What about legacy admissions?

Race-based preferences in college admissions are so obviously unfair, and so widely perceived to be unfair, that those who defend this discrimination typically switch the conversation to the unfairness of legacy admissions — the practice of giving an edge to the sons and daughters of alumni. For example, the Washington Post harps on legacy admissions in this highly misleading front-page article.

Bringing up legacy admissions to defend race-based preferences amounts to “whataboutism,” a form of argument liberals tend to deride. But when genuinely applicable, “whataboutism” arguments are perfectly legitimate. They are based on a principle fundamental to our notion of justice — that similar situations should be treated similarly.

But is the practice by which colleges boost legacy applicants similar to the race-based admissions practices they use to boost blacks? As a legal matter, it is not.

The law prohibits discriminating against members of particular racial groups. It does not prohibit discriminating against people whose parents didn’t attend a particular college.

This reality doesn’t end the inquiry, though. Legacy admissions, though not illegal, might still be as unjust as race-based admissions. And, of course, they could be barred by new legislation, as some are calling for.

Here’s the real problem with a “what-about-legacies” defense of race-based preferences: the two practices aren’t very similar as a factual matter.

As even the Washington Post acknowledges, the boost colleges give to legacy applicants is generally small. It’s nowhere near the boost applicants receive for being black.

Indeed, the boost is so small that most legacy students fall into one of two categories. They either (1) would have been admitted under current selection policy even if they weren’t legacies or (2) would have been admitted but for the fact that they aren’t black or Hispanic. For those in the second category, all legacy status does (as a college admission officers once told me) is compensate for the disadvantage of not belonging to a favored minority group.

The insignificance of the legacy advantage is clear from an analysis by The Daily Princetonian of the SAT scores of Princeton’s class of 2026 . The analysis found that legacy students had higher SAT scores than non-legacy students.

For example, according to the Daily Princetonian, 38 percent of legacies had a score higher than of 1550 or higher, compared to 32.5 percent of nonlegacy students. More dramatically, only 2.2 percent scored below 1390, compared to 12.8 percent of non-legacies.

Blacks make up 3.8 percent of legacies in Princeton’s class of 2026. Given the enormous preference Princeton gives to black applicants, it’s fair to infer that nearly all of the 2.2 percent of legacies who scored below 1390 are black. These students were admitted almost entirely because of their race, not their legacy status.

The Daily Princetonian found, not surprisingly, that legacy students come from wealthier families than their non-legacy counterparts. Supporters of race-based preferences sometimes argue that wealth gives applicants an advantage on the SAT. That may be. However, in Princeton’s case, legacy students have higher SAT scores even when controlled for income.

What about performance at Princeton? How do legacy students compare to non-legacies when it comes to grades?

According to the Daily Princetonian’s analysis, legacies get better grades:

Graduating seniors who had a legacy connection had higher GPA’s while at Princeton. According to the 2023 Senior Survey, over three-quarters of legacy students finished with a GPA of 3.7 or above, while less than 60 percent of non-legacies accomplished this. Eight percent of legacy students graduated with a GPA of less than 3.5, compared to 18 percent among non-legacy students.

These numbers show that the grade inflation at Princeton is staggering. More to the present point, they show that, if anything, Princeton is improving the academic caliber of its student body by admitting legacy applicants. It is not improving the academic caliber by admitting blacks.

What would happen if Princeton stopped its practice of giving a small boost to the sons and daughters of alums and, at the same time, followed the Supreme Court’s dictate to stop giving preferences to blacks. It seems likely that blacks would be hit disproportionately hard.

As noted, blacks make up about 4 percent of Princeton’s legacy students. Black representation in the legacy pool is bound to increase as the sons and daughters of those in “blacker” classes reach college age. Most of these black legacy students are likely to have lower SAT scores and grades than white and Asian-American non-legacy applicants. They could use a legacy boost.

As for whites, they make up a majority (about 56 percent) of the legacies in Princeton’s class of 2026. Some members of this group wouldn’t have made the cut, even absent race-based preferences, without the legacy boost.

Who, under a system that gave no boost for legacy or race, wouldreplace this relatively small number of white students? They would be replaced almost exclusively by applicants with slightly better credentials than the legacy whites. It’s likely that nearly all of them would be white or Asian-American.

In pointing out that the legacy boost is small and wouldn’t be needed by most legacy admittees under a color-blind admissions regime, I don’t mean to defend legacy preferences. It wouldn’t bother me if colleges that comply with the ban on race-based preferences also end legacy preferences. The likely result would be a slight decrease in white and black enrollment and an increase in Asian-American enrollment. That would be fine.

But the given (1) the vast difference between the impact of the legacy boost and the boost from racial preferences and, (2) the high degree of academic success enjoyed (at least at Princeton) by legacy students, the two practices are too dissimilar to support a sound “whataboutism” argument.

And given the likelihood that under a lawful admissions policy, blacks would benefit on balance from a legacy boost (only a little bit now, but more in the future), it seems self-defeating for those who support racial preferences to want to do away with legacy admissions.