I write in response to your July 19 editorial regarding legacy college admissions (“Our View: Coy on legacy admissions, Maine’s top colleges contradict themselves”). While never working in a college admissions office, I was the director of admissions at St. Paul’s, a private secondary school in Concord, New Hampshire, for a number of years. Similar to Bates, Bowdoin and Colby, every year we had many more qualified applicants than we had space for.
There were programs and constituencies that needed to be heard in the admissions process. Legacies, or the children and grandchildren of alumni, were only one. Others were impact athletes, musicians, dancers, truly brilliant students, some of whom might be socially awkward, to name just a few. All of these youngsters added to the rich tapestry of St. Paul’s. They first, however, needed to be able to do the academic work. The problem was that some 70% of our applicants could do just that, and we could only admit 15%.
Of course the primary criterion was an applicant’s “good kid” qualities. And these qualities could be viewed differently by different admissions readers.
Legacy admissions honor the college’s or the school’s history because they represent that history. As well, many of the enormously generous gifts to our financial aid program were given by alumni. For a school that boasted of its diversity, it would be challenging to turn down an alumnus’ child whose family had just given millions of dollars to its scholarship endowment. It would, however, be a terrible mistake if that child could not do the academic work.
Bill Matthews
Kennebunkport
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