Hi, I'm Erica Pandy, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

It's Friday, October 29th, and we're focused on college legacy admissions.

College admissions are theoretically based on high GPAs, test scores, and strong admissions essays.

But there's another way students get

accepted into elite universities. That's through legacy admissions. That's when wealthy students

with alumni parents and grandparents get admitted to universities through their connections

rather than merit alone. Legacy admissions have significantly impacted diversity at top-tier

institutions, so colleges and universities are slowly doing away with them.

At Notre Dame, for example, legacy admits outnumber black admits five to one, and that at Harvard,

77% of legacy admits are white. Could we see more top-tier universities close this side door

for wealthy students? In a moment, Axios reporter Felix Salmon on legacy admissions.

And we're joined now by Axios's chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon, who's been reporting on Legacy

College admissions. Hey, Felix. Hi, Erica. So Felix, let's start with this. How did Legacy

admissions start? It's a club, right? Universities are very clubby places, and so they were like, oh, Fred's kid wants to come.

And Fred was great, so we'll let Fred's kid in.

And it just kind of spiraled from there.

And how do universities benefit from these legacy admissions beyond just

growing the club membership? Well, I mean, that's the weird thing, right? Is it doesn't grow the

club membership. If Fred's family is part of the club, then in a weird way, what it does is it keeps

the club more exclusive. It keeps the club smaller. It minimizes the number of families who are part of

this amazing club. But yes, the way they benefit is if you have a bunch of rich families who all

send their kids to Yale and they keep on sending their kids to Yale and it becomes part of the family,

...