Commentary: Even with generous financial aid, elite universities favor children of the wealthy

My alma mater, the University of Chicago, recently announced that it will provide free tuition for students from families with incomes below $250,000, joining a list of elite universities offering generous financial aid.

These measures are welcome, but it remains to be seen whether they meaningfully alter a status quo in which elite universities systematically favor the children of the wealthy. This favoritism is driven by legacy preferences, athletic recruitment and nonacademic ratings that reward expensive resume-building, yet elite universities remain reluctant to change these practices.

Admissions practices at these universities are a legitimate object of public concern. Less than one-half of 1% of Americans attend an elite private university, but these universities' graduates are disproportionately represented in our country's leadership. They account for around 4 in 10 U.S. presidents since 1960, a quarter of current senators and two-thirds of Supreme Court justices since 1967. Their alumni also make up about 1 in 12 of the nation's top earners and 1 in 8 Fortune 500 CEOs.

This advantage is not simply the result of these universities selecting the best students. A recent study found that students admitted off the waitlist to an elite private university - for reasons unrelated to qualifications, creating a natural experiment - were 50% more likely to reach the top 1% of earners and three times more likely to work at a prestigious firm than similar wait-listed students who instead attended a flagship public university.

An elite-college degree isn't a guaranteed ticket to the top, but the odds are ever in the favor of these diploma holders. It should therefore trouble all Americans that, in the admissions race, wealthy applicants start several steps ahead. Students from families in the top 1% of earners are twice as likely to attend an elite private university as students with similar test scores from the bottom 95%, and students from the top 0.1% are 2.5 times as likely. These figures likely understate the true advantage because affluent families can afford test preparation services that boost scores in the first place.

Income provides an admissions advantage only at the very top of the income scale. Among students from families below the 95th income percentile with similar test scores, attendance rates at elite universities do not increase with income. By contrast, flagship public universities show no similar income-based admissions gap.

What explains this advantage? Legacy preferences, athletic recruitment for niche sports and nonacademic ratings - all of which favor the wealthy - together account for about 70% of the admissions gap. The remainder reflects the fact that affluent students apply and enroll at higher rates.

There is little justification for privileging legacy applicants and recruited athletes in ways that favor the wealthy. Admissions should be based on demonstrated achievement and potential, not whether one's parents attended the university. Sports should broaden opportunity, not narrow it. On the other hand, many would question an admissions system based solely on academic test scores that ignores forms of achievement and potential those tests fail to capture.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons to question how elite universities currently measure nonacademic merit. Among students with the same test scores, nonacademic ratings do not increase with income below the 99th income percentile. Yet students from the top 1% somehow receive substantially higher nonacademic ratings. Students should not need to come from the top 1% to have meaningful opportunities to excel in music, debate, community service or the other activities these ratings are meant to capture.

This skewed pattern disappears for academic ratings: Among students with comparable test scores, the share receiving a high academic rating varies little by income, even at the very top. In other words, even students from the richest families do not appear to have an academic edge over students with similar test scores - but they do have a substantial advantage in acquiring other markers of merit.

If elite universities are serious about admitting students from across the economic spectrum, they should end admissions preferences for legacies and athletes and reform their system of nonacademic ratings.

The children of the wealthy already start life with substantial advantages. It is not the mission of universities to lock those advantages in place.

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This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 2:08 AM.