Legacy Admissions in D.C. Could End Because of These Students

Felix Rice was so overwhelmed with excitement when he moved into his dorm room at Georgetown University as a freshman, he sat down on his bed and cried. He was coming from Texas, relying on financial aid and money he had earned at a sweaty and difficult summer job at a warehouse — a job that made the stakes of a college education very clear, he said. Something else felt just as stark: Everyone was rich. He could see it in peoples’ clothes, in the way their parents looked, in the way they talked. He could feel it in discussions in class and in dorms, in the ways students spend their breaks, in the issues that spark activism on campus or just … don’t. After the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions in 2023, Rice and some friends talked about what they could do to make elite colleges like theirs more diverse. They soon zeroed in on legacy admissions preferences — an advantage sometimes factored into decisions about applicants who are children of alumni — which felt like it helped people who were already privileged.