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Harvard’s Incoming Freshman Class Is One-Third Legacy

Harvard’s Incoming Freshman Class Is One-Third Legacy

Harvard
Photo by: STRF/STAR MAX/IPx 2019 12/31/18 Lori Loughlin is seen in Los Angeles, CA. Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin Busted In College Admissions Scandal.

The recent celebrity scandal of Hollywood stars paying for their children to get into elite schools has highlighted the unfairness of the admission system for a number of schools.

“Harvard’s incoming class of 2021 is made up of over 29 percent legacy students, reports The Harvard Crimson. Last year’s applicants who had Harvard in their blood were three times more likely to get into the school than those without,” CNBC reported.


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Harvard isn’t the only school where this is the case. It’s the same situation at t Stanford. And, The New York Times reported that at five Ivy League schools, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown, along with 33 other colleges, there are actually more students from families in the top one percent than from the total bottom 60 percent. “In fact, across the top 30 schools in the U.S., one review from 2011 discussed in the Washington Post found that children of alumni ‘had a 45 percent greater chance of admission’ than other applicants,” CNBC reported.

This drastically affects potential students of color, as legacy students are most often wealthy and white. This group is already disproportionately represented at college.

By contrast, low-income students are severely underrepresented at elite institutions. “Nationally, 40 percent of students receive federal aid in the form of a Pell Grant, the Boston Globe reports, but they only account for an average of 16 percent of Ivy League undergraduates,” CNBC reported.