Officials still consider legacy status in admissions, but outreach to prospective legacy students has lost visibility on campus over the last three years.

University spokesperson Julia Metjian said officials consider an applicant’s relation to GW alumni in admissions, but officials don’t guarantee entry or scholarships for legacy applicants. She said admissions officers review each applicant based on academic background, the rigor of high school coursework, GPA, essays, letters of recommendation and extracurricular activities.

Metjian declined to comment on why officials still consider legacy status and if officials plan to end legacy consideration after the Supreme Court’s decision to bar the consideration of race in college admissions in June.

“While legacy can be considered in applications, the university does not have a legacy path, policy, or scholarship involved in the undergraduate admissions process,” Metjian said in an email.

GW was 1.5 times more likely to accept legacy applicants in 2011, the latest year in which data is available, but GW legacy students received less preferential treatment than legacies at other universities.

Officials hired Marie Treanor, the director of legacy alumni engagement, an alum and a legacy, in 2019 in an attempt to expand programming for former students that would entice their relatives to attend GW. The Office of Alumni Relations website listed Treanor as a staff member until at least January 2023, according to web archives.

University spokesperson Josh Grossman said Treanor no longer works at the University and that officials changed the director of legacy alumni engagement position to focus on student and alumni engagement prior to her departure. He declined to comment on when Treanor stopped working for the University.

Officials offered information sessions and tours for prospective legacy students in 2020, according to a tweet from the Alumni Association. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions does not list legacy student programming.

A legacy families website used to provide information on GW’s legacy family network, according to the fall 2019 issue of GW Magazine, but the website no longer exists.

Experts in college admissions said some universities only use legacy status to indicate an applicant’s interest in the university, while other schools may provide an advantage for legacy students, which could complicate their goals for diversifying their student body.

Julie Park, an associate professor of student affairs at the University of Maryland, said legacy consideration can be a “tip or bump factor” in decisions. She said the policy can provide an edge when there are many qualified applicants and schools only have a certain number they can admit.

“It’s about the misalignment with what institutions’ espoused values are,” Park said. “If institutions are saying ‘Oh, we’re all about diversity and equity,’ legacy admissions totally undermine that.”

Park said she would not be surprised if “top institutions” like Harvard and Princeton universities drop legacy preference and that a lot of private institutions would follow their lead and stop considering legacy status “like dominoes.”

“It’s your bloodline, basically,” Park said. “That just seems very 18th or 17th century versus 21st century.”

Heath Einstein, the dean of admissions at Texas Christian University, said legacy students may be “more inclined” to attend their parent’s alma mater because they hear stories about their college experience growing up. He said indicators of an applicant’s interest in a university help admissions officers avoid over-enrolling or under-enrolling a class.

“When admission folks are trying to admit or trying to manage the enrollment at their university, a lot of what we’re doing at a very high level is trying to predict the behavior of 17- and 18-year-olds, which can be very challenging,” Einstein said.

He said despite the Supreme Court’s ban on the consideration of race in college admissions, universities can still attain a diverse class with legacy consideration because “race-neutral practices” like test-optional policies or the distribution of financial aid have a greater impact on student diversity than legacy admissions. He said the racial diversity of college students is increasing and legacy student diversity will increase correspondingly.

He added that universities like GW may have phased out legacy outreach programming due to an increase in certain groups of applicants that admissions officers may prioritize outreach toward instead.

“We have so many different stakeholders in this process,” Einstein said. “There’s only so much time that we can devote to any of them and our jobs have become increasingly complex over time as well that I don’t think you’re seeing quite as much active cultivation from the admission office that you once did.”

Legacy students said attending their parents’ alma mater helps them feel closer to their family but that legacy status should not carry a large weight in college admissions.

Elsie Spitzer, a sophomore studying international affairs and international business, said her late father attended GW but that she only learned about her legacy status when she was applying to GW and her mother informed her that it was her father’s alma mater.

Spitzer said legacy students can benefit universities because legacy students serve as a connection between the student body and alumni. She said some legacy students attend their parent’s school because they’ve built a “shared experience” for their college, and officials should foster those students to strengthen the student-alumni relationship.

“It’s been nice to be here because, obviously, I don’t have my father for my teenage, college years,” Spitzer said. “So being here kind of helps me feel closer to him.”

Lily Thompson, a sophomore studying chemistry, said her parents attended GW, and she was initially opposed to attending GW because she didn’t want to attend her parents’ alma mater but ultimately chose GW because the University gave her more financial aid than other options, like Rutgers University.

Thompson said, despite her legacy status, she is opposed to the consideration of legacy status in college admissions because some schools weigh applicants’ relation to alumni similarly to extracurriculars at schools that have a stronger use of legacy admissions in the admissions process, like Yale University.

“Like, ‘I have like all my extracurriculars and oh also I was born to specific people,’ which seems like a weird thing to include on your application or to consider,” Thompson said.