We at Ivy Coach have long called for an end to the admission boost given to the children of alumni at elite colleges and universities. That is why we can say that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology should be unequivocally. . .praised for its refusal to consider legacy status when evaluating applicants! That’s right, MIT never has and (hopefully!) never will consider legacy status in their admissions process. What sets apart MIT, which was recently ranked as the second-best university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, from its elite university counterparts when it comes to this policy?

MIT Takes Meritocracy Quite Seriously

From its founding in 1861 to the present moment, MIT has placed great emphasis on admitting students who meet certain standards of academic rigor. After all, the STEM-focused research university is famous for its excellence in innovation. Countless inventions, theories, and companies have been pioneered by MIT students and faculty. Can you imagine what this reputation would look like had they admitted less qualified legacy applicants in the place of their most successful alumni?

MIT’s no-legacy admission boost policy stands in stark defiance of the ubiquity of the practice amongst almost so many other elite colleges and universities. In a 2012 blog post correcting a reporting error which had some people believed that MIT did consider legacy status, Chris Peterson, Director of Special Projects at MIT Admissions, clarified the values underlying this institutional stance:

“It is indeed unusual for a school like MIT to have no preference for legacies. But one of the things that makes MIT special is the fact that it is meritocratic to its cultural core. In fact, I think if we tried to move towards legacy admissions we might face an alumni revolt. There is only one way into (and out of) MIT, and that’s the hard way. The people here value that. . . I personally would not work for a college which had legacy admission because I am not interested in simply reproducing a multigenerational lineage of educated elite. And if anyone in our office ever advocated for a mediocre applicant on the basis of their “excellent pedigree” they would be kicked out of the committee room. So to be clear: if you got into MIT, it’s because you got into MIT. Simple as that.”

Does MIT’s Legacy Admissions Policy Adversely Impact Alumni Donations?

The short answer is not at all! MIT’s $23.5 billion endowment, currently the fifth-largest university endowment in the nation, was built from donors who knew their children would not experience an admissions boost and donated anyway! Research has proven there is no correlation between the consideration of legacy status and alumni donations, so we can’t say that MIT’s financial dominance comes as a total shock. MIT is a guiding light for the elite colleges across our nation currently grappling with widespread scrutiny of the legacy admissions boost. Despite what colloquial knowledge would have one believe, MIT still manages to attract donations from alumni, organizations, and major benefactors. They would not have built up their immense endowment if this were not the case.

The Harvard Crimson put it best in their 2023 editorial advocating for an end to the practice at Harvard, called “The Pragmatic Case for Ending Legacy Admissions, Now”: “Empirically, there is no statistically significant evidence of a causal relationship between legacy preferences and alumni giving. This study is verified just by looking around us in Massachusetts: MIT, which has branded itself as the anti-legacy institution for years, still rakes in tens of millions of dollars in donations every year; and at Amherst College, which scrapped legacy admissions a couple years ago, administrators haven’t seen much effect on donations either.”

Highly selective colleges and universities, take a cue from MIT: phasing out legacy consideration will not throw your endowments into dire straits! We at Ivy Coach would only add one small stipulation to the example set by MIT. Enshrine any and all admission boosts given to the children of major donors so as not to jeopardize any financial aid programs. It is never worth gambling away a university’s accessibility to low-income students for the sake of opening up a handful of slots in each class!