At the present moment, Harvard University has been forced to reckon with its legacy of racism, elitism, and exclusion. In the wake of the overturning of Affirmative Action, with SCOTUS ruling that race may no longer be factored into admissions decisions (though schools like Harvard have, naturally, exploited a legal workaround), we at Ivy Coach predict that the next frontier of change in the Ivy League admissions landscape will be the phasing out of legacy admissions. Considerable scrutiny has already been brought to the practice, including a federal civil rights investigation, and for good reason!

Legacy status gives the children of Harvard alumni a considerable boost to their chances of admission. But many do not know that the current use of legacy status at Harvard is historically tied to more controversial admissions practices aimed at maintaining Harvard’s ties to the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment.

A Brief History of Harvard’s Exclusionary Admissions Practices

For the first half of its 400 year history, Harvard almost exclusively serviced the sons of wealthy white Christian families from the northeastern United States. However, in the early twentieth century, an influx of Jewish immigrants to the east coast produced a new generation of academically-ambitious students with their sights set on Harvard. By 1921, one in five Harvard undergraduates were Jewish. 

To address the changing demographics of the student body, then-President Abbott Lawrence Lowell (whose name still graces the undergraduate dormitory Lowell House) convened the Committee on Methods for Sifting Candidates for Admission. Through extensive surveillance of enrolled students and antisemitic rhetoric, the Committee attempted to predict the likelihood that an applicant was Jewish, with the ultimate goal of suppressing the number of Jewish students admitted to campus.

The Tension Between “Character” and “Merit” at Harvard

Further measures were taken as the 1920s progressed to maintain Harvard’s affinity with the WASP establishment. The personal essay and the alumni interview, now integral components of the Harvard admissions process, were implemented during this time to give traditional white Christian applicants a boost through a nonacademic metric, “character.” In 1934, Harvard admissions officers turned to admitting the sons of alumni at higher numbers in order to satisfy these new “character”-driven criteria.

By the 1950s, in the wake of World War II and a wave of modernization across the country, a new standard was taking hold across the Ivy League admissions landscape: merit. An increasing emphasis on standardized testing, academic rigor, and student ambition developed alongside exclusionary criteria. Over the next few decades, racial diversity increased on Harvard’s campus, while, perhaps counterintuitively, the advantages of legacy status continued to be codified and entrenched in the admissions process. 

Double Standards in Harvard Admissions Today

Given this troubled history, the privileging of legacy applicants is questionable at best. Many have also criticized other types of applicant advantages, including those that help recruited athletes, the children of donors, and the children of Harvard faculty and staff get through the door. According to a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, amongst white undergraduates at Harvard, 43% fall into one of these privileged categories, as opposed to 16% of students of color. Furthermore, 75% of white students in these categories would not have been admitted had they not had privileged status.

In other words, while explicit racial quotas are relics of the past, there are still a variety of processes in place to implicitly benefit white applicants, especially those from elite backgrounds. Now that race may no longer be used as an admissions criteria (though it remains a consideration in practice), Harvard officials are beginning to recognize that legacy admission is unjustifiable: Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra told The Crimson this last October that ending legacy admissions is “under consideration” by the university.

The Future of White Privilege at Harvard

So does white privilege still play a role in admission to one of the most prestigious universities in the world? Absolutely. At Ivy Coach, we dream of a future where this is no longer the case, and we welcome the tidal wave of change that is just beyond the horizon, one we hope will make the admissions process better for all.