Poskanzer and Castilla promised to keep the identity of the elite college they studied a secret in order to publish their findings. But they described it as a Northeastern private college that is “representative” of the top 25 schools ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Like other elite schools, the student body is wealthy. Half of the students hail from ZIP codes with mean household incomes over $100,000, a threshold that only 6 percent of ZIP codes in America met during the study period.
More than a third of the legacy students who applied were accepted, compared with only 14 percent of non-legacy students. That added up to almost 3,300 children of alumni accepted during the 16 years that the researchers studied. Legacy students are a major category, rivaling the total number of students of other races and ethnicities. Approximately, 3,500 Black students, 3,100 Hispanic students and 7,300 Asian