Stanford To Continue Legacy Admissions And Withdraw From Cal Grants
Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1780 into law, prohibiting the state's independent universities from providing a legacy or donor preference in admissions to their applicants. The prohibition is set to go into effect in September.
Stanford has considered alumni and donor status for academically qualified students in the past, and it will continue to do so according to updated admissions criteria the university announced last week. Those criteria also include a reinstatement of a standardized testing requirement for the class entering Stanford in fall 2026.
When California enacted AB 1780, it became the fifth state to pass some type of ban against colleges giving an advantage to the relatives of alumni or institutional donors and the second state to do so for private institutions. In August of last year, Illinois became the fourth state to pass a legacy admission prohibition, following Maryland, which enacted a legacy admission ban last April that applies to both public and private colleges. Colorado passed its ban in 2021, and Virginia did so last year.
Introduced by California Assembly member Phil Ting, the bill went through significant revisions. Originally, it would have prohibited universities from receiving funds through the Cal Grant financial aid program if they gave preferential admissions treatment to applicants with donor or alumni connections. That provision was later amended so that a school that extended a legacy or donor preference would have faced a civil fine equal to the amount of Cal Grants it received in the prior year.
But that penalty was also removed from the bill before its final passage. Now, institutions simply must annually report to the legislature and the California Department of Justice whether they are complying with or violating the bill's provisions, and if in violation, also report the admission rates of students receiving a legacy or donor 'bump' compared to the remainder of the student body.
To make up for the lost state aid, Stanford will be 'replacing state-funded student financial aid with university funding, keeping our students' financial support whole,' wrote Brad Howard, associate vice president of University communications, in an email to The Stanford Daily . Howard went on to say there are 'important issues on which there are many perspectives" about legacy preferences, adding that the University will conduct 'continued study and analysis' of the matter.
Although California's public colleges and universities do not consider family or donor connections in their admission processes, reports submitted to the state legislature showed that several private California colleges and universities were giving preferential treatment to applicants related to graduates and donors at the time AB 1780 was passed.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the University of Southern California had the most legacy admits of any of the state's private universities, admitting 1,791 students in that category in its 2022 entering class, while Stanford had 287, equaling 13.8% of its new admits that year. The Times also reported that Stanford students received about $3.2 million in Cal Grant support that year, putting an approximate price tag on what the university's decision to replace that funding might cost it.
Stanford's decision was criticized by Ryan Cieslikowski, a Stanford alum who now works as a lead organizer for Class Action, a student advocacy group that helped spearhead efforts in support of California's legacy ban last year.
Arguing that the Trump administration was exploiting America's mistrust of elite higher education for political purposes, Cieslikowski told me, "amid federal attacks, universities should be striving to demonstrate that they serve the public interest. Stanford's decision to continue legacy admissions does the opposite — all to preserve advantages for wealthy alumni and donor's children."
The fairness of legacy admission preferences has been questioned for years, resulting in several prominent colleges electing to discontinue them. However, campaigns against the practice have been intensified ever since the Supreme Court found race-conscious admissions to be unconstitutional in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.
That ruling brought more scrutiny to the racial implications of the legacy advantages extended by highly selective institutions. For example, the percentage of the freshmen class admitted at several elite colleges via the legacy route exceeds the percentage of entering freshmen who are Black, according to a report by Education Reform Now. At many of these colleges, three-quarters or more of the legacy applicants receiving acceptances are white.
The debate over the racial dimensions of college admissions is sure to resume given yesterday's news that, following instructions from President Trump, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has directed the National Center for Education Statistics to begin collecting data disaggregated by race and sex for institutions' applicant pools, admitted cohorts, and enrolled cohorts at the undergraduate level and for specific graduate and professional programs. In the past, only the racial breakdown of enrolled students, not applicants or admittees, was reported.
According to the Education Department, the 'new requirements will enable the American public to assess whether schools are passing over the most qualified students in favor of others based on their race.' Apparently, questions about whether colleges are passing over more qualified students to admit the relatives of their alumni or big donors will remain unanswered..
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