Kids of the 1% are twice as likely to get into ‘Ivy Plus’ colleges, even when their grades are no better than anyone else’s

• A new study shows kids of the top 1% are over twice as likely to be admitted to Ivy Plus colleges.
• That’s despite scoring no better than students of other income groups, per an Opportunity Insights study.
• After the end of race-based affirmative action, wealth and legacy admissions may now be the new focus of scrutiny.

Children of the top 1% of income earners are more than twice as likely to be admitted to Ivy Plus colleges, despite scoring no better on SAT or ACTs than students of other income groups, according to a study published on Monday by Opportunity Insights, a group of Harvard-based economists.

Ivy Plus refers to the eight Ivy League colleges Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, UPenn, Princeton, and Yale, plus Stanford, MIT, Duke, and the University of Chicago.

According to the study, roughly 40% of the wealthiest students with 99th percentile SAT or ACT scores attend Ivy Plus colleges — double the rate of their equally qualified but poorer peers and four times that of middle-income students.

The study analyzed standardized test scores from 2001 to 2015, parental tax records of nearly all college students from 1999 to 2015, as well as internal admissions records from three of the 12 Ivy Plus colleges. 

The research identifies three main factors behind the discrepancy: a bias towards children of alumni — known as legacy students — wealthy students having higher non-academic ratings, and well-to-do students being more likely to be recruited as student-athletes.

The study noted that although less than 1% of Americans attend these 12 colleges, these schools have an outsized impact. Ivy Plus graduates “account for 15% of those in the top 0.1% of the income distribution, a quarter of US Senators, half of all Rhodes scholars, and three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half-century,” per the study.

These findings come in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling which effectively ended race-based affirmative action in June, Insider reported.

Now, scrutiny from lawmakers and civil rights groups might be shifting towards wealth and legacy admissions and their impact on inequality, the Associated Press reported on July 1.

On Tuesday, the US Department of Education launched a federal civil rights probe against Harvard, alleging favoritism towards legacy students in their admission process, per Reuters.

The Ivy Plus colleges did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider, sent outside regular business hours.