There’s a reason some families spend as much energy on the alumni interview as they do on the essay. A parent’s diploma on the wall has quietly done real work in admissions for decades, and that’s exactly what a new bill wants to take away.
The Merit-Based Educational Reforms and Institutional Transparency Act would strip a college’s accreditation if it keeps giving alumni or donor kids a boost in the admissions process, and because accreditation is what lets a college’s students receive federal financial aid, this one reaches even the private schools that state laws can’t touch. Sen. Todd Young of Indiana has pushed this idea since 2023. It stalled then. He’s trying again.”
“America is a land of opportunity, not a land of aristocracy.”
— Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind.
Legacy preferences have already been fading without any new law. About a quarter of four-year colleges still factor in legacy status today, down from roughly half a decade ago. But the schools most likely to still be doing it are exactly the ones our families tend to apply to: wealthy, selective and quietly protective of the practice. Stanford, for one, walked away from California’s state financial aid money rather than give up its legacy admissions policy when the state threatened to publicly call it out.
If your family has a legacy connection, don’t assume it still carries the weight it used to, and don’t assume it’s gone either. The honest move is to ask the admissions office directly how much it actually matters at that specific school, because the answer is changing school by school, not all at once, and it’s not the kind of thing you want to guess on.
🎓⌨️ Turnitin’s New Tool Watches Students Type — Turnitin’s newest software, Clarity, tracks students’ keystrokes, revisions and copy-and-paste activity as they write, then lets professors replay the whole drafting process to check for AI use. Yale, Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins have already turned off Turnitin’s AI-detection feature over false-positive concerns.
🎓🎓 Brown’s Longest-Serving President Announces Her Exit — Christina Paxson will step down as Brown University’s president at the end of the 2026-27 academic year, a year earlier than the extension she signed in 2025. She’s led Brown since 2012, longer than any other current Ivy League president, and the school will begin a national search for her replacement this fall.
🎓💰 Rice Raises Its Free-Tuition Cutoff to $200,000 — Rice University is expanding its Rice Investment financial aid program starting fall 2027, offering free tuition to families earning up to $200,000 a year, up from the previous $140,000 cutoff. Families earning less than $100,000 will have tuition, fees, and room and board fully covered.
🎓🏈 94% of Division I Athletic Programs Lost Money Last Year — A new federal report found that 330 of 352 Division I athletic programs spent more than they brought in during the 2023-24 academic year, a gap covered largely by student tuition and fees. Every Division II program reviewed lost money too.
That gap doesn’t stay contained to the football program. Colleges cover athletics shortfalls with tuition and fee revenue, the same pool of money that funds financial aid and the same pool your family is already negotiating over in an admissions offer. It’s also why a growing number of schools have quietly cut Olympic sports like swimming, tennis and track over the past two years while football and basketball budgets keep climbing. If your student is being recruited for a non-revenue sport, ask the athletic department directly whether that program’s funding is considered stable. Don’t assume it.
Princeton kept the No. 1 spot on LinkedIn’s Top Colleges list for a second year, but the list itself is the real story. Instead of ranking schools by how hard they are to get into, LinkedIn ranks them by what happens to graduates once they leave: who gets hired, who gets promoted, who builds a strong network. It’s pulled from LinkedIn’s own data on millions of alumni.
“What makes LinkedIn Top Colleges different is that it’s built on real career outcomes.”
— Laura Lorenzetti, VP and executive editor, LinkedIn
The order looks different because of it. Babson beats Georgetown. Bentley, a school many families have never toured, lands ahead of Michigan and USC. Seven schools joined the list for the first time this year, including Washington University in St. Louis and Davidson.
This isn’t a replacement for the rankings your family already knows. Think of it as a second opinion. A school that ranks lower on prestige can still rank high on what happens after graduation, and that’s worth a real conversation with your student, not just a glance at the number.
Admissions Angle works with students as early as 8th grade to build strategies that account for the full picture. If you have questions about what’s changing and what it means for your student, book a free discovery call with us.
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