Nearly 600 colleges consider an applicant’s legacy status during their admissions process, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education.
That’s almost a third of the more than 1,900 federally funded colleges that reported whether or not they gave preference to legacies, or the children or relatives of alumni, in the 2022-23 academic year — the first time institutions were asked to provide data on the practice. Colleges with open-admissions policies were not included in the data.
And while highly selective colleges have come under renewed scrutiny for their use of legacy admissions since the Supreme Court struck down the consideration of applicants’ race, the new data show the practice exists far beyond the Ivy League.
In fact, about two-thirds of the 578 colleges with legacy admissions accepted 50 percent or more of applicants in the fall of 2022; among that group were 30 institutions that accepted everyone who applied. Just 58 institutions on this list accepted fewer than one in four students.
Just over 100 colleges that consider legacy status are special-focus institutions, most of which are very small religious colleges. Almost 17 percent of all the colleges with legacy admissions had fewer than 100 applicants in the fall of 2022. A tiny slice of this group had no applicants at all.
In the months since the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-conscious admissions (and since the data were reported to the Education Department), institutions such as Carleton and Occidental Colleges, and Virginia Tech and Wesleyan Universities have dropped legacy admissions.
Explore which colleges consider legacy status, how many applications they receive, and what their admissions rate is in the table below:
