Amherst College Ends Legacy Admissions Favoring Children of Alumni

U.S.|Amherst College Ends Legacy Admissions Favoring Children of Alumni

Amherst College announced connected Wednesday that it would nary longer springiness the children of alumni a boost successful the admissions process, becoming 1 of the archetypal highly selective colleges successful the state to wantonness a signifier that has held backmost efforts to diversify the apical echelons of American higher education.

With the announcement, Amherst, a backstage wide arts schoolhouse successful Massachusetts, joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University and the California Institute of Technology successful the fistful of highly selective schools that person opted against having alleged bequest admissions programs.

“We privation to beryllium a person among higher acquisition institutions, successful policies and programs that enactment entree and equity,” said Matthew L. McGann, Amherst’s dean of admissions and fiscal aid.

Amherst besides announced that it would grow its fiscal assistance programme by astir $4 million, to $71 cardinal annually, making further allowances for families’ expenses and adding much grants for low-income students.

Amherst acknowledged that its heavy fiscal resources, including an endowment of astir $3.8 billion, allowed it to marque this decision. “We are doing what we’re doing due to the fact that we can,” Dr. Martin said, “and due to the fact that we should.”

Legacy preferences are commonly utilized astatine prestigious universities to springiness the children and grandchildren of alumni, who are often donors, a boost successful the admissions process. The apical universities person said that these admissions assistance promote donations that tin beryllium utilized to concern scholarships for others who request them.

But bequest programs person besides functioned arsenic a obstruction to diversifying assemblage campuses. Critics accidental they thin to springiness achromatic oregon wealthier students an unfair advantage, yet entrenching radical and socioeconomic inequities.

Recent litigation opened a model into however bequest preferences person affected admissions astatine Harvard, 1 of the astir selective schools successful the country. A survey presented arsenic grounds successful a suit implicit affirmative enactment recovered that students of alumni had a stark advantage: Over six admittance cycles, Harvard admitted bequest applicants astatine a complaint of 34 percent — 5.7 times higher than for applicants with nary household transportation to the school.

About 11 percent of the students admitted to Amherst successful caller years person been children of radical who graduated from the college. Still, the schoolhouse has been lauded for its efforts to summation diversity.

Amherst’s admissions process is need-blind, and the assemblage stopped offering loans arsenic portion of its fiscal assistance packages successful 2007, switching to grants instead. According to Amherst, astir members of this year’s freshman people are students of color, and 18 percent are first-generation assemblage students.

“We privation to make arsenic overmuch accidental for arsenic galore academically talented young radical arsenic possible, careless of fiscal inheritance oregon bequest status,” Biddy Martin, the president of Amherst College, said successful a statement.