I attended three elite institutions and taught at one of them at the beginning of my career. I give to my undergraduate alma mater but not to the school where I began grad school and the school where I finished it.
I felt that attending my undergraduate alma mater changed my life as it broadened my horizons about what I could do. I came from a very academic family (both parents professors) and was primed to become a professor (and have the brain for it). I think I already had high expectations for myself but I think that I left thinking that I wanted to be the best in the world at what I ultimately chose to do. I worked incredibly hard at school, did very well, played a minor varsity sport, had a job as a research assistant for 4 years that really augmented my education. I was also a middle class Jewish kid and used my undergraduate time to learn about how to walk in the pathways of power when that power was mostly in the hands of a WASP-y elite at that time. I felt it really prepared me for the world.
I have donated to it every year, but my level of donations have declined as a result of two events. First, they wait-listed my son while admitting the much intellectually weaker kids of some of my friends. I actually didn’t think that my alma mater was the best school for my son – I had picked two schools that I thought were better and he attended one. Even so, I was disappointed as I thought my loyalty to the school should have been matched given his strengths. Second, I don’t think that the alma mater has responded well to the wave of antisemitism that has spread through elite schools. They did not enforce pre-existing rules and did not pursue legal remedies when they should have done so.
My son got two graduate degrees at the school where I started grad school. I suspect that he will feel like that school transformed his life and that, if/when he has a major liquidity event with his company, he will donate to that school.
In both cases, given all of the problems in the world, I do wonder about giving money to schools with extremely large endowments. I have given limited amounts of time to my undergraduate school by doing admissions interviews. The school where I had been a professor asked me to help it using my professional expertise and I have done so willingly – probably worth a lot more than any donations I could make. I offered to do the same for my alma mater but they did not take me up on the offer.