How can I assume it’s QPQ when I do not see it in the U environment? Their kids are vetted. In ways, I’m calling your bluff (and a few others) who insist how it is, but from the outside. Again, my complaint is about the pull coaches can have.
Once people understand admission is not simply merited only based on stats and some hs titles or awards, there are a host of ways kids qualify. Their drives and how they put them into action, the quality of their thinking and striving, their perspective and maturity. Their engagement in ways that matter more than serving themselves, their own nrrow interests. Not just the bare bones of a hs resume.
@observer12 I think your view is unsophisticated. That it’s common for big legacy donors to shoehorn in their unqualified children is fairly unlikely, despite what you may read or see in movies. My experience is that most parents are pretty thoughtful and care about their children, thus they want the right college fit, and if it’s not their alma mater, they’re okay. Smart people want to see their kids thrive and are not looking to sacrifice fit and happiness simply for some dumb perceived prestige.
So why do they need to be offered a special incentive, a quid pro quo? The donors who donated to MIT and Caltech didn’t seem to care about this special incentive. Are they a different breed?
@Gourmetmom “That it’s common for big legacy donors to shoehorn in their unqualified children is fairly unlikely, despite what you may read or see in movies. My experience is that most parents are pretty thoughtful and care about their children, thus they want the right college fit, and if it’s not their alma mater, they’re okay.”
I agree with you which is why we should BOTH agree that the children of big legacy donors should be treated just like every applicant and obviously the ones who are worthy of being admitted will be admitted on their own merits.
How is that view “unsophisticated”? I am saying that I don’t think many of those children – despite being “qualified” – would be admitted without the parents’ donation and the reason I think that is because the colleges refuse to just put them in the same pile.
Actually, I believe that MIT doesn’t give alumni or big donors’ children preference and I don’t believe it has hurt their donations and if it has, then they are absolutely able to function as a university and have a much higher number of low-income students than the already incredibly rich universities that are afraid to do what MIT does.
So if MIT can do it and still have lots of low-income students, can you explain why other even richer universities cannot?
Maybe MIT really does believe that their donors donate for the good of the university and not to get something in return.
Do you mean that the typical MIT alumnus is a “different breed” and actually donates for charitable purpose and is not expecting their kid to be treated like everyone else?
@lookingforward “Once people understand admission is not simply merited only based on stats and some hs titles or awards, there are a host of ways kids qualify. Their drives and how they put them into action, the quality of their thinking and striving, their perspective and maturity. Their engagement in ways that matter more than serving themselves, their own nrrow interests. Not just the bare bones of a hs resume.”
Again, nowhere did I see the bank account of his parents in there. Middle class students with excellent academic records and test scores are judged by all of those things you mentioned. I am asking why anyone believes that the children of rich donors (whether alums or not) should be considered any differently.
I assume many would be admitted anyway since their stellar credentials would stand out. If there was no need to give them special preference to make sure they were admitted as long as they were “qualified”, then there would be no need to give them special preference period. Right?
You seem to be implying that donors would not donate if their kids were just in the pile with everyone else. Why would you assume that and why would it matter?
Forgive me if someone else pointed this out…I am trying to keep up. However the test prep mania is not only about elite schools, but it is also about merit money. Maybe even primarily about merit money. Look at the Miami University page about merit money. https://miamioh.edu/admission/merit-guarantee/
It has a minimum GPA + a minimum SAT score. The year my D applied she was awarded enough that we would only pay room and board. A fantastic deal.
She received fantastic merit money from all of the big publics she applied to.
This is why the College Board has to tighten up security around the test.
"Do you mean that the typical MIT alumnus is a “different breed” and actually donates for charitable purpose and is not expecting their kid to be treated like everyone else? "
Legacy does not count for admission at CalTech.
Not sure about MIT.
“The six defendants, five with ties to UCLA, allegedly used fake passports, doctored with their own photos, to pass themselves off as the Chinese nationals at (Test of English as a Foreign Language or TOEFL) testing centers in and around Los Angeles as recently as 2016”
“Ryan said 39 Chinese clients have been linked to the cheating scheme, and at the time, were either in high school or community college. Those clients were trying to gain entry to a variety of U.S. four-year colleges and universities.”
Here you go, just in case y’all haven’t heard about it yet.
No, I suggest that donors to MIT and Cal Tech donate for CHARITABLE purposes and not for a quid pro quo so their kids are in a special pile.
And I also suggest that if you are only willing to donate if you receive that quid pro quo and if you stop donating if your child is not admitted, then you obviously were donating for that quid pro quo.
I apologize for sounding like a broken record, but if colleges believed they were getting donations with no expectation of a quid pro quo, then they would not need to have a backdoor admissions policy at all. I take you at face value. You say the donations are not a quid pro quo and I agree, so why would you argue against putting all applications in the same pile?
Neither of these two schools offers legacy preferences or development cases. And they manage to be just as generous with their financial aid. They also manage to offer totally unrestricted EA.
@observer12 Sorry I didn’t mean “you” and meant to be a bit more global. Perhaps “one” would have been better.
I get what you’re saying.
But say the 50 or 200 super rich donors out there who are capable of such donations are delivering outsize returns to society -even if the cost is a gauranteed spot at a school. And most probably don’t expect it, but perhaps hope it helps at some point in the future. And some don’t care.
The kid who may have lost a spot a H to this person probably got into Dartmouth or Michigan. Or UT or UCLA. They haven’t been damaged in the process or with opportunities. There’s no tort. No damages.
So, in the end if this rich super donor took my daughter’s spot at H and the donations helps pay for a 20000 students over a few decades. These students who couldn’t couldn’t otherwise afford it. It’s ok. Not a bad outcome.
And so I don’t disagree that it’s not at the most basic level somehow unfair. It’s more like I think it is perfectly ok.
Some students may be admitted because of particularly “stellar” credentials, but that is not how college admissions works in general. Strong credentials get the students in the door, but the selection is made based on the benefit to the college to admit that student The ad com has a variety of different agendas that need to be fulfilled — diversity goals, the need to fill college classes and departments with cable students and to achieve a balance that reflects their resources-- so not too many nor too few students within any discipline; their athletic needs, arts needs, etc. And that includes financial needs – they also need the right balance of full pay vs. financially needy students, and they need to keep their financial aid numbers consistent with what they have money to fund.
When someone donates $1 million to a college, that is filling an institutional need. When some kid has star power on a football field, that is filling an institutional need. So for every single student the ad com picks, there will be an answer to “what will we get from admitting this student.” Maybe the answer is something obscure, and different qualities will be weighted in different ways. $1 million probably speaks pretty loudly.
But you need to recognize that even a poor kid who is admitted with full financial aid is filling some sort of need – even if that “need” is a desire to bump up the stats for Pell grant recipients and first generation college students. And that’s why the concept of throwing the development kids in the same pool with the others probably won’t work.
It seems relevant to me because there’s been so much conversation (text and sub-text) about how wealth is supposedly so much of the “problem” at elite U’s, and I’m telling you that Pell grants and other government funds go only so far. Private institutions use private funding sources in the way of personal donations to make an expensive education truly no-loan. I’m sure the $50 donations were also used wisely but probably more for the entire student body’s benefit, because $50 is not going to fund a student whose father died in her early childhood.
Probably all of the alumni for all universities get solicited for donations regularly – for those institutions and for various other needs and causes. There are all kinds of private schooling and training, and for all kinds of purposes. A frequent option for a donor, so stated, is to “fund a student for one year of scholarship money,” “fund a music student,” etc. Those options exist with other donation options. I have ALWAYS wanted to be in a position to fund a student entirely, but I’ve never been in that position, so I can certainly understand why an Ivy donor/alum who valued his alma mater would choose that particular target for his contribution. It’s satisfying. It doesn’t mean any of those yearly donors knew who my daughter was or were part of the admissions process. However, I did encourage her as time went on to fill her donors in on what she was learning, her Study Abroad experiences, her internships, etc. I told her that if I were such a donor, such information would be very meaningful to me, and I would be touched by it.
We should just be grateful that there are generous people out there, instead of demanding that all donors be on the same “level” playing field, because that is not realistic. Since we live in a capitalistic system, or as long as we do, there will be gradations of wealth.
You may be wise and old but apparently you don’t know that the Ivy League colleges operate as tax-exempt non-profits.
The stated social goods are research and education.
The problem they face is more akin to the problem faced by the YMCA or Stuyvesant or a Head Start program. Or you might compare them to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, or the Fred Hutchinson research institute.
None of these institutions are raising prices for benefits. Instead they strive for fair benefits.
The argument from analogy to businesses doesn’t work.
If a college sets aside a certain number of seats for donors, at least it should do so transparently. Legacy preferences should go away because it’s simply not fair. I’m speaking as a graduate of an Ivy that considers legacy status and another tippy top that doesn’t.