By Carolyn Jones, CalMatters
When California banned private colleges from favoring the children of donors and alumni in the admissions process, it intended to help level the playing field for prospective students after the Supreme Court ended affirmative action.
But some college counselors say the ban probably won’t make much difference.
“It’s not going to have as big an impact as people think it will. It’s more symbolic,” said Julio Mata, president of the Western Association for College Admission Counseling. “It might open up a few spots for regular students, but it won’t completely change the landscape.”
The new law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, prohibits California’s private colleges from giving admissions preference to students who have alumni or donor connections. The University of California banned the practice 25 years ago.
Assemblymember Phil Ting, a Democrat from San Francisco who co-authored the bill, said the new law will make the college admissions process “more fair and equitable.”
“Legacy admissions helps the students who least need it,” Ting said. “This country is supposed to be a meritocracy. Students who already have every advantage should not be taking spots away from students who’ve worked extra hard to get there.”
Inspired by Varsity Blues scandal
The law follows a similar bill from Ting that was set to expire this year. That law required California’s private colleges to publicly report how many legacy students they admitted, but it didn’t ban the practice.
Ting’s original bill was inspired by the Varsity Blues scandal that erupted in 2019, in which wealthy parents bribed consultants or coaches to get their children into elite colleges. In California, Stanford, USC, UC Berkeley and UCLA were all implicated.
Under the new law, which goes into effect September 2025, the state attorney general can take legal action against colleges that don’t comply, but at one point it would have gone a step further. In the original version, the bill called for hefty financial penalties for schools that violated the ban, but the bill’s sponsors dropped that provision after private colleges complained and it appeared the bill wouldn’t pass. While the law isn’t perfect, it’s an important step toward leveling the playing field, Ting said.
“My hope is that the institutions follow the law. Not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law,” Ting said.
But limited penalties and the fact that colleges self-report their data make the law much less effective, counselors said. Also, the admissions process at selective private universities is already so opaque and nuanced that connections often have limited pull, Mata and others said. University of Southern California, for example, gets 80,000 applications a year and admits an estimated 8,200. Even if every spot went to a child of an alumni or donor, there wouldn’t be enough spots for everyone.
“‘Legacy’ was never a golden ticket,” Mata said. “It’s just one factor in admissions. And not every alumni or donor is going to be viewed with the same weight. Some are more notable than others.”
And it’s not clear whether colleges will comply. Some might be willing to risk a lawsuit or potentially lose state-provided financial aid in order to admit whomever they want. Many colleges said that legacy admissions were a crucial part of their fundraising efforts. When asked if Stanford plans to comply with the new law, a spokesperson said, “The legislation does not take effect until September 2025. During that time, Stanford will be continuing to review its admissions policies.”
Families of graduating students at a graduation commencement ceremony at Stanford University in Palo Alto on June 13, 2021.Harika Maddala for CalMatters
Colleges and counselors said they hadn’t yet heard pushback from wealthy parents.
Stanford law professor Rick Banks said the new law is well intended, as legacy admissions overwhelmingly favor white and affluent students, but he still opposes it.
“Despite the unfairness of legacy preferences, private universities should be permitted to rely on them, as they are absolutely central to the fund-raising model on which universities rely,” Banks, a founder of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice, said in an interview on Stanford’s website.
When asked how he thought private colleges should respond to the law, he said they probably shouldn’t bother.
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