Cal Tech and MIT.
But many universities continue the practice – up to 42% of private institutions, according to a 2018 survey.
