July 03, 2004
End Legacy Admissions at Harvard
Dear President Summers:
At this year's Commencement exercises, you talked at length about the widening inequality gap in the United States and mentioned a number of initiatives Harvard is taking to address the problem. You also said that the college admissions process is trying to put each student's achievements in the context of his or her "background and the circumstances under which credentials have been achieved," adding that private SAT prep courses are among "the least economically diverse in America." Despite these pronouncements, Harvard College continues to defend its admissions policy of giving applications from children of alumni an "additional look."
Immediately before your speech, Robert G. Stone Jr., chair of the Committee on University Resources, read off the impressive fundraising achievements of Harvard reunion classes. He drew attention to the fact that two college class reunion chairs had the same last name and said that this was the kind of tradition we would like to maintain at Harvard. His proclamation was met with applause from some members of the audience, including briefly from you.
It is wonderful to have successive generations of the same family attend Harvard and then commit considerable time and effort to the university. Their contributions, though, would be even more impressive without the fact that children of alumni get "an ever so slight tip." This "tradition" stands in striking contrast to the university's commitment to educational equality. In the words of The Economist magazine, it is a "helping hand for those who least need it."
With your admirable effort to address the problem of educational inequality, you are sending a strong message that "Harvard is - really and truly - an option for exceptionally talented students whatever their financial means." It is, however, diluted by the conflicting message that children of alumni receive that additional look.
Coming from well-educated and relatively wealthy parents, our (future) children will already have an enormous advantage in the college admissions process. Should they ever decide to apply to and be accepted at Harvard, we would not want them to have any doubt in their minds that it is because of their abilities and future potential - not because their parents are Harvard alumni.
We urge Harvard to end its policy of favoring children of alumni in the college admissions process.
Sincerely,
Gernot Wagner '02
Siripanth Nippita '00
Avik Chatterjee '02
Kimberly L. Collins '02
Rohit Goel '02
Daniel B. Giffin '99
James Grimmelmann '99
Rita Hamad '03
Michael D. Hartl '96
Myung H. Joh '02
Jonathan G. Koomey '84
John L. Larew '91
Darryl Li '01
Tse Wei Lim '02
Erika Lundquist '99
Adam Marlowe '02
Chris Meserole '02
Nicholas Murphy '02
Zuzanna Olszewska '01
Marisa Perez '99
Michael Prokosch '70
Brian Questad '00/'01
Sanjay Reddy '91, A.M. '95, Ph.D. '00
Dianne Reis '93
Lori Rifkin '00
Travis Schedler '02
Dale Shuger '00
Caroline Stanculescu '00
Mary Ann Walter '00
Calvin C. Wei '00
Add your name to this list!
Further readings:
"A Hereditary Perk the Founding Fathers Failed to Anticipate" by Adam Liptak, New York Times, January 15, 2008.
"The New College Try" by Jerome Karabel, Op-ed, New York Times, September 24, 2007.
"The Old College Try - Why do alumni give to universities? To get their kids in, of course," Slate (July 6, 2007).
"Poison Ivy: Not so much palaces of learning as bastions of privilege and hypocrisy," The Economist (September 21, 2006).
The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates by Daniel Golden, Crown (September 5, 2006).
"Inequality and the American Dream," The Economist (June 15, 2006).
The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by Jerome Karabel, Houghton Mifflin (October 25, 2005). Reviews of The Chosen: "Ivory Tower Intrigues: The pseudo-meritocracy of the Ivy League" by James Traub, Slate (October 24, 2005); "Merit in Motion," The Economist (Novemer 26, 2005).
"Getting In: The social logic of Ivy League admissions" by Malcom Gladwell, The New Yorker (October 10, 2005).
Equity And Excellence In American Higher Education by by William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin, University of Virginia Press (April 15, 2005); "A Thumb on the Scale: The case for socioeconomic affirmative action," Harvard Magazine (May-June 2005), excerpts of chapter seven of the book.
"Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend," The Economist (January 1, 2005); Letter to the editor by William Fitzsimmons, Harvard College Dean of Admissions, in response to the article (January 20, 2005).
"The Legacy of Legacies" by Jerome Karabel, Op-Ed, The New York Times (September 13, 2004).
"Bush, a Yale Legacy, Says Colleges Should Not Give Preference to Children of Alumni," The New York Times (August 7, 2004).
"Herkunft bestimmt Karrierechancen [German: Birth determines career prospects]," Die Presse (August 4, 2004).
"College Admissions and Legacies," Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio (January 15, 2004).
"The curse of nepotism," The Economist (January 8, 2004).
"The Senate and Alumni Admissions" by Josh Gerstein, Op-Ed, New York Sun (November 6, 2003).
"How Affirmative Action Helped George W." by Michael Kinsley, Time (January 21, 2003).
"Family Ties: Preference for Alumni Children In College Admission Draws Fire" by Daniel Golden, The Wall Street Journal (January 15, 2003).
"Legacies in Black and White: The Racial Composition of the Legacy Pool" by Cameron Howell and Sarah E. Turner, NBER Working Paper No. w9448 (January 2003).
"A Second Look: Attacking Legacy Preference" by Jesse Shapiro, Perspective (November 1997).
"Why Are Droves of Unqualified, Unprepared Kids Getting into Our Top Colleges? Because Their Dads Are Alumni" by John Larew, Washington Monthly (June 1991): p. 10-14.
Posted by Gernot Wagner on Saturday, July 03, 2004. 
Comments
This open letter was published in the September-October 2004 edition of Harvard Magazine, Harvard's alumni magazine. It is the third-to-last letter on that web page.
Comment posted by 
Gernot Wagner, August 16, 2005 7:12 PM.
I sent the letter to most members of the Board of Overseers. Richard Melvoin, one of its members, responded. Read my response to his email.
Comment posted by Gernot Wagner, August 16, 2005 7:15 PM.