A simple way to equalize the Ivies? Give others the legacy SAT bonus

What if middle-class and low-income students got the same sort of edge in college admissions that children of alumni often receive?

A new paper from a team of prominent economists said that a simple strategy — an SAT “bonus” of 64 to 160 points, like that effectively seen in legacy admissions — would go a long way toward decreasing economic segregation in U.S. higher education and give a boost to social mobility through the generations.

The research adds to a continuing conversation about the “missing middle” on selective college campuses. It shows that relative to high-achieving affluent and low-income students, students with high test scores from the middle class — those from households earning between $25,000 and $111,000 per year — enroll in Ivy League-caliber institutions at lower rates.

For example, of American college students born between 1980 and 1982 who scored a 1400 out of 1600 on the SAT, 11% from households that made more than $111,000 per year enrolled at Ivy League-caliber colleges, compared with 5% from middle-class families and 7% from families that earned less than $25,000.

Three-quarters of affluent students with a 1080 on the SAT attended one of the 976 selective colleges included in the study, compared with just 51% of students from the lowest income bracket with the same score.

“You cannot explain the very high shares of kids from high-income families solely by saying they are the ones who have higher test scores,” said John Friedman, an author of the study and an economist at Brown University.

The proportion of middle-class students on Ivy League-caliber campuses could be increased to 38% from 28% simply by enrolling more of those who have the same high SAT scores as wealthy applicants, the research suggests. But because so few students at the very bottom of the income distribution score highly on standardized tests, the authors said, additional steps would be needed to significantly increase their presence on the “Ivy Plus” campuses that are the focus of the study: the eight Ivy League colleges plus the University of Chicago, Duke, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford.

Offering the equivalent of a 160-point SAT boost — the advantage given to legacy applicants by some elite colleges, according to previous research — would increase the low-income share of Ivy Plus students to 12% from 4%. The authors also propose giving a boost to middle-income students of between 64 and 128 SAT points on a sliding scale that reduces the bonus as family income goes up to $111,000.

Because the scale of these advantages is similar to those given to legacy applicants at some colleges, the paper suggests that socioeconomic integration across two- and four-year colleges is achievable, Friedman said. “This would take a lot of concentration and focus, but it is not something that is wholly beyond our capacity.”

The other authors are Raj Chetty of Harvard; Emmanuel Saez and Danny Yagan of the University of California, Berkeley; and Nicholas Turner of the Federal Reserve. The paper was peer-reviewed and will be published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The research is based on anonymous federal data linking parental tax returns to students. The SAT “bonus” scenario is far from a concrete policy proposal. It does not consider student qualifications other than standardized test scores and does not delve into how public policy might change to make college more affordable — a major issue in the Democratic presidential primary. Nor does it address how such a strategy of income-based affirmative action could affect university budgets. Colleges might have to recruit students who are currently not applying, then provide more financial aid. The authors present their system of income-based preferences as a counterfactual. In their model, they hold constant the total number of students at each college, the racial composition of the student body and the proportion of students on each campus from each state.

On race, the implication is that some white students with lower incomes and somewhat lower test scores would be admitted instead of some higher-income, higher-scoring whites. Lower-income black or Asian American students would similarly take the places of some higher-income black or Asian American students.

The study does not wade into the debate over whether the current racial makeup of elite colleges is fair. That is a subject the Supreme Court may take up as cases challenging race-based affirmative action at places like Harvard and the University of North Carolina wend their way through the federal court system.

The authors of the new paper do not state who should lose the seats others would gain. In reality, enrolling more low-income and middle-class students while holding constant the total number of spots could mean that some other currently favored groups — such as athletes, legacies or the children of donors, and black or Hispanic students — would be admitted in lower numbers.

Johns Hopkins, for example, has ended legacy admissions in order to admit students from a greater diversity of backgrounds.

The 6.2 million people included in the study are approaching 40 years old, but Friedman said the findings remain relevant, given the continued paucity of low-income students at highly selective colleges. At Ivy Plus institutions, there have been more students from families in the top 1% of earners than students from the entire bottom half of the income distribution.

And looking at alumni currently in their late 30s allowed the researchers to estimate the influence of colleges on long-term earnings. A previous study from the same team found that Ivy Plus colleges were particularly successful at propelling low-income students to the top 1% of earners. The authors argue that if these colleges enrolled more low-income and middle-class students, they could shore up their reputations as “ladders for upward mobility.”

“This ought to shame university leaders into doing better by disadvantaged and middle-class students,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a supporter of class-based affirmative action, who did not participate in the study.

Data collected by the plaintiffs in recent litigation against Harvard’s race-conscious admissions system revealed just how much of an advantage the children of alumni had.

Over six admission cycles, Harvard admitted legacy applicants at a rate of 34% — 5.7 times higher than for nonlegacy applicants, according to a study by Peter Arcidiacono, an economist at Duke and expert witness for the plaintiffs, working with two other academics. Christopher Hunt, a college essay consultant in Colorado, said he sympathized with efforts to give middle-class students the kind of advantage that legacies, athletes and others with connections had.

“Once these institutional priorities get met, there is a lot less room for meritocratic competition among other students, irrespective of income,” he said. “That sense of not having an advantage — and wanting an edge — no doubt contributed to last year’s college admissions scandal. Parents and students of all incomes are more aware than ever of the unfair nature of college admissions.”