Legacy Admissions After the Affirmative Action Ruling: Which U.S. States and Colleges Have Ended Them

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended race-conscious admissions in 2023, the debate over fairness in selective college admissions has shifted to another long-standing practice: legacy preferences, the extra consideration some colleges give to the children and relatives of alumni (and, at some schools, of donors). This guide explains where things stand as of November 2026: what the Court decided, which states have banned legacy admissions, which well-known colleges have dropped them, how California’s law is working in practice, and how applicants, including international students, can find out whether a college still uses them.

What the Supreme Court decided in 2023

On June 29, 2023, in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (decided together with the University of North Carolina case), the Supreme Court held that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and UNC violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The ruling ended the use of race as a factor in admissions at public and private colleges that receive federal funds. Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion added that nothing in it prohibits universities from considering “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life,” as long as the applicant is treated as an individual and not on the basis of race (Supreme Court opinion, No. 20-1199).

The decision did not address legacy preferences. But because legacy applicants at many selective colleges are disproportionately white and wealthy, critics argued that keeping legacy preferences while ending race-conscious admissions would tilt the process further. Legislatures and colleges began acting soon afterward.

How common legacy preferences still are

The most complete count comes from Education Reform Now, which analyzes Department of Education (IPEDS) data. Its winter 2025 brief, Legacy Admissions in 2025, found (Education Reform Now, Future of Fair Admissions Issue Brief 5):

420 four-year colleges still considered legacy status, or 24% of four-year institutions, down from 29% in 2022 and 49% in 2015.
Since 2015, 452 colleges had stopped considering legacy status; 92 of them stopped after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling. About 86% of the colleges that dropped the practice did so voluntarily and 14% because a state law required it.
Only 11% of public colleges (62 institutions) still considered legacy status, and in 24 states no public college did. Among private colleges, 30% (358) still did.
Legacy preferences remain most common at the wealthiest and most selective colleges, where more than half still give an advantage to relatives of alumni.

States that have banned legacy admissions

As of November 2026, five states restrict legacy preferences by law. Four of them acted in 2024, the first year after the Supreme Court ruling (Education Reform Now; College Transitions, October 2026):

State	Year enacted	Who is covered
Colorado	2021 (first state)	Public colleges and universities
Virginia	2024 (HB 48, effective July 1, 2024)	Public colleges and universities
Maryland	2024 (effective July 1, 2024)	Public and private colleges
Illinois	2024	Public colleges and universities
California	2024 (AB 1780, effective September 1, 2025)	Private nonprofit colleges; the University of California has not used legacy preferences since 1998

Bills to extend bans to private colleges have been introduced in other states, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Minnesota, and a bipartisan federal bill has been proposed in Congress (New America); College Transitions’ October 2026 review still lists only the five states above.

California’s law: how it works and how Stanford and USC responded

Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1780, by Assemblymember Phil Ting, on September 30, 2024. It bars private nonprofit colleges in California from giving admissions preference based on an applicant’s family ties to alumni or donors and requires private colleges to report annually on their compliance. “In California, everyone should be able to get ahead through merit, skill, and hard work,” Newsom said (Office of the Governor, September 30, 2024).

Effective date: September 1, 2025, so the 2025–26 application cycle (students entering in fall 2026) was the first one covered (Daily Trojan).
Who it applies to: private nonprofit colleges that take part in state-funded student aid such as the Cal Grant (Higher Ed Dive).
Enforcement: the final law has no fines. A college that still gives legacy or donor preferences must report demographic data on its admitted students and compare admission rates for applicants with and without those ties, and the California Department of Justice lists violating colleges on its website. Ting’s original version would have cut violators off from Cal Grants, but that penalty was removed before passage (Higher Ed Dive). The first annual compliance reports were due June 30, 2026.

The two largest private universities in the state went different ways:

Stanford University announced in August 2025 that it would continue to consider applicants’ ties to alumni and donors for its fall 2026 undergraduate class and would instead stop accepting state student aid funds, covering the difference with its own scholarships. Current recipients of state aid were told their aid would not change. In fall 2023, 13.6% of Stanford’s admitted undergraduates had ties to alumni or donors (Higher Ed Dive, August 13, 2025).
University of Southern California said it would “do so in compliance with the law.” In USC’s admission profile for the Class of 2028, 14% of first-year admits and 30% of transfer admits were listed as legacy students (Daily Trojan, October 1, 2024).

Colleges that have dropped legacy preferences on their own

Several well-known private colleges ended legacy preferences without a state mandate, some before the Supreme Court ruling and several in the summer of 2023 right after it (College Transitions, October 2026):

Johns Hopkins University began phasing out legacy preferences around 2014 and announced the change publicly in January 2020. Legacies fell from 12.5% of first-year students in 2009 to 3.5% in 2019, while the Pell Grant–eligible share of the entering class rose from 12.8% in 2013 to more than 24% in fall 2025.
Amherst College ended legacy preferences in October 2021. Legacies had been about 11% of each class; the Class of 2027 was about 6% legacy.
Wesleyan University (July 2023), Occidental College (July 2023), Virginia Tech (July 2023) and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (July 2023) all dropped legacy preferences within weeks of the ruling.

Has ending legacy preferences made classes more diverse? The evidence is limited. Johns Hopkins, the college with the longest track record, has reported large gains in low-income and first-generation students, but it also expanded financial aid over the same period, and most colleges that dropped legacy in 2023 have not yet published data for classes admitted under the new policy. Ending legacy preferences frees a relatively small number of seats; colleges that have increased socioeconomic diversity have usually paired it with more financial aid and targeted recruitment.

How to check whether a college uses legacy preferences

Look up the college’s Common Data Set (CDS). Most U.S. colleges post a CDS each year on their institutional research website. Section C7 rates each admission factor, including “Alumni/ae relation,” as Very Important, Important, Considered or Not Considered. Search for “[college name] Common Data Set” and check the latest year.
Read the admissions office’s own policy page or FAQ. Colleges that have ended the practice usually say so; others describe legacy as “one factor among many” in a holistic review.
Check the state. Public universities in Colorado, Virginia, Maryland and Illinois, all private colleges in Maryland, and California private nonprofits that take state aid are barred from using legacy preferences (with Stanford’s opt-out of state aid as the notable exception).
Remember that “legacy” can include more than parents. Some colleges count grandparents or siblings; donor ties are a separate factor at some schools.

What this means for international students

Legacy rules apply to everyone. Colleges that consider legacy status do so for domestic and international applicants alike, and colleges that have ended it have ended it for all applicants. Few international applicants have parents who graduated from the same U.S. college, so in practice a legacy preference mostly affects how many seats remain for everyone else at the most selective schools.
It is one factor among many. For international applicants the factors that matter most are still academic record, course rigor, test scores where required, English proficiency, essays, recommendations and, at many colleges, ability to pay (most U.S. colleges are need-aware for international students). See Forward Pathway’s U.S. college rankings and each school’s page for admission rates and costs.
Essays may still discuss identity. Under the 2023 ruling, an applicant can write about how race, culture or background has shaped his or her life, and colleges may consider that experience as part of the individual applicant.

Latest update: federal admissions data reporting (2025–26)

On August 7, 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum titled “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions,” directing the Education Department to expand federal (IPEDS) reporting on admissions. The Department responded with a new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) for four-year colleges, which it says is “intended to capture information that could indicate whether institutions of higher education are using race-based preferencing” (Federal Register, November 13, 2025). The first ACTS collection opened in December 2025 and closed in March 2026 (NCES, This Week in IPEDS). The supplement focuses on race and admissions outcomes rather than legacy status, but it adds to the pressure on selective colleges to explain how they choose their classes.

References

#Amherst College #Johns Hopkins University #Occidental College #College Admissions #Education Equity