12 reasons admissions offices don’t care about diversity
Almost every major American university today claims to value access to their institutions for underserved populations. But their rhetoric around diversity and helping lift students out of poverty is often incomplete or outright hypocritical. More than three dozen universities enroll more students from the top 1% than the bottom 60%. The biggest offenders are the most liberal voices promoting diversity like Brown, Princeton, and Harvard. Wealthy students with college-educated parents attending great high schools maintain overwhelming advantages in the admissions process.
Rather than US News top 50 universities, the campuses that do the best at enrolling and graduating first-generation, low-income, undocumented, urban, or rural students are the ones that get the least attention: the California State University System, the State and City Universities of New York, and less-prominent regional public universities in many states like Texas, Florida, and Ohio.
Consider that the Cal State system graduates more than eight times as many students compared with the entire Ivy League, at a fraction of the cost. Stanford educates a quarter of the number of undergraduate studies as Cal State Polytechnic, yet their endowment is 270 times Cal State’s. Arizona State enrolls three times more low-income Pell Grant recipients than the eight Ivy League universities combined.
If you’re like me and wonder whether universities are full of crap when they claim to value diversity and college access, here are twelve indicators that suggest they care more about educating the affluent elite rather than giving students from varied backgrounds a chance at receiving a high quality education.
1. They practice legacy admissions
This is a no-brainer. Students with parents who received degrees from any college are overwhelmingly more likely to earn their college degrees compared with first-generation college students. Many universities provide students with an added boost if their parents or other relatives also earned their degree. Jacques Steinberg wrote in the Gatekeepers that legacy admission confers a more than 100 point SAT advantage. More than one-third of Harvard’s class of 2022 gained an advantage through legacy. When Harvard’s 2025 admissions rate is 3.4%, it makes you wonder how many unhooked students gain admission. The state of Colorado has moved in the right direction by recently outlawing legacy considerations.
2. Less than 20% of their student body comes from a first-generation college family
A convenient indicator for whether a university is sincerely committed to college access is to assess how many of their students come from non-college-educated families. It’s often hard to find this data. Unsurprisingly, elite universities are not proud of the reality that their campuses largely serve affluent families.
They promote their efforts to enroll Hispanic or black students without mentioning that many of them come from college-educated families or attended resource-rich high schools. Brown is the perfect example of a university that totes its woke credentials yet enrolls less than 15% of its students from first-generation families. They’ve even redefined what first-generation means away from neither parent having a degree to whether you “feel” like you are first-generation. Only Harvard enrolled more than 20% of their students as first-generation for the Class of 2024. But since a third of their class is legacy, if you’re neither legacy nor first-gen, your chances of gaining admission are very low.
3. They enroll less than 10% of their students through transfer admissions
One of the most straightforward tools available to universities to increase diversity and college access is to enroll more transfer students, especially from community colleges. A comprehensive report by the Jack Cook Kent foundation called Persistence found that community college students are much more likely to come from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. They tend to be first-generation college students and non-traditional students like older adults and military veterans.
Universities choose rather to enroll a higher proportion of transfers or not. A higher ratio of transfers on campus suggest a sincere commitment to college access and diversity.
Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Stanford admit around 1 percent of their transfer applicants compared with more than five times the admissions rate for first-time freshmen. MIT, Yale, Amherst, and Claremont McKenna accept fewer than two dozen transfers each year. Williams, America’s top liberal arts college, admitted 11 transfers, whereas Cal Tech accepted only three transfer applicants in 2019.
In contrast, Cornell, Brown, Pennsylvania, Columbia, and U Chicago admit transfers at similar rates to first-time freshmen. USC enrolls a third of their students through transfer. Still, transfers to elite universities are twice as likely to come from another four-year university than a community college. Their preferences reflect society’s bias toward four-year degrees while shunning local colleges.
Public universities like UT-Austin, the UC system, Florida, and Maryland enroll a more balanced class of first-time freshmen and transfers. If you’re a prospective transfer, don’t even bother applying to most elite private universities.
4. Neglecting to publish their detailed admissions statistics broken
One of the most annoying aspects of the college search is that you rarely know what it takes to gain admission. But it is much easier to see if you don’t even have a chance if universities are transparent with their data. Universities publish the bare minimum like their overall acceptance rate, average ACT or the range of SAT scores, and perhaps their early decision statistics. As STEM and business majors become more popular and substantially more competitive, which major you choose makes a big difference for your admissions chances.
Carnegie Mellon is a leader in transparency in disaggregating their data based on your major. I also appreciate that MIT breaks down their SAT application numbers and admissions offers based on your score range. That helps us learn that basically nobody gains admission with less than a 700 on the SAT Math.
5. Early Decision
Universities claim that early decision promotes college access when in reality, it helps their accountants and enrollment managers better predict who will arrive on campus and which students will pay full price. Some universities have early decision admissions rates that are three times higher than regular decision. Multiple studies suggest applying ED confers a 100 point SAT advantage.
That means legacy early decision applicants receive a double bonus. Submitting an early decision application requires beginning the application process over the summer, and students in low-income or first generation households are less likely to begin their applications early. The takeaway is don’t believe universities who practice early decision while also claiming to have a genuine commitment to diversity.
6. Required recommendation letters
Second only to interviews, recommendation letters are the biggest waste of time for everyone: students, teachers, counselors, admissions officials. Most universities say they don’t make a difference for most students most of the time. At least a thousand universities allow for recommendation letters. The students who benefit most from recommendation letter requirements are savvy about the application process and who attend schools with low student-to-faculty ratios, usually private schools.
Some public schools have more than 900 students per counselor, while many private schools employ a small army of college advisors. Teachers and counselors who are paid higher and have fewer students to deal can write much better letters. Research also finds that longer letters correlate with higher admissions chances. One simple way to increase college access and recruit diverse students is to remove recommendation letter requirements.
7. Their enrollment class sizes have remained largely the same for decades
One of the biggest drivers of the college admissions madness is that incoming class sizes have remained largely the same despite application numbers skyrocketing. Even during COVID, when many universities turned to virtual learning, admissions spaces for Fall 2021 applicants didn’t change much. Harvard has enrolled around 1,700 students for the past century. I don’t buy it when universities say they can’t increase their enrollment spaces. Maintaining their luxury brands through artificial scarcity comes at the direct expense of accessibility and diversity recruitment. Rice University recently announced a 25% increase over the next few years, which is a step in the right direction.
8. Interviews
Similar to recommendation letters, interviews privilege the savviest applicants from professional families and attend resource-rich high schools. In theory, universities claim that interviews help them connect with underserved communities, but in practice, it’s yet another element that clever students can game. Families hire interview preparation specialists just like for test prep and essays. For schools where interviews are optional, like MIT, students are often admitted at much higher rates than those who opt out of interviews. The students least prepared or likely to know their importance or option are those from rural backgrounds and other marginalized communities.
9. Excessive essay requirements
Any university that admits more than 75% of its students doesn’t need to have essays at all. They can accept and enroll their class through academics alone. Research suggests that essay requirements deter low-income and first-generation students from applying. Non-selective Houston Baptist actually advertises that they don’t require essays because they know it will increase their application numbers. Decreasing barriers for applying will increase college access and produce more application fees for universities.
10. Letters of continued interest
I will do an entire post about these because they’re one of the most insidious and obnoxious aspects of the admissions madness. Letters of continued interest, which are usually optional, give students who are deferred or placed on the waitlist a supposedly new opportunity to advocate for their candidacy. However, first-generation college students who don’t have access to counseling resources may not understand why they need to submit another essay. Since almost all students get denied from the waitlist or deferral piles anyway, they’re a major waste of time. They serve only to benefit the students who will jump over whatever hoops universities throw their way.
11. Difficult to renew scholarships after freshman year
Although it is less of a problem nowadays, universities often offer scholarships and grants that require GPA minimums, participation in student organizations, and/or a lot of paperwork to renew. A lack of transparency in financial aid makes it difficult for families to make an informed decision on the total potential cost of an education. Less selective universities, in particular, offer generous scholarships to high school seniors to lure them into enrolling. Then they make it more difficult to renew those scholarships by requiring GPAs sometimes as high as a 3.8. For low-income students that are less likely to return for sophomore year or graduate on time, having scholarships with strings attached decreases access.
12. Not participating in nationwide application portals like Common or Coalition Application
One of the most frustrating aspects of American college admissions is the many application portals. Most other countries like the UK, Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea have a single portal that allows students to apply to most of their nation’s universities. MIT, Georgetown, University of Georgia are a few examples of universities that do not participate in the Common or Coalition Application. Having unique portals deters students in non-college-going communities from applying. Universities with a sincere commitment to diversity recruitment would join the two major portals, even though they’re also flawed and imperfect, the Common and Coalition applications.
