Students Split on Legacy Admissions; Yale Dean on Protecting Legacy and Test Requirements

Pod and Man at Yale

The Buckley Institute is pleased to release the newest of episode of Pod and Man at Yale. In the most recent episode, Arav Dalwani ’26 and Sabrina Guo ’27 debate legacy admissions, whether it should exist and whether they would want their own kids to benefit:

• Dalwani ’26: “If I’m someone that’s spent 4 years studying at Yale, I’d also like to have some sense of reciprocity where the college or the school is treating me like I’m a part of the community.”
• Guo ’27: “I think most of my friends would say, ‘yes, let’s get rid of legacy admissions… it’s the right thing to do, morally.’”
• Dalwani ’26: “The way an admissions officer gives preference to someone on the basis of race is very different from giving someone preference based on whether their parents went to a school.”
• Guo ’27: “If these two kids are at par, I just wouldn’t want legacy to be the drive over factor of yes, let’s accept that applicant.”
• Dalwani ’26: “If it’s a legacy versus just some other standard, nonlegacy … if both applicants have the same score… then I think legacy can be sort of the push factor as to whether that student should be admitted.”

Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan ’03 joined the podcast to present Yale’s defense of legacy admissions and explain Yale’s reinstated test requirement for applicants:

• Quinlan ’03: “There is a lot of talk about legacy admissions being an impediment to diversifying student bodies but our experience at Yale is not that.”
• Quinlan ’03: “And once we get into the nineties and the two-thousands, which of course was when I was at Yale, we’re talking about a radically diversifying student body. And now would be the time that we would no longer be able to consider legacy? Once we have a much more diverse alumni body?”
• Quinlan ’03: “Students without test scores were putting themselves at a disadvantage in our process, particularly students from diverse backgrounds, high schools that we had never seen applications from.”

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