As waves of college acceptance gossip swept through the senior class last month, students were left wondering: “Did some students only get in because of their parents?”

Most elite colleges favor applicants with legacy, but this outdated practice only harms the integrity of these colleges by taking the admissions focus off merit and diversity.  Colleges should stop taking legacy into account in order to level the college admissions playing field.

At the nation’s top 40 highly selective colleges and universities, “primary legacy applicants,” or children of alumni, enjoy a whopping 45.1 percent increase in their chances of admission to their parents’ alma maters, according to a 2011 study by Harvard researcher Michael Hurwitz. This legacy boost often makes the difference between that dreamed-of admission and a disappointing rejection.

That’s not to say, however, that colleges accept legacy students only because of their parents. Most legacy applicants tend to have slightly higher SAT scores than non-legacies, according to Hurwitz’s study, so some would be qualified even without their admissions bonus. Nevertheless, the preference colleges do give to legacy students harms the schools’ credibility and diminishes the achievements of accepted legacy students.

Colleges and universities continue to cling to legacy preferences in admission for one primary reason: they don’t want to lose their alumni’s donations by rejecting the alumni’s children.  And with good reason: alumni donations increase by 87 percent when the child is accepted but decrease by 27 percent when the child is rejected, according to a 2007 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Money has no correlation to the qualifications of a student.  Instead of focusing on donations, elite colleges should earn their reputations by admitting the most qualified applicants on the basis of merit.

Princeton University accepts over 40 percent of all legacy students but only 10 percent of non-legacies, according to ABC News.  But is it fair for non-legacy students to lose out simply because they were born to the wrong parents?

Legacy preference only compounds the hierarchies that plague our country by disproportionately aiding the wealthy, thus working against the diversity most colleges seek. African Americans and Hispanics comprise only 6.7 percent of the legacy applicant pool at the nation’s 40 most selective colleges and universities, according to John Brittain, former chief counsel at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Legacy preference is an outdated holdover from a time when society’s upper crust ruled the world of higher education.  Rather than hold on to a discriminatory tradition from a bygone era, colleges should abolish the elitist practice and judge students solely on qualifications.

Until colleges make this change, the answer to that unspoken question of legacy hanging over the heads of the senior class gossip will remain an uncomfortable “maybe.”