California Governor Gavin Newsom banned legacy and donor preferences in private California university admissions by signing Assembly Bill 1780 into law on Sept. 30. At the 5Cs, this change primarily affects Harvey Mudd College and Claremont McKenna College .
The law, which goes into effect starting with the 2025-2026 admissions cycle, intends to “stop the practice of legacy and donor admissions and protect students as they pursue their higher education.”
CMC and Mudd were two of the five California colleges that gave preferential treatment to an applicant based on their relationship to donors or alumni in the 2023-2024 academic year, according to a 2024 report by the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities (AICCU) on admissions preferences.
CMC and HMC each admitted 15 applicants with these affiliations. Out of those 15 students, 11 enrolled at each college, meaning that 3.4 percent and 4.9 percent of students in the classes of 2027 at CMC and HMC respectively had a legacy or donor connection.
One of these students, Aidan Deshong HM ’28 has a father and brother who are Mudd alumni.
“I presume Mudd felt I was qualified beyond my legacy status because I got some merit aid,” Deshong said. “But I suspect that the bar was lower for me because that’s the idea in general. If you have legacy, the bar’s a little bit lower and admission rates start to be a little higher.”
Pomona College, Pitzer College and Scripps College were listed in the AICCU 2024 report as colleges that did not give preferential treatment to applicants with legacy or donor affiliations.
In an email to TSL, Pitzer Vice President of Admission and Financial Aid Yvonne Berumen said that Pitzer officially ended legacy admissions in August 2023 and donor preferences in August 2024, adding that they were never a significant factor in admissions.
“We typically received fewer than 100 legacy applications each year and admitted only a small portion as these applicants had to be just as competitive as other admitted students,” Berumen said.
According to Berumen, after reviewing three years of data, the Pitzer admissions office found legacy applicants to be equally as qualified as the overall applicant pool and attendance yielding at much higher rates due to their connection to the college.
“Although some of this advantage may be lost with the change, we are confident that legacy applicants will continue to be strong candidates and will be admitted at similar rates,” Berunem said in her email.
CMC is the only Claremont College that has considered legacy status or donor relation in admission practices since 2019, enrolling classes with 4 to 7 percent of students meeting this criterion over the past five years. The 2023-2024 academic year was the first time HMC reported the admission of donor or alumni-related students.
Though Scripps does not account for these affiliations in its acceptance process, Evelyn Cantwell SC ’28, whose mother and grandmother are both Scripps alumni, said that being a legacy student influenced her decision to apply to Scripps from childhood.
“The values that I grew up with that [my family] learned from the Claremont Colleges were woven into my life,” Cantwell said. “When it came time for me to apply to schools, these were the schools that had the mottos and the beliefs and the communities that I had learned to love growing up with.”
On the other hand, Alex Maelor-Jones PO ’28, whose mother and brother are Pomona alumni, shared that being a legacy student almost dissuaded him from applying to Pomona.
“I did not want to benefit from the legacy admissions system as a whole,” Maelor-Jones said. “So knowing that Pomona doesn’t consider legacy actually made me more inclined to come here because I didn’t have that factor weighing upon my decision.”
When asked about legacy preferences in admissions, Deshong said that he was in favor of ending the practice.
“Just because your parents went to a college doesn’t mean you deserve a lower bar to get into that college,” Deshong said. “Particularly because if your parents went to that college, you’re probably a little more privileged than the average applicant. It’s the reverse of the equity that the colleges might be actively trying to promote.”
Cantwell said that despite the percentage of legacy admissions decreasing, she felt the new decision would open up more space for everyone.
“I think it’s an important step in leveling the playing field for underprivileged students applying to college,” Cantwell said. “And if the experience of being a legacy influences anyone as much as it did me, given the ideals and the education that were passed down, it shouldn’t impact students too negatively.”
CMC’s office of admissions declined to comment, while Scripps and Harvey Mudd’s offices of admissions did not respond to an inquiry from TSL.
Facebook Comments