CMU also stopped considering legacy in admissions (no announcement though, just a change in the CDS).
Other schools that have ended any legacy preference relatively recently include JHU, Amherst, and Pitt.
Will be interesting to see what schools follow (and which don’t).
If Harvard, Yale or Princeton end legacy, that will trigger an avalanche. No college will want to be the last college to defend legacy admissions.
I don’t see how Williams can continue to consider legacy after this announcement. I wouldn’t be surprised if Swarthmore ends legacy preference this year, too.
If Harvard, Yale and Princeton end legacy, that pretty much clears the table.
Wesleyan is so small and its legacy percentage is already low at 7%, so this only affects about 50 kids.
That’s not really the point, is it? The university is taking a stance and more will follow, I assume. Although as a Wesleyan alum, I did just joke to my D24, “Well, there goes your shot at Wesleyan!” Funny only because she is not planning to apply.
Yes, it is partly the point. Larger, richer and more powerful alumns at HYP make it harder there. Easy to impact a few dozen kids at Wesleyan
I guess the NYT is always in the habit of writing about small and insignificant events.
Hee hee. I often do find the NYT biases amusing. Have to love that bias for pricey small LACs and highly selective schools.
So why do so few Wesleyan legacies attend?
UMN Twin Cities has also dropped legacy (and employee) benefit in admissions:
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities has an updated undergraduate admissions holistic review practice. As part of the recent Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admissions along with our standard annual review of undergraduate admission practice, we no longer consider race and ethnicity or family attendance or employment at the University as context factors.
Guessing timing of this will also depend on where each school is in campaign cycle (amoung other things).
UVA will be an interesting one to watch. Highly selective but public with thousands of legacy kids applying and enjoying the boost.
I think it’s abhorrent that a public university would consider legacy for in-state students. They are meant to serve the entire population, including those with parents educated elsewhere.
On the other hand, I have no issue with public universities using legacy for out-of-state students.
For a non-paywall page directly from the source, here is Wesleyan’s announcement:
https://roth.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2023/07/19/wesleyan-university-to-end-legacy-admission/
Probably a lot less biased in that direction than many posters on these forums.
Posters on this forum are not in the business of objective news reporting, correct?
surprised no one has noted the difference in Admit rate by sex: Males - 19%, Female - 12%. (yield is about the same). Or, are the Male applicants just that much stronger?
Far more females apply (62% of the Wesleyan pool per the 2022-23 CDS), and Wesleyan attempts to have as close to a 50/50 gender split as they can. In general, male applicants at many highly rejective schools have on average a lower HS GPA than the females. Jeff Selingo talks about this in his book, and I have heard a number of AOs say the same. What that means is for LACs trying to get close to 50/50 gender ratio, they have to accept a higher proportion of males and also give allowances for male GPAs.
Only 4% for the class of 2027.
https://www.wesleyan.edu/admission/apply/class-profile.html
This was an easy decision for Wesleyan as it costs them nothing.