Class Action, a student-driven advocacy group, just published a report by senior fellow James S. Murphy tracking legacy preferences across American colleges. The headline finding is good news. The detail underneath it is the part your student needs to understand.
The Trend Line and the Exception
Using federal data, Murphy found that nearly half of four-year colleges considered legacy status in 2015. By 2024, fewer than a quarter did. Johns Hopkins, Amherst, Wesleyan, and Pomona have all dropped it. Illinois banned it at its public universities, and California banned it at private colleges that accept state grant aid.
Now the exception. Among colleges that admit fewer than 25 percent of applicants, the report finds that 57 percent still give legacies a boost. The practice is disappearing from the schools where it barely mattered and holding on at the schools where it matters most.
What the Colleges Say Themselves
You don’t need an advocacy group’s framing to see this. The colleges’ own numbers make the point.
Princeton’s trustee committee reported in 2024 that about 30 percent of legacy applicants are admitted, when the overall admit rate was under 6 percent. The committee called the preference a tie-breaker that decides fewer than 30 admissions a year, and kept it.
At Georgetown, the interim provost told the faculty senate in 2025 that children of alumni were admitted at nearly three times the non-legacy rate and made up roughly a quarter of admitted students. By her own account, about a third of admitted legacies got in only after a second review and a legacy “tip.”
Stanford went further. When California’s law took effect, Stanford walked away from Cal Grants, at a cost it put at about $4 million a year, rather than stop considering legacy status.
What This Means If Your Student Is Not a Legacy
The published acceptance rate at a school that uses legacy preference is not your student’s acceptance rate. At Princeton, a slice of the admitted class comes from a pool admitted at roughly five times the overall rate. Take that slice out and the odds for everyone else drop further.
It also shows up in who gets in. A 2024 study in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal, analyzed roughly 686,000 applications to 11 highly selective colleges. South Asian American applicants had 49 percent lower odds of attending than white applicants with similar grades, scores, and activities. The authors identified legacy preference as one of two main drivers, because white applicants were far more likely to have it.
None of this means your student shouldn’t apply. It means the list has to be built on the real numbers, not the brochure numbers.
What This Means If Your Student Is a Legacy
Legacy status is not a strategy. Princeton’s own report says roughly 70 percent of legacy applicants are denied, and that the overwhelming majority of admitted legacies would have been admitted without the preference. Where the preference exists, it operates at the margin between applications that are already strong. It cannot rescue an application that gives the reader no reason to say yes.
What Your Student Can Control
Every college reports how it weighs alumni relationships in Section C7 of its Common Data Set, rated from Very Important to Not Considered. Have your student look it up for every school on the list. It takes ten minutes, and it tells you which admissions offices are playing on a tilted board.
Then put the energy where it belongs. Stats are the floor. When your student and a legacy are competing for the same handful of seats, the tie does not go to the applicant who reads like everyone else. It goes to the one who gave the reader a story worth fighting for in committee.
