Every year, Georgetown University admits an incoming class of students who are wealthier than almost any other in the country. This overrepresentation of students from ultra-rich families stems from a handful of admissions policies we have long known benefit wealthy applicants. But last month, we learned of yet another reason.
According to a new legal filing, former University President John J. DeGioia (CAS ’79, GRD ’95) annually compiled a list of about 80 names for the admissions office. These students were selected not for their academic qualifications, extracurricular accomplishments or compelling personal stories; instead, they were chosen for the money in their parents’ bank account.
On the top of this list would often be written: “Please admit.” And, according to The Washington Post, the admissions office almost always obliged.
Georgetown robbing seats from the most qualified applicants to give to the children of the rich and powerful is upsetting enough, but it is only one part of the system that Georgetown has created that excludes working- and middle-class students at every step of the process.
From the outset, the admissions office has biased recruitment practices and reserves 10% of each incoming class for legacy applicants. Then, for those admitted, Georgetown charges exorbitant tuition while offering insufficient financial aid packages, which fail to yield working-class applicants. These practices, one after another, serve to shut out a variety of qualified, hardworking students.
And it is the reason Georgetown’s student body consistently fails to reflect the economic makeup of the country.
According to a 2017 New York Times analysis, more Georgetown students come from families in the top one percent of the income scale than the bottom 60%, making Georgetown the 12th most unequal university in the country. In fact, an applicant from the top one percent is nearly three times more likely to get into Georgetown than an applicant of average income, even when you assume both students have the same test scores.
Further, even as the Biden administration expanded Pell Grant eligibility by 10% to include more low- and middle-income students this year, Georgetown saw its Pell Grant enrollment of first-years grow to only 15%, far less than even half of the national proportion of Pell Grant recipients.
That represents a mere one percentage point increase from Georgetown’s previous ten-year high of 14% in 2018. And it is a far cry from the universities Georgetown considers its peers, who all saw their Pell enrollment grow to between 19% and 22%.
Given how intertwined class and race are in this country, Georgetown’s penchant for over admitting wealthy students also results in the drastic underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic students.
According to the most recent Department of Education data, 5% of Georgetown students last academic year were Black and 7% were Hispanic or Latino. In stark contrast, over 13% of college students nationally identify as Black, while over 22% identify as Hispanic or Latino.
Over the past two decades, Georgetown has hardly improved. Hispanic enrollment at Georgetown has not even remotely kept pace with growth nationally, and the total number of Black students fell since 2001, even as Georgetown’s overall enrollment grew by over 800 students from 2000 to 2023. Most recently, enrollment for students of color in the first class admitted post-affirmative action was four percentage points lower than the previous year’s pool of admitted students.
The university only has itself to blame for these abysmal numbers. Even as its very own Center on Education and the Workforce through the McCourt School of Public Policy warned that keeping legacy admissions without affirmative action would make protecting diversity impossible, Georgetown stood by its discriminatory admissions preference.
Ending legacy and donor preference would open spots for working- and middle-class applicants and applicants of color. Studies show that ending legacy preference would immediately boost enrollment for Black, Hispanic and Asian students as well as students from families in the bottom 95% of income levels.
While the administration and board refuse to act, Georgetown students have been organizing. Our campaign, Hoyas Against Legacy Admissions, is working to pass a bill in the D.C. Council to ban legacy and donor admissions.
We have already won support from the State Board of Education, which voted 8-1 to endorse our bill this summer. Over the next few months, we will be advocating for the bill to members of the D.C. Council and testifying in favor of it — and we will need your help.
We are asking all Hoyas to join our campaign, help us advocate for our bill and tell the administration with one voice: Please admit qualified candidates from all backgrounds, regardless of their parents’ income or graduate status.
Asher Maxwell, Ethan Henshaw and Felix Rice, on behalf of Hoyas Against Legacy Admissions, are juniors in the College of Arts and Sciences and Darius Wagner is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.
