Eagerly anticipating the next USNWR ranking category: Ranking the top 20 colleges by how much you need to pay for a legit admit. See schools raise their minimum donor amounts to safeguard their ranking spots!
I hope this post helps shed a little light on institutional development and common misconceptions about how they influence current year admissions.
Development preference is not always a quid pro quo, in any given year.
And it’s not 500k or the building level with nothing in between.
Also, please know that donations for “the building” are not for the whole amount.
It’s usually a large anchor gift that gets the process going. That gets your name on the building.It also helps to get other donors and matching programs engaged. And the development team knows there is more opportunities with the donor of this magnitude.
This can be useful down the road to fund another need for the school, another facilities project or substantial post mortem pledge.
Many of these students you find receiving advocacy via the development office are the result of these past gifts. And many are structured as multi year gifts.
500k at an Ivy League or wealthy university will not get a below standard candidate into the school.
It won’t even help a pretty good candidate without a significant additional talent.
That’s why they needed the side door of athletics which meant more in the process than the money.
Or they paid for the children’s credentials to be improved through higher test scores. This helped them reach the bar.
The idea that they were “stupid” to not just donate the money for the admission is flawed. It’s a basic misunderstanding of how institutional development works.
It doesn’t work as many assume in cc. And the numbers at play would be stunning to most.
Bottom line is you still have to be “admissions acceptable” for development to have any meaningful impact on the process. .
500k in a current year gift may help someone on the edge of being admitted to be a yes vs a waitlist. Maybe.
Usually the development teams are managing it like any business, revenue streams from many sources.
Most gifts usually have nothing to do with admissions. The primary work centers around large gifts from successful alumni or parents of grads or current students.
There can also be very specific capital campaigns.
And none of this is built around current year’s admissions. It’s not like they decide that you have a sales quota of filling ten spots, now go make it happen team.
Development preference can also be shown to qualified applicants with potential for significant future donations, it can be also shown to be someone who can drive development opportunities/events by their mere presence. President Obama as an
potential example.
And it’s not “hey Bill , my client will donate” 500k if you will grant an admission to his daughter.
You’d be laughed off the line.
It just isn’t how it works. It’s a process and long term operation for the development teams. It’s institutional development is a career with accreditation. They hire very talented and experienced people at the wealthiest schools.
Named chairs, multi year commitments and endowed scholarships move the needle. But it is still not that direct a discussion. These commitments are worked out over time. If they call in for the favor of having a family members a fair review. That will happen.
Or it’s a call to let them know the family is interested in helping out. Meetings and lunches are held to discuss options and the donors intent. There’s no menu of benefits delivered.
If a high value candidate or relative of a donor of note they can help get development to advocate for this student. It’s not a slam dunk. It can go a couple of ways. Fully qualified and a yes. Nearly qualified and perhaps a suggested gap year or PG. If woefully unqualified, even a building won’t change that, there’s no guarantees.
The people involved in this scandal did not have children with the combination of gifting level and qualifications. I’m not sure where this concept of a Jared Kushner being completely unqualified.
As his graduation proves, in reality.
Big donors past, present and future must have admissions candidates that meet a standard. Obviously lower than the unhooked student but still highly competitive.
Didn’t some of these parents donate to a foundation that then gave money to the athletic department in exchange for getting an athletic tip?
Sometimes that is perfectly legal – as in the case of the Harvard fencer and the Stanford fake sailor – and sometimes it isn’t. But I don’t really get the distinction myself. Just because you have enough money to make a ten million dollar donation to the university instead of a $500,000 donation to the athletic department, that makes it okay? I don’t understand how the Stanford recruit’s parents donating to the athletic department after she got in is any different than the Loughlin’s donating to the athletic department after their kid got in.
I absolutely understand that “legally” billionaires have the power to make a donation to get their kid in and can still take a tax deduction for it, but merely rich people can make a smaller donation to the athletic department to get their kid in and can’t take a deduction because it is illegal.
But I think it is perfectly reasonable for us to focus on the bigger corruption than whether or not it is technically “legal”. The IRS allows big donations to get your kid in but not smaller ones, and if a parent donates to the athletic department to get their kid designated as a recruit, that is different than if a parent donates to the university to get the kid designated as a recruit.
I do have one question. Do any university fundraisers get a percentage of these large donations they convince parents to make, or are they paid any bonuses if they get lots of donations? Or is their salary a flat sum that is not any larger than a typical professor?
I’m not sure what your point is because designating a student as a recruit also isn’t a “guarantee” of admission for student who doesn’t meet other standards.
I’m not sure where this concept of the students being admitted as athletic recruits to Yale or U. Penn or Georgetown or UCLA or USC as being “completely unqualified” came from. They are just as qualified as the other student athletes admitted, just like big donors’ kids are just as qualified as the other big donors’ kids who are admitted. In other words, they have to meet some baseline that - absent the donation or athletic recruit status - would almost never get them admitted. That’s the reason they have to go in the special pile.
Yep. I have at least one item with his label.
I remain ignorant as to why. Does anyone know why he is not being charged, since I did read some evidence that he was on the phone during at least one of the conversations about “arrangements.”
If it is true that very rich people don’t donate extremely large sums of money in exchange for their child getting a huge admissions preference, can someone explain the reason that a university would put those applications in a different pile or have a “deans list” or whatever they do?
Why would they not simply look at all applications without knowing whether their parents were multibillionaire donors who bought a building or just regular upper middle class kids? If the son or daughter of the billionaire mega-donor is a strong candidate, he or she would be admitted and if that candidate was no different than a thousand other students, he or she very likely would not be admitted.
Since we are so certain that no one donates in exchange for an admissions preference, there is no reason to put these applicants in a separate pile because their parents were donating only for charitable purposes because they believe in the mission of the university and getting any benefit in return would make their donation look like a bribe.
Excellent, @privatebanker. Folks should take heed, more than to some issues at Harvard 100 years ago. Clearly, you understand more than what you “think” you smell.
No, donations to the athletic dept outside usual development channels are not right. The fact some did this doesn’t make it right.
Now, I don’t know why we’re back to supposition about IRS rules.
Or why you’re back to questioning the mighty power of a coach who includes a name in his/her recruit list. There’s your side door. Happens all the time. And despite otherwise mismatch. The AI is no protection, not any insurance. Happens at status colleges without an AI, too.
The Sony Wikileaks leaked emails seem to suggest that, at least sometimes, a multi-year development effort isn’t necessary. Michael Lynton’s assistant just called up Brown and donated $1 million over 4 years to establish a scholarship and boom, out comes the red carpet.
Perhaps the kid was a great student, but that million bucks sure did get things rolling. Or maybe she just is THAT terrific! Anyway, it’s all still up and makes for some interesting reading.
There’s little to be googled about AI. Mostly, if anything, you’ll find some report to a high school. But it does not insist each recruit meet an academic related bar.
I feel sorry this perpetual discussion sheds shade on parents here whose kids DO have the companion academic merit. But recruiting can be a slippery practice.
Si ger did a host of slippery things. His buyers were willing participants. No one or two tales of some other kids erases that.
Apparently Macy was only recorded discussing cheating for their younger child. They decided not to go through with the cheat in her case, only the older one. On the older, I guess they only recorded Huffman.
Because Giannulli got in as an athletic recruit on the bribed coach’s team and the Stanford kid didn’t get in as a recruit.
Epiphany, I suspect Macy just didn’t fit the charges the feds decided to bring, that specific conformation they feel they can best run with. I suspect they looked at what/who fit the ‘best case’ possible. And being omitted from this set of particular charges does not make him innocent.
It’s probably more to do with the opportunity of the charges they did choose to bring. At this early glance, it looks like a sleek case, as is. Not everyone included.
Yale, Georgetown and U Penn do not admit athletes just because they are designated recruits. Those athletes have to meet a basic admissions standard.
You seem to be saying the admissions department at those universities would admit a substandard, unqualified student simply because the coach says the kid has great athletic talent but that isn’t true. An athletic recruit still has to meet an academic bar at those universities.
Are you saying the bar that an athletic recruit has to meet is lower than the bar that the child of a billionaire donor who gives very generously to the university has to meet?
I don’t understand why you are so negative about the academic standards of student athletes at elite universities. Presumably they all have to meet an academic bar. Am I missing something here?
All the fake recruits who didn’t have someone change the answers on their SAT were “academically qualified” to attend the university that admitted them. It’s just that a student with those criteria whose application was in the big pile would be highly unlikely to be admitted. There was never any guarantee – how could there be a guarantee unless you are calling the entire admissions department at those universities corrupt? And I don’t think they were. They looked at all these students’ academic qualifications and found them to be perfectly fine.
There is a lot of information that isn’t public. When we make guesses about why some were charged and others were not, or some pleaded guilty and others did not, based only on the public information, we’re likely missing huge pieces of the puzzle. When I see two defendants with outstanding legal counsel behaving differently, I assume there’s some major differences in their cases that I don’t know about.
Thank you, @lookingforward and @OHMomof2
Yes, I realize that @Hanna
I thought that @Scipio might have read something I hadn’t yet (on the thread, or elsewhere). I wasn’t very clear in the way I asked the question.
I am distinctly saying the bar is not the same. Have been, since this thread began. Perhaps ucbalumnus can regale you with tales of (some) athlete academic struggles at the two UC flagships. Or other folks who’ve seen this at other colleges.
(Not that I’m asking for a derail.)
I’ve experienced the coach pull firsthand. Uniquely, I’ve also seen, from both the development and admissions sides, kids and relatives of wealthy uber donors turned down. Also unsuitable kids with family names known to us all and actors, the good looking, etc, whatever some of you feel is enough to knock others aside.
You don’t know how they vet each category or not.
This just popped up via my browser.
"Following Lori Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli’s decision to plead not guilty to the charges facing them in connection to the college admissions scandal on Monday, a source close to the 54-year-old actress tells ET that she feels like those who orchestrated the scheme misled her about the severity of her involvement.
“[Lori and her husband] claim they were under the impression they might be breaking rules, but not laws,” the source says. “They feel they were manipulated by those involved and are planning that as part of their defense.”
“They realize how serious the charges are, but feel that once the judge hears their story he will see they had no bad intentions,” the source adds."
Granted, that’s hearsay. I just doubt ignorance of the law will stand up.
“”[Lori and her husband] claim they were under the impression they might be breaking rules, but not laws,"
Given how many other parents have done this in the past – including the most recent revelations about how UCLA found fake athletes years ago – it certainly seems like that is what happened.
Remember, as far as we know, Laughlin didn’t pay a Harvard graduate to take the exam for her kids. She simply made a big donation to a foundation in exchange for knowing her kid would get the admissions preference an athletic recruit gets.