The Easiest Reform for College Admissions
In the world of college admissions, few choices about how to weigh applicants are simple. How much weight should schools give to applicants’ athletic performance, to standardized-test scores, to the need for a diverse student body, to the donations of wealthy benefactors? These are all complicated questions. But Johns Hopkins University just presented the higher-education world with at least one easy decision: Legacy admissions need to go.
a decision, reached in 2014 but kept secret until recently, to stop giving an admissions boost to applicants who have a parent who attended Johns Hopkins. Giving weight to legacy status takes attention away from consideration of an applicant’s accomplishments, raw talent, leadership—despite the widespread and often-unquestioned assumption that it will. (The students who might have been admitted if not for legacy preferences are potential donors, too.)
