After Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling, more universities end ‘legacy’ admissions

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. — In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action, Wesleyan University will no longer give preference in admissions to students whose family members attended the school, President Michael S. Roth announced Wednesday.

Roth said the Middletown university’s decision was directly tied to the court’s affirmative active ruling. In response to that ruling, which characterized affirmative action as anti-meritocratic, some critics have wondered whether legacy admissions deserve similar scrutiny.

“In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action, we believe it important to formally end admission preference for ‘legacy applicants,’” Roth said. “We still value the ongoing relationships that come from multi-generational Wesleyan attendance, but there will be no ‘bump’ in the selection process.”

Even before this decision, Roth said, legacy status had played “a negligible role” in Wesleyan’s admissions process.

“Wesleyan has never fixated on a checked box indicating a student’s racial identification or family affiliations,” he said. “We have long taken an individualized, holistic view of an applicant’s lived experience.”

Wesleyan joins a small number of other elite schools that have ended legacy admissions, including MIT, Amherst College, Johns Hopkins and the University of California, Berkeley. Other top universities, including Yale University and the rest of the Ivy League, continue to give preference to students whose families members attended.

Legacy admissions have drawn increasing criticism in recent weeks, including from President Joe Biden, who said recently that they restrict diversity and “expand privilege instead of opportunity.” Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center survey from 2022 found that 75 percent of Americans say legacy status should not be a factor in the admissions process.

Since the Supreme Courts rulings last month, which drew condemnation from numerous colleges in Connecticut and elsewhere, schools have floated different strategies for maintaining a diverse campus. A UConn administrator said the school would likely increase recruitment efforts in Black and Latino communities and was considering the use of an “adversity score” that would measure socioeconomic status and other factors. Officials at other schools said personal essays could become more important than ever in the admissions process.

Roth said Wednesday that Wesleyan, which enrolls about 3,200 students, will increase financial aid, continue recruiting from diverse communities, strengthen outreach to community organizations and more.

“Ending preferential legacy admission is the easy part,” he said.