Elite-College Admissions Were Built to Protect Privilege
At the very first Harvard College commencement ceremony, nearly 400 years ago, markers of exclusivity were front and center. The graduating class consisted of just nine students: no women, no people of color; only, in the words of a Boston historian, “young men of good hope.” The order in which they received their degrees was determined “not according to age, or scholarship, or the alpheber [sic], but according to the rank their families held in society.”
The freshman class was much less homogenous. According to a survey conducted by the student newspaper , more than half of the accepted students were nonwhite; more than half were women; more than half would receive financial aid once enrolled. But vestiges of the same exclusivity remained. Legacy applicants, predominantly white and wealthy, were admitted at five times the rate of
