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The University of Virginia this week issued what it called a clarification in its admissions policy toward children of alumni, who are often known as “legacy” applicants.
Those parental ties will no longer be conveyed to admission officers in a direct “checkbox” way, U-Va. leaders said Tuesday, but applicants will be given a new opportunity to write about a “personal or historic connection” with the public flagship university and how that experience has prepared them to contribute to the school.
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The U-Va. statement represented an attempt to stake out a nuanced position in the fierce debate over legacy preferences that has flared since the Supreme Court, in June, rejected race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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The court’s ruling did not require colleges to curtail or end legacy preferences, but the legacy factor has drawn fresh scrutiny as colleges are seeking to maintain racial diversity without using race-based affirmative action. Some major schools — including Virginia Tech last week — have declared they are ending consideration of legacy status altogether in their selection of an incoming class. Critics say legacy admission preferences too often help White and wealthy applicants.
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Scores of colleges and universities — including U-Va. — have said they consider alumni relationships in the admissions process. But leaders of those schools say the practice has been misunderstood.
The release of the online Common Application for the 2023-24 cycle gave schools a chance to unveil new questions for applicants in a changed recruiting and admissions landscape.
U-Va. President James E. Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom said the university would abide by the court ruling. “We also will do everything within our legal authority to recruit and admit a class of students who are diverse across every possible dimension and to make every student feel welcome and included here at UVA,” they wrote in a message to the university community.
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One question U-Va. asks through the Common App invites students to discuss their individual backgrounds, perspectives or experiences that would be a “source of strength” at the school — a prompt that could elicit answers related to race, ethnicity, upbringing, gender or other personal characteristics. The Supreme Court ruling allows colleges to weigh such written information in their review of an application, as long as they do not use a direct racial preference in their admissions decisions.
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Another question is new and optional: “If you have a personal or historic connection with UVA, and if you’d like to share how your experience of this connection has prepared you to contribute to the University, please share your thoughts here. Such relationships might include, but are not limited to, being a child of someone who graduated from or works for UVA, a descendant of ancestors who labored at UVA, or a participant in UVA programs.”
Explaining why that question was added, Ryan and Baucom wrote: “We hope this prompt will give all students — not only, for example, the children of our graduates, but also the descendants of ancestors who labored at the University, as well as those with other relationships — the chance to tell their unique stories. No one who assesses candidates for admission at UVA will have access to any self-disclosed ‘checkbox’ information regarding the personal or historic relations to UVA of the candidates they are considering. We believe this approach is consistent with our efforts to treat all our candidates as individuals, in light of their capacity to advance our mission, and in the fullness of their humanity.”
The U-Va. message did not say, however, that alumni connections would no longer be considered.
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“It looks to me like U-Va. is trying to have its cake and eat it too,” said James Murphy, deputy director of higher-education policy for Education Reform Now, an advocacy group that opposes legacy preferences. “They want credit for ending legacy preferences without actually ending them. This new optional question appears to do nothing to mitigate the extreme advantage legacies enjoy in the admissions process, since it openly invites legacies to self-identify.”
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The new question, Murphy said, would not reduce the legacy advantage. “If anything, it enhances the importance of being a legacy by giving students a chance to say why it matters where their parents went,” he said.
Virginia Tech, another public university, announced Friday that it will no longer consider legacy status in its admissions, joining others in recent weeks that have said the same, including Occidental College, Wesleyan University, and the universities of Maryland and Minnesota. About 12 percent of Virginia Tech’s applicants are alumni-related, the university said, but legacy students account for a larger share of the incoming class: 20 percent.
“This demonstrates that legacy students are applying with all the academic and extracurricular preparation that they need to compete for admission,” Juan Espinoza, associate vice provost for enrollment management, said in a statement.
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Another prominent Virginia public university, William & Mary, has said, in response to the questionnaire known as the Common Data Set, that it considers alumni relationships in its admission decisions. Private institutions including the University of Richmond and Washington & Lee University have said the same.
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“We haven’t made determinations yet about potential changes to current admission practices,” William & Mary spokesman Brian Whitson wrote in an email Wednesday.
In the District, American, Georgetown, George Washington and Howard universities have all reported through the Common Data Set that they consider alumni relationships in admissions. But Johns Hopkins University in Maryland does not, nor the University of Maryland Baltimore County nor Towson University, north of Baltimore.
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