Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/why-we-ended-legacy-admissions-johns-hopkins/605131/

by vo2maxer • 7 years ago

140 92 7 years ago

Bostonian• 7 years ago

The principle that you should not be penalized by the family you are born into would also prohibit racial preferences, but I don't see that addressed in the article.

eesmith2• 7 years ago

The article doesn't seem to have anything to do with the "principle that you should not be penalized by the family you are born into".

iecheruo• 7 years ago

When deeply accustomed to privilege, attempts to restore merit often present as penalty.

Removing legacy preference in favor of merit is not penalization.

The article does not advocate admission based on racial preference. It does point out that a level playing field allows more applications of merit from races that would traditionally be displaced.

notlukesky• 7 years ago

So long as admissions are not solely test based (like in many countries) then it will be gamed. The 2019 college admissions bribery scandal is the tip of the iceberg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_college_admissions_briber...

There are also other ways of getting easier admission to selective schools in the US by saying you are for example Native American.

eesmith2• 7 years ago

Enough people falsely believe they are Native American - the "Cherokee princess" myth; http://www.native-languages.org/princess.htm - that I can't believe that simply saying one is Native American is enough to get easier admission.

Here's how I envision it. I write in my essay that "I'm proud that I'm part Native American. My grandmother told me that her great-grandmother was Cherokee. My ancestors were forced off their land, and I think that's a tragedy.", etc.

Admissions officer reads it, rolls eyes, then plops it into the rejection pile.

Do you have something more substantial in mind than just "saying" to get easier admission?

MandieD2• 7 years ago

I grew up being told by various family members about a great-great grandfather whose mother was Comanche. “You’re so very lucky to have taken after your grandmother, with those high cheekbones! They’re from her Comanche great-grandmother.”

The whole “Comanche/Cherokee princess” thing is not an uncommon family myth in Texas and Oklahoma, and I had a high school classmate whose mother thoroughly believed she was 1/8 Native and therefore eligible for all sorts of scholarships.

I now realize that it is probably unlikely that said great-great-great grandmother of mine was Comanche.

lmkg• 7 years ago

But test-based admissions can also be gamed. And the scandal that you cited has quite a few examples of that.

protomyth2• 7 years ago

Hopefully, the admissions office requires you to furnish your tribal ID or paper showing you are an enrolled member. There are plenty of articles showing blood tests are inaccurate and basically showing ignorance of the whole issue.

walshemj• 7 years ago

Coaching students for Oxbridge in the UK is another example

virtuous_signal6• 7 years ago

The year I arrived, Hopkins had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). Now those numbers are reversed—3.5 percent of students in this year’s freshman class have a legacy connection to the university, and 19.1 percent are Pell-eligible

This change happened in five years. Such a policy change would be extremely popular. For proponents of race-based affirmative action, this would serve as somewhat of a proxy due to the correlation between race and class. For opponents, removing legacy preferences makes admissions more meritocratic.

The only groups with something to lose are (i) mediocre children of alumni, and (ii) the university's endowments if alumni decrease their donations. I don't believe (i) is a strong factor in a university's calculations, which leaves (ii). I believe universities are happy to see the public fighting about race-based affirmative action: indeed, dividing and pitting the low- and middle-income groups against each other over their limited subset of the pie, means they will not be working together to increase their overall share of the pie.

(I think this issue could and should be considered orthogonal to race-based affirmative action. Race-based AA was never put on a stable enough legal footing and will continue to bounce back and forth in the courts until it's resolved, while this could be resolved quickly and uncontroversially.)

bradj• 7 years ago

It would be interesting to study the effect of this on donations and the endowment. There should be some measurable effect. Additionally, if there is an effect on donations and the endowment, it would be interesting to study the effect that that change has on endowment payouts. Does lower donations, due to lower legacy admissions result in less funds for University operations?

virtuous_signal6• 7 years ago

I haven't heard of studies on this but I would say the effect is potentially huge. For instance, just going by numbers of legacy admits at Harvard: www.cnbc.com/2019/04/07/harvards-freshman-class-is-more-than-one-third-legacy.html

And any natural experiment that could have been done due to JHU's change was probably messed up by the largest donation to a university, ever: www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/us/michael-bloomberg-johns-hopkins-donation.html

jnwatson• 7 years ago

My single datum indicates it results in a 100% drop in donations from families with a rejected student.

mobilefriendly• 7 years ago

"mediocre children of alumni" This is an unfair description of the advantage of legacy at an elite school. It's typically an edge, like playing a sport or belonging to an under-represented demographic.

virtuous_signal6• 7 years ago

I'm aware that it's typically an edge; what I mean by "mediocre" is not a personal description, but rather the state of being quantitatively less meritorious than those students who gained admission without the legacy edge.

CydeWeys• 7 years ago

The non-mediocre children of alumni can still get in. "Mediocre" is being used here in a relative sense.

michaelt• 7 years ago

If the impact of legacy is small - equivalent to gaining 0.01 points of GPA - then if they need legacy to be admitted, they're only 0.01 points above being rejected - one of the least qualified students at the school.

And if the impact is large - equivalent to 1 point of GPA - then there are legacy admissions a full GPA point worse than the least capable of their non-legacy peers, which is even worse.

I agree mediocre is inaccurate, because mediocre means half way to the top, and students who need legacy admissions are at the very bottom of the class.

hooloovoo_zoo• 7 years ago

Another group that stands to lose are those students who were admitted on merit and no longer have access to “mediocre” students with good connections.

virtuous_signal6• 7 years ago

That's true, and in addition to the claim that legacy admits make the entire college experience more affordable for everyone else, is probably the strongest objection.

I would venture the following: if we agree on the norm that "power should stop being transferred dynastically or through nepotism in a modern civilized society", and abolishing legacy preferences bring us closer to this norm, then the negative effects will be transient, and worth it.

dan-robertson• 7 years ago

This relies on a correlation between “legacy” and “good connections”. But if it’s about good connections, why not just have a policy like: “if you’re sufficiently good you get in and if you don’t have a ton of money we can provide scholarships to make things more affordable or free; and if you’re ok but rich, you can pay 2x the usual rate for admission up to some quota of these admissions”

You could even replace “rich” with “rich and well-connected” though it may be hard to determine the second part.

This seems like a more honest system and it doesn’t strike me as obviously unfair or unreasonable to have. Someone paying double fees isn’t taking someone else’s place so much as providing for someone else’s place.

blululu• 7 years ago

Maybe this is an added benefit since those well connected kids will go somewhere else and increase the access to those networks.

guelo• 7 years ago

The good connections' access to outstanding smart college kids would also be threatened. Which means these connections will have to find other, hopefully less dynasty-reinforcing ways to recruit.

jugg1es• 7 years ago

Love this point. Not sure if it can be called cynical or not, but a really smart kid would definitely miss out on a networking opportunity with the parents of a legacy friend. Think Bighead from Silicon Valley.

bradleyjg• 7 years ago

(ii) the university's endowments if alumni decrease their donations.

The tax law says you aren't supposed to be able to deduct contributions to charitable organizations if you get something in return.

Edit: Point being that this system is illegitimate in the first place, not that it doesn't happen.

SpicyLemonZest• 7 years ago

I'm not sure that's true. There are rules about explicit quid-pro-quos, and although they're not entirely banned (if you donate $250 for a concert ticket worth $50 you can deduct the $200) there are rules that clearly aren't being followed in this case. But tax law doesn't (and probably couldn't) attempt to restrict vague returns like "the recipient sees you and your family in a more favorable light".

morpheuskafka• 7 years ago

You are supposed to reduce the value of the deduction claimed by the fair market value of anything in return. So if they send you a $10 sticker or invite you to a banquet with $500 in food, you can't deduct that part. The question is, how exactly can one determine the FMV of a boost in admission consideration (not even just the admission itself, but an un-quantifiable additional favorable factor in review)?

geofft• 7 years ago

Legacies are considered more favorably for admissions regardless of how much (or even whether) they donate, right? Or have I misunderstood the system?

That is, the only thing that donations get you is the vague hope that your university will never make the decision Johns Hopkins just made, and it's a vague prisoner's dilemma - as long as enough alumni donate, legacy admissions stay around for all alumni.

jostmey• 7 years ago

Another way to look at it: The number of legacy students has fallen almost to zero, so now Johns Hopkins announces they are getting rid of legacy students, not before.

nugget• 7 years ago

Yes this seems more like an attempt to capitalize on a negative trend (legacies no longer applying and matriculating) to achieve positive brand association (Hopkins is now leading the way towards a meritocratic future). I'd be curious what led to the fall in legacy students in the first place.

chadash2• 7 years ago

I once heard the dean of admissions at Columbia claim that they could get rid of the entire incoming class and replace them from kids in the applicant pool without suffering a decline in quality. I'm guessing this is mostly true, save for a few truly impressive students at the tippy top. Given the low number of spots compared to applicants, it's likely that you can fill an entire class with children of alumni without much of a dip in quality. But it sure is unfair to people who don't have parents who went to elite schools.

leetcrew4• 7 years ago

I think it's fair to assume that the "quality" of an applicant is some combination of innate ability (normally distributed) and the amount of resources that have already been invested in that student (exponentially distributed). this implies that the differences between students increase at the very high percentiles.

if the dean's claim is true, they are basically admitting that their admissions criteria sucks.

goatinaboat• 7 years ago

the university's endowments if alumni decrease their donations.

Most universities where legacy admissions are a thing have self-perpetuating endowments by now. Harvard could easily fund itself forever without any donations or even tuition fees at this point, just off the interest and trading profits.

floatingatoll• 7 years ago

There is a third group: (iii) individuals who hope that some sort of chance nepotism will benefit them someday and don’t want society to move away from it before it does.

If someone has to decide openly between allowing or denying an instance nepotism, based on a secretly-held belief that it’s acceptable because it could benefit them, then they are able to take the stance that “nepotism is bad, but anti-nepotism has gone too far” in order to extend the life of the benefit (and their chances of benefiting from it).

JumpCrisscross2• 7 years ago

Legacy admissions for nonprofit institutions are a scam on the public.

If a university wants to keep legacy admissions, fine, that’s their right. But no more tax exemption for their revenues, property or endowments. (And no more, I’d argue, publicly-subsidised loans for its coffers.)

Same for “institutional advancement,” i.e. granting the progeny of the rich seats in exchange for patronage.

rb8082• 7 years ago

I think legacy admissions are a good thing for the organization and the other students who go there. People in the US have a close attachment to their university, they would like their children to go there and they donate a lot of money.

Take away legacy admissions and you just get people who want to go there for the reputation and endowment. The endowment quickly fades because people are less likely to donate, and when your reputation slips suddenly your students dry up and there is no loyal customer base of families who are committed.

Legacy admissions are a great way to generate loyal customer base. Top schools would be crazy to give this up.

JumpCrisscross2• 7 years ago

People in the US have a close attachment to their university, they would like their children to go there and they donate a lot of money

Why link first two to the last?

Pride in one’s alma mater, and encouragement towards one’s children to attend, can remain without a codified edge in admissions.

There are numerous advantages a parent familiar with the process and people at an institution can give their kids. Adding to that edge is superfluous.

MiroF4• 7 years ago

That's true, and I absolutely agree with this decision, however studies have found a clear empirical link between legacy admissions rate and fundraising rates.

rayiner• 7 years ago

Endowments and reputation fading is a good thing. One of the things that drives up cost of college is the competition among universities. If we are going to publicly subsidize higher education, through loans or otherwise, we need to reduce differentiation. Obviously there will be better or worse ones still, but going across the country to attend a “top 50 school” is not something we should be encouraging. (And that phenomenon is much less common in Europe, where going to a local school is typical even for good students.)

MiroF4• 7 years ago

Many of these top schools that have legacy programs don't have subsidized enrollment because they meet full need. Most public funding there goes to research, not subsidized loans.

wbl• 7 years ago

Caltech doesn't have legacy admits. They have a top notch reputation while Harvard somewhat unfairly has a reputation of being easy.

MiroF4• 7 years ago

Like many public schools, the difficulty of Harvard is largely contingent on the classes you choose to take and the program you're in.

sweeneyrod2• 7 years ago

I'm sure Harvard's reputation would be fine without admitting a load of thick kids who happen to come from privileged backgrounds (the smart ones would get in anyway). Maybe their endowment would suffer, but since they currently have about as much money as the whole of Latvia I expect they'd survive.

rb8082• 7 years ago

Harvard and the Ivies have been doing what they do for centuries and they're still successful. I'd suggest they know what they are doing when they let in privileged kids. If I could get into an Ivy I'd probably like to have some "thick" privileged kids in my class too to help fund my startup.

akhilcacharya• 7 years ago

The endowment quickly fades because people are less likely to donate, and when your reputation slips suddenly your students dry up and there is no loyal customer base of families who are committed.

This is great! I hope more elite universities follow suit (or preferably are forced to) if that’s the case.

wy352• 7 years ago

you just get people who want to go there for the reputation and endowment.

As opposed to people who only want to go there because Dad or Mom went there? Or, how about this -- people who want a world-class education without having to compete against other applicants with an unfair advantage.

I would not have found a well-paying job without my univerity's resources and name recognition, and I would not have been able to pay for tuition (for any college out-of-state) without my university's very generous need-based financial aid. So you can call it reputation and endowment, but I prefer to call it social mobility.

generate loyal customer base

Given these are non-profit institutions, I certainly hope not.

rm999• 7 years ago

Really happy to hear this. As someone who went to Hopkins I would fully encourage my children to apply (I had a great time and got an amazing education). But the idea that I spent a few years of my life there 40 years ago feels irrelevant to the admissions process. Any advantage given would be counterproductive in several ways:

1. It would coddle the child at a time in their life when it's essential to learn independence. This can't be good for the values they are developing.

2. It has no correlation to their success at the school. Getting admitted to a tough school like Hopkins if they are not prepared would be incredibly stressful and would probably be negatively correlated to their future success. I saw a few students who got special admissions crash and burn their freshman year and transfer out.

3. The article goes into this a lot, but it's not good for equality and encourages stratification. This isn't good for society. And it decreases diversity which is probably bad for the university.

_jasper2• 7 years ago

With you on 1 and 3 and I'm curious how this decision polls with other stakeholders (i.e. alumni with college-age children whom they want the best for).

Your #2 is basically a restatement of mismatch theory[1] which has generated tremendous controversy when applied to the affirmative action debate.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/the-nee...

zdragnar• 7 years ago

Mismatch is a very real thing, at least at the extremes.

My friend was a teacher at a private technical school (for manufacturing, electrician work etc) that started having revenue problems. The attempted fix was to lower the bar of candidates they took in and pushed them through more and more remedial classes, including basic maths. Their graduation rate plummeted, enrollment kept shrinking, and they went under.

I also saw a less extreme version of this in college and university while I was a student. Kids were being accepted well below standard, then pushed through remedial (aka developmental) courses to get them up to par on reading / writing / maths. The graduation rate for these students was far lower than those who didn't take the courses.

Mind you, this isn't (or at least, just because of) affirmative action. The state in question had a massive gap between what high school students graduated knowing, and what colleges required, and so was a systemic issue that affected all races.

Since then, common core was supposedly attempted, and colleges were banned from testing students into remedial courses if they met certain conditions. The end result is fewer students spending money without earning credit (remedial courses didn't count towards a degree) but it has been too recent to know whether it has had a positive impact on graduation rates or if the students who would have been forced to take them but now aren't are floundering.

xvector• 7 years ago

Talking about affirmative action, what a horrible system. If you're unlucky enough to be born Asian, your difficulty of getting into college has just been doubled.

It baffles me that such racist policies are so prominent at some of the best universities in the world. "Personality scores" too. What an inane cover-up for rejecting people and races you don't like. While we're at it, lets get rid of legacy admissions too.

In college admissions, a student's name, race, and background should be obfuscated. Test scores and rhetorical skills should be the sole measure of a student. Maybe a boolean telling us if a student was below the poverty line or not. It's not perfect, but this would be far better than what we have today.

At least California law prohibits affirmative action, and I was able to go to a fantastic university without having to worry about institutional racism.

susijdjdjxa• 7 years ago

I’m having a hard time squaring reasons 1 and 2. If legacy admits struggle, are they really being coddled? Personally, I didn’t apply to Hopkins because it sounded like boot camp. So your reason 2 seems a lot more plausible.

pm90• 7 years ago

The point is that the legacy admit will be coddled at the admission stage but will struggle once they’re in. Which, to be honest seems even worse: the kid was praised a year ago for getting into a good college but one year in they bomb out leading to a lot of stress for everyone.

cascom• 7 years ago

In the spirit of debate:

1. I wouldn’t call it coddling - going from say 5% chance to a 15% chance

2. I would hazard that the vast majority of legacy admissions are perfectly capable students - just as would have trouble telling the difference between the performance of the ~5% of applicants that got in, with the next 5% that didn’t

3. Equality of what?

asdff• 7 years ago

You'd be surprised, a lot of kids opt not to go the legacy route simply because that's where mom/dad went and they want to branch out. I'd say getting admitted has little correlation to success in school, anyway. Plenty of people fail out. To your last point, it would be nice if legacy/donor admits didn't cut into the number of offers extended to everyone else.

leetcrew4• 7 years ago

Plenty of people fail out.

this is actually pretty rare at very selective institutions. Harvard has a graduation rate of about 96%. most elite schools tend to be in the mid to high nineties.

motohagiography2• 7 years ago

Commenting to register disappointment at this outcome, but no point in arguing a forgone conclusion. The opportunities this creates will be in how to satiate the need for validation for this new class of burghers. Imposter syndrome is a trillion dollar opportunity.

Surely there is some new thing we can invent for them to take pictures of themselves with?

Edit: the author is using the Atlantic to take a victory lap after having infiltrated, destroyed and dismantled something. Their cant deserves scorn.

ryan93• 7 years ago

Are you saying you support legacy admissions?

xnyan2• 7 years ago

I am trying really hard to parse what you are saying. Please help.

Commenting to register disappointment at this outcome, but no point in arguing a forgone conclusion.

Understood. It reads like you really want people to know you own a thesaurus, but register your forgones to your heart's content.

The opportunities this creates will be in how

Huh?

to satiate the need for validatiom this new class of burghers.

A new class of mid-level paramedieval bureaucracy will be created from the fact that rich kids who don't meet school admissions requirements don't get rich people admissions slots?

Imposter syndrome is a trillion dollar opportunity.

Elaborate?

Surely there is some new thing we can invent for them to take pictures of themselves with?

Why are you sure?

The author is using the Atlantic to take a victory lap after having infiltrated, destroyed and dsmantled something.

How can you dismantle something that has been destroyed?

Their cant deserves scorn.

Hypocritical and sanctimonious speech is fine with me. What do you have against cants?

motohagiography2• 7 years ago

Indeed, your struggle is apparent.

peterwwillis• 7 years ago

There's huge waiting lists for international students to get into Hopkins. What this will probably result in is that it makes headroom for more international students to get in (because if you're sourcing "qualified and promising students from all backgrounds" there's probably gonna be more of those across the whole globe rather than locally).

Also, the Pell Grant averages just over $4K, going up to about $6K. The tuition for JHU is about $52K, but with room and board, books, and other misc living expenses this goes up to $69K.

MandieD2• 7 years ago

Hopkins was pretty generous with financial aid ca. 20 years ago when I was there - our household income was in the $80-90k range, putting us well above US average at the time, but still well below the average JHU student's family. We forked out a total of about $55k between tuition and living expenses for my whole 4 years, and I vaguely remember the “sticker price” being in the $30k/yr neighborhood. I maxed out on federal student loans ($16k total), and my parents made up another $24k in PLUS (Parental Loans for Undergraduate Students) that we had a tacit understanding that I’d take over after graduation (I even managed to pay them back for what they’d paid while I was in school!), and I worked summers, but that just went towards living expenses.

Most of my aid was straight-up need-based, on top of $2k/yr National Merit and federal Work-Study, the latter of which had me running around doing desk-side support and learning a TON about end-user behavior.

Graduating into the post-DotCom bubble was a little rough, but unlike some of my CS classmates from more prosperous backgrounds, I felt absolutely no shame taking a boring government contracting job that covered my loans and what I thought was a nice lifestyle.

jl2718• 7 years ago

Good point. Somebody did the math and found out that internationals are worth more than legacies.

jeegsy3• 7 years ago

An important point. Internationals typically have to pay in full at a higher rate.

lgleason• 7 years ago

Admissions should be 100% merit based. No special favors for anybody.

xnyan2• 7 years ago

That sounds very tidy, but reality is not that simple. Here is a very real situation many schools face: you have 100 slots in your school. You objectively determine that X skills are needed to do well in your school. 1000 applicants demonstrate meeting X level of skills. Some of the 1000 clearly show they have skills well above X, but most of the 1000 are roughly equivalent.

Which 900 get turned away and how do you decide which?

angry_octet2• 7 years ago

Is that really so hard? Random selection?

leetcrew4• 7 years ago

the obvious question is why does X skills have to remain constant? if you have ten times as many qualified applicants as slots, why not increase the rigor of your program until the decision gets a bit easier?

elfexec• 7 years ago

I remember Harvard defending their race-based admissions policy because of privileges some groups had and disadvantages other groups had. But they never addressed their legacy admissions. After all, who is more advantaged/privileged than the children of harvard grads? If Harvard was truly interested in leveling the playing field, they would also eliminate legacy admissions. If Harvard and other elite schools were consistent, I'd be less annoyed by their admissions policy.

Hopefully this move by Johns Hopkins gets the ball rolling and other schools will soon follow suit.

dehrmann• 7 years ago

Talking about disadvantages and privilege is great and all, but alumni donate money. Best to let in a few legacies and keep the cash flowing.

Ending Legacy Admissions at Johns Hopkins

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