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Legacy Admissions are Stupid
By J.D. Porter
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 14, 2007
I like rich, academically incapable idiots as much as the next guy, but I’m beginning to wonder if Columbia should stop admitting so many of them. I’m speaking, obviously, of legacy students. Despite claiming to care about diversity, our school still gives them preference in admissions. For some reason people don’t seem all that infuriated about this, even though the whole concept is about as fair as picking a deranged child to rule a nation because he’s the firstborn. Well, the time has come to destroy that sickly child.
Legacy admissions initially came about because Ivy League administrators hated Jews. In the 1920s, they noticed that someone had been educating Jewish people, who were now better qualified for their schools than the traditional student body, the bored children of various industrial barons. Horrified, the people at Yale, for instance, decided that only someone whose dad had gone to Yale could truly understand Yale pride (like white pride, but richer), and legacy admissions were born. Since Jewish parents had mostly spent their college years in Lithuanian shtetls and disease-ridden tenements, the old order was restored.
It’s unclear why Yale somehow found legacy admissions more acceptable than simply announcing a formal policy of anti-Semitism, but there must have been a reason, because we at Columbia still find it acceptable today. Obviously our administrators aren’t intentionally racist, but they do endorse a policy that tries to set racial diversity back at least one generation. I’m all for celebrating our heritage, but only if that heritage isn’t appalling and stupid, like most of America’s racial history. The Wall Street Journal estimates that 10 to 15 percent of Ivy League students are legacy students. Admitting about one-hundred-plus students a year based on an at-best twenty-year-old model of diversity is the academic equivalent of keeping separate drinking fountains just for old times’ sake.
Of course, we have to remember that in addition to being racist, classist, and probably misogynist, legacy admissions also contribute nothing to our educational experience. It’s tough to envision a scenario in which a class discussion pivots on one student’s explanation of what his dad thought when he was here. At least student athletes actually have to do something in exchange for admissions leniency, like kicking a ball, or rowing a paddle. This puts them far beyond the value, and probably skill set, of any legacy student.
The one viable argument for continuing legacy admissions is that legacy families are often big University donors. Those Jew-hating Yalies may have been unscrupulous, but they knew the importance of that crucial robber-baron dollar. The tenement kids might deserve to get in, but their sob-stories aren’t going to buy any new science buildings. Columbia has to court the wealthy, even if they are mostly white guys. On the other hand, they might not all be white guys if we would stop with the legacy admissions.
Either way, the “it makes money” argument is specious to begin with. You could apply the exact same rationale for selling arms to terrorists, but that doesn’t mean Columbia should contact al Qaeda. Legacy admissions may not be punishable by international tribunal, but they are obviously wrong, and our need for money doesn’t make them OK. We might as well drop the charade and just allow people to openly pay their way into the school. It wouldn’t hurt to have a guarantee that those kids you hate had to fund your building maintenance. Every one I know wishes they would shut up and go away. People aren’t qualified to do things on the basis of their parents’ skill sets. My dad was the top marksman in his class at West Point, but it would not be wise to choose me to defend America, or even a single American. Similarly, when we admit students because their parents were smart, we increase the chances of having dumb students on campus, and that ruins things for everyone.
I’m sure that not every legacy student is a privileged idiot gliding his way through college en route to an undeserved executive position in a major corporation. Some could even potentially be smart. Clearly Ivy League parents are more likely than average to send their kids to good schools. If that’s true, however, then legacy kids already have an advantage over others without us making it worse. In 2003, the Journal reported that legacy kids at Harvard had a 40 percent admission rate, compared to 11 percent for everyone else. It’s like Mike Tyson goes into the ring with a small child, and the Ivies are yelling “It’s not fair! That kid gets to use both hands!”
The utter ridiculousness of legacy admissions is not even really debatable. It’s a concept born out of racism and parochial fear, and it remains retrogressive in nearly every sense. It may cost us some money, but Columbia has an opportunity here to do something big and truly progressive. Oxford and Cambridge don’t practice legacy admissions, and although it has lost them some funding, they haven’t exactly become safety schools. If legacy kids deserve to go here, let them get in on their own. Otherwise, you’re not fooling anyone. Not even the dumb students.
J.D. Porter is a Columbia College senior majoring in English and comparative literature.
The Lion’s Roar runs alternate Fridays.
Specopinion@columbia.edu
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I'm mad at JD Porter! He writes about children of ivy league parents as if they have lived an easy life, and don't deserve to be admitted when their parents have donated large sums of money to the school. Also, I feel this is analogous to affirmative action because poor black kids from sub-standard school systems and rish white kids from ivy league loins are basically the same thing. It's science. Also english majors are dumb because who cares about english? I don't.
You must write cogently to be thought of as cogent. Otherwise, you will never be published except in the letters -to- the -editor cesspool, within which we are all here presently aswirl. Even businessmen and scientists who lie and cheat every day need to send memos.
Thank you, thank you for calling me a rich, incapable idiot. I also believe my close friends will feel the same and will seek to send you a note. And since we are rich, maybe a check.
I am a legacy alumni, and many of my closest friends were legacies as well, and we are all very proud of that fact. We are also not incapable nor are we idiots. We are business owners and lawyers and contributing members of society.
I believe that legacy admissions are absolutely necessary. In this day of affirmative action and diversity, we have the problem of reverse discrimination, which makes it harder for qualified non-minorities (like my children) to get a fair look. Being a loyal alum and providing a legacy to my children is the least I can do. I expect them to be qualified for admission - I don't expect a free ride, but I do think they need the extra push of legacy in order to get around affirmative action.
Doesn't your claim of "reverse discrimination" only prove Mr. Porter's point that legacy admissions are blatantly racist? We can't let all the good white folks be pushed aside by those unqualified minorities! I mean, they are minorities, they can't be as qualified as us good white folks!
You are not an alumni, but rather an alumnus. If you have become schizophrenic or two-faced, you might have become an alumni somewhere along the line. Either way, a graduate of CC should be embarrassed to not know the difference.
Yes, and he also should be embarrassed to split infinitives.
Not to know is not not- knowing. There are nots that we know, and there are knots that we sew. So, those who sow seeds of sewing residue produce seedy sows. Production of this sort might seem unworthy of the effort involved. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed...He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Introibo ad altare Dei.
The author's superiority complex comes from growing up and receiving an education in the great state of....
*drumroll*
Texas. I think anyone would develop such arrogance amongst public-school Texan peers.
The Ivies had jewish quotas because the Ivies were not founded to educate the masses, they were founded to educate the children of Protestants. The fact that Jews wanted to attend Protestant schools was their problem. The jews in this country could have started their own universities, but they didn't. Jews make up almost 30% of the Ivy League, despite being only 2% of the U.S. population. Protestants, who founded all of the Ivies, make up far less than their representation, even though it was their money and sweat which created and nurtured these institutions.
I usually enjoy Porter's column, and to an extent I enjoyed this one too, but I was surprised that he wrote it without giving any indication that he knows a legacy student. Honestly, how much does "legacy" factor in to acceptance? I know many legacy students who were smart kids that still didn't get in to Columbia because it is extremely competitive (but did get into other stellar schools). I know for a fact that Columbia rejects smart legacy kids, so I'd be surprised that the ones they accept are the morons that Porter portrays them to be.
My hunch is that "legacy" is a very small factor.
If we're so smart, how come we can't figure out a plan to beat Fordham? What we need here, let's face it, are more big, dumb bastards who can block. There should be legacies for the children of previous big, dumb bastards who went here back when you needed only 900 boards and we used to win a game or two. Why only rich goofs as legacies? Big, dumb bastard legacies would make a world of difference to our endowments, too. Why do you think alumni give all that money to Harvard and Penn? Because they win games! The situation could be immeasurably improved by allowing in and legacy-ing more big, dumb bastards. Oh, and a few small, dumb bastards who can run! You don't have to discuss Ulysses with them. Just let them eat and grow even larger so that we will have a University to be proud of. This is all self-evident
The ivies are more proud of their academic smartness, actually. if the games are not won, that is not the ivy's fault, it is the doing of individual players here on sports scholarship who don't know good strategies.
Wow, are you ever dumb! Are you big? We can use you.
I know that the ivies originally came under this league for sports, but if you have been in touch with reality lately, you will know that Ivies are important today for their selectivity. Think about it's demand today before attacking me.
When spec publishes an offensive opinion that uses baseless name-calling, it deserves to gets offensive comments like the 'big dumb bastard' one.
Spec should raise the level of the dialogue.
Porter is far too fond of childish words like "idiot", offensive phrases like "jew-hating yalies", and ignorant assertions like "not even really debatable". I know it's an opinion, but shouldn't it be a mature, reasoned opinion? Save the silly rhetoric and name-calling for the fed.
The "big, dumb bastard" posting seems humorous and satirical rather than "offensive." ???
sometimes, when the circumstances are outrageous, we ought to permit such language.
arguing against anachronistic admissions policies engendered by "jew-hating yalies" certainly deserves some leeway.
Who, comrade, decides for all when an opinion is "mature" and/or "reasoned"?
poop...
It would be interesting to know more of the academic valor of legacy students. The diversity point is the most interesting; some claim legacy admissions are antithetical to diversity--this is only true in practice because of the historical makeup of the school. In theoretical terms, the same philosophy that dictates diversity initiatives must apply to other admissions practices, such as legacy tradition, athletes...
Valor: Great courage in the face of danger. What in hell is "academic valor?"
I think you are all silly for getting worked up about this column. No one cares outside of your little imaginary worlds. Wake up folks, you are all outnumbered. Ivy league schools are for people who cannot cut it in the real world. It is especially true for legacy students who need some form of emotional shelter before leaving home, some sense of belonging to a place they are unfamiliar with. You all have an emotional shelter as well; you perceive yourselves as upper crust, deserving by name only. Most of you will live the remainder of your lives under that shelter, tucked away in some corner office collecting a big fat check for doing nothing more than attending a school because of its name.
Congratulations, your school is a joke.
Wow, aren't you bitter that you didn't get into Columbia or any other Ivy? There are no doubt many intelligent students in other colleges; but other than some legacy students, all Ivy League students have the intelligence equivalent to any valedictorian in any other colleges, perhaps even more.
ALL ivy league students have the intelligence equivalent to ANY valedictorian at ANY other college.
Maybe all except you; that comment is horrendously bad.
I was not trying to impress you. I don't need to prove myself in a commentary board, do I? I was merely getting my point through.
Not me! I'll collect a small check and listen to Pink Floyd.
The scope of this school and its student representation is way broader than any of the people commenting here, a narrow slice of anxiety, can attest to.
"you are all outnumbered"
By what? Mediocre state-educated half-wits?
Your comment stinks of nothing but petty envy.
The fact is, the people you think "cannot cut it in the real world" are precisely the same people who are running this country and will continue running this country.
Accurately, it's "by whom." But, who's counting brain cells? This country is being run? By what? Or, rather, by whom?
Jesus, chill out and get over yourselves, people! It's a friggin' opinion piece. Write your own damn column.
I especially love the flashy displays of wit from critics, which amount to nothing more than ad hominiem attacks. It's just amusing to see that the best reply you can give is to make a silly comment like attack the entire field of English literature just because he happens to study that.
It's also a terrible shame that so many of you simply can't honestly open your eyes and see how legacy admissions is fundamentally a racist and classist institution. But before you all start howling all the tired old FOXnews " crap how evil affirmative action is going to bring about the end of the world (blacks! horror!), let's think first about legacy admissions. First of all, Columbia was all-male until the 1980s, and while diverse at some level, it was still a generally homogeneous student body. Perhaps not intentionally racist, but on a global and systematic level, legacy admissions has the effect of making it much harder for those who do not come from a Columbia family to attend. And on the whole, that means white, affluent, coming from a private school, large house in the burbs, or fancy UES apartment. Get it?
You folks should read an article in the Princeton Alunni Weekly from several years ago that talks about this issue. One dumbf@ck Princeton alum from its KKK days makes the suggestion that legacy admissions should be like admissions to a private club, and all legacy children who wish to attend Princeton should automatically be allowed in.
To be fair, I think admissions offices these days do a very good job of remedying this. Legacy status is simply a coincidental fact of a student's application, but it is not the REASON why a student gets in. The grades/SATS/ECs/etc are already strong enough to get the student in anyway. I think that's the way it should be, and if that's the case, then, as far as I'm concerned, there's no argument here.
Btw, as an Old Oxonian and Old Wykehamist, I can say for a fact that we don't practice "legacy" admissions, as the author rightly points out, and I think we've done just fine for ourselves. Our students at Oxford were probably just as diverse, interesting, and intellectually able as the students I knew at Columbia, all without having to play this scandalous game of rewarding the accident of birth.
Wow, this whole "comments on articles" move show a lot of promise. I always thought most students agreed with the drivel in these articles.
so legacy preference is racist, but the diversity porter lauds [aka affirmative action] is not?
why can't porter be honest and simply argue that he prefers a campus with a disproportionate number of minorities [compared to the number that would get in sans AA] to a campus with a disproportionate number of legacy people. this is a valid argument and i probably agree with it for variance reasons. but you've got your accusations of racism backwards. my definition of racism=discrimination or prejudice based on race.
jonathan talamini, jmt2104
Does Spectator check facts? I’ll grant that this was an opinion piece—that is, all opinion and no facts, not to mention an unflattering streak of mean-spiritedness. However, legacy admissions is a topic worthy of discussion and analysis, so let me contribute some facts.
First, it’s easy to find out how many members of the Columbia College first year class are legacies, and it’s not even close to the ten to fifteen percent/100 plus kids cited in this article. Columbia College Today publishes the info each year. The class of 2010 (last year’s first year class) has 49 children of Columbia College alumni—assuming the class was 1025 students, that’s 4.8% legacy.
In past years the number of legacies in the class has more often been in the range of 60 kids. Heck, there are probably 25 or more Harvard legacies in the class—that doesn’t mean Harvard legacies are being given unfair advantage by the admissions office. So a legacy enrollment of 5% to 6% is hardly abusive. You would expect a number of legacy kids.
The legacy preference exists, of course, but at Columbia most of the legacy kids are extremely satisfactory students and the legacy preference, if needed, is a tip factor for an otherwise worthy candidate. Note that Daniel Goldin in The Price of Admission, his book attacking legacy and VIP preferences, left Columbia alone (except to cite one faculty member talking about faculty child preference—which is ironic, because while there are a few faculty kids who need the preference for admission, some of the very best students in the College are faculty kids). I submit that’s because Columbia’s legacy admissions preference has nothing scandalous about it. In any case, the article’s premise that Columbia has a large number of unqualified legacy kids is patently wrong. Mr. Porter can stop worrying about the qualifications of his legacy classmates and focus more on his own intellectual development.
Second, the legacy preference may be debatable, but don’t drag anti-Semitism into it. It’s just false that the legacy admissions preference was created out of anti-Semitism. I’m not saying elite schools didn’t try to manage Jewish enrollment—just that legacy admissions was not created out of anti-Semitism or for anti-Semetic purposes. Every college enacts a legacy preference once it becomes even slightly selective, even if they are keeping out their own kind. To quote Daniel Goldin’s book, The Price of Admission:
“Founded in 1842, Notre Dame admitted every Catholic high school graduate who could afford tuition until the end of WWII. As it became selective after the war, it introduced legacy preference….”
Was Notre Dame worried about keeping out Jewish students? No—they were keeping out Catholic kids—they just wanted to preserve places for alumni children. Same for Yale and the Ivies—the legacy preference was designed to help alumni, not to exclude a particular ethnic group. In fact by the time Columbia got around to formalizing the legacy preference, the alumni body was already significantly Jewish, so in Columbia’s case Jewish kids have long benefited from legacy admissions at the “expense” of newer immigrant groups.
Ivy League admissions is about building a balanced class comprising students with a wide range of backgrounds and talents. Mr. Porter chose Columbia over his state school for that reason. If he wants to attend a school where GPA and SAT scores are the primary or exclusive determinants of who gets in, he has those alternatives. Unfortunately, they tend not to be as interesting as Columbia.
wow this article really sucks. this is from an english major at columbia? remind me next time to spend my 45k on a nice car
Or to capitalize the first letter of my sentences.
Legacy admissions? I don't think they should allow Subarus or anything or anyone lacking a sense of humor to accelerate, matriculate, subjugate, expostulate, cohabitate, ventilate, or publicly cogitate anywhere near this campus. This way, we could get rid of the Board of Trustees and fully seventy percent of the student poplulation. This University has only a 6 billion dollar slush fund to work with. I think Bloomberg and Gates carry more than that in their pockets for spending money. Ergo, we need more legacies, not fewer. This all goes without saying, but is stated nonetheless.
I find the second anonymous poster's claim that the author's "arrogance" springs from his English and Comparative Lit major background to be even more arrogant than the author himself, not to mention completely absurd.
I also find the propensity to look down on humanities majors to be one of the most digusting displays displays of arrogance (not to mention an outright incorrect and unwarranted practice) at this school. Don't get me wrong, I AM an English Major (and one who's not afraid to print her NAME in the comments), and I have enough friends who are math or science majors to know that most of them don't feel this way, but the ones who do should really be ashamed of themselves.
The English department at Columbia is one of the best in the country, in my opinion and perhaps even "officially" (whatever that means), and anyone here should be proud to be a part of it. The idea that English is a "soft" major (whatever that means as well) is batted around by people who feel the need to feel intellectually superior to others who got into the exact same school they did. This is usually because they are unhappy, overstressed, and overworked, and want to believe that the major they chose will at least get them a high-paying, prestigious job after college.
Unlike those who choose math or economics, most of the English majors I know chose their major based on what they love, with full knowledge, as one particular Facebook group puts it, that they will "probably be living in a box" once they graduate. They are brilliant, articulate, and dynamic people, who for the most part appreciate the math and science majors around them, realize they work extremely hard as well, but acknowledge that the brain of a math major works very differently from the brain of a history major, for example, and that the two lines of study are hardly comparable.
And lest you think I'm defending a dirty little secret (obviously, this would be the fact that I am utterly devoid of those math and science smarts that you seem to think are the only kind that matter in this world), I chose to be an English major after acing every single math and science class I ever took in high school (many of them extremely intense and difficult AP courses), but never really enjoying them.
The commenter chooses condescendingly to tell the article's author to "learn that arguments should be made on the basis of facts and not prejudice," yet the commenter would do very well to learn this very lesson himself.
His arrogance is showing through.
Sorry, for some reason they wouldn't show my name in the actual NAME field for the above comment, so I'm doing it here, so as not to be hycritical:
Giulia Pines
CC '08
gp2115@columbia.edu
As previous posters already alluded to: How many legacies are actually at CU due to merit, and how many due to legacy status. I am pretty sure that in 15 years when my son applies to college, he'll be better off not mentioning his father's alumnus status at CU, specifically because of the stats given by first two people to make comments: Legacies have higher average scores, which means that the admissions office is already looking over its shoulder at perpetual whiners like JD Porter, and denying admission to legacies who would have gotten in had they not been legacies. MG - SEAS'94 and MBA'00 alumnus (not a legacy, but hope that my kids will be at either CU or (gasp) Penn)
What really scares me is that this writer is an English major. This poorly written, dsorganized mess reads like the rantings or an imature high school sophomore who is way too cool for life. Instead of going for so many zingers, this peson is better off addressing the fact that legacy student ay places like Yale have a SLIGHTLY higher admission rate, but they also have higher test scores and gpa's than than the average applicant. Furthermore, and this is the dirty secret anti-establishment folk repeatedly ignore: legacies at Yale also have higher gpa's than the mean gpa of the overall Yale student body. So which individual group has the lowest average gpa??? Well, that would be african american students, followed by hockey players. Every now and then, we get people screaming to kick out all the athletes. But I don't hear anyone calling for more scrutiny regarding the admittance of African-Americans.
Previous acts of discrimination in the past are not a valid reason to attack the distant descendents of those offenders today. Payback is not social justice. Neither is revenge against the innocent. Yale is currently 25% international and has a higher percentage of minorities and Jews than than the US as a whole.
And please, "kicking a ball, or rowing a paddle" ??? That's about the saddest description of soccer and rowing I've ever heard. How would writers like it if we described their careers as "throwing a bunch of letters down on paper." Columbia English professors should be embarrassed at their protege. But then again, this probably a 'A' paper to them.
This is a fairly childish,silly article. It is also simply overloaded with prejudice, arrogance, and envy.
The author presents no facts whatsoever regarding legacy students. What is the graduation rate of legacy students compared to the rest of the student population? What is the average SAT, class rank, and high school GPA of legacy students compared to the average admit? What is the average Columbia GPA of legacy students compared to the average student at CU? The author presents no evidence whatsoever that legacy students compare negatively to the rest of the student body.
The fact that the admission rate of legacies is higher than other applicants proves nothing regarding their academic abilities. Intelligence is a product of both DNA and nurture. Is it so had to believe that people who are: 1) intelligent enough to graduate from Ivy League schools (and who usually marry equally gifted people), 2) economically successful and 3) spend both time and money nurturing their children also happen to produce many academically gifted offspring. Gee, kids with energetic, smart parents who attend academically excellent high schools are admitted at a higher rate than the average applicant. Duh!
The author is an English and Comparative Lit major and it shows. I guarantee you that the students majoring in physics, math, chemistry and the other sciences have had a much more intellectually challenging experience at CU than the author. Maybe the author wouldn't be so intellectually arrogant if the took some hard classes for a change. Maybe he (or she ?) would learn that arguments should be made on the basis of facts not prejudice. Prehaps this intellectual laziness is the product of taking a soft major like Comparative Lit.
Excellent response. He pesents no evidence to show that legacies are less smart or possessing of lesser skills than anyone else in the class.
There is also more than an undercurrent of entitlement in the author's attitude. Many smart and talented people are turned away from Columbia for reasons which will never make scientific sense, because building a diverse class is something of an art and definitely something of a crapshoot. The author should understand that he is lucky to be here - he doesn't "deserve" a Columbia education more than anyone else. Given the privileged snobbery of this piece, my bet is that the author will be screaming at the CC admissions office 25 years hence about why his poor Muffy didn't get admitted. But why stop at legacies? I note that for most of the top schools, between 40 to 50 percent of the students are from private schools. Surely, there are plenty of capable public school students who are losing out to the "legacy" private schools. I view that as a much bigger issue.
My solution: Open admissions. First come, first served. It will knock the pompous snot out of people like this author who think only they are smart enough and hardworking enough to get an education.
Wow, are YOU ever a megalomaniac sans portfolio! You would never make our football team, but you might shine as a side-line statistician. And if your statistics are as faulty as your logic and ill-informed opinion, you might qualify as Don Rumsfeld's replacement. At least he knew that there were things that we know we don't know.
How can you call the author arrogant when your whole comment just demonstrated how arrogant you are! This article was funny and also brought the whole legacy situation more into perspective. Accepting legacies might seem traditional and straightforward but it can be associated with many negative things as this article pointed out.
I think this article proves that the problem isn't just legacy admissions at Columbia, but rather, the lack of thought that goes into the admissions process as a whole. Apparently, the university values students who are pedantic and self-congratulatory more than those with actual potential. I'm equally ashamed that the Spectator, a paper I want very much to be proud of, publishes this type of garbage.
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