Okay so we all have heard about direct payments to get Susie-P-Q or Benjie-Bob-Lou into Dream College. Many of those families were caught under Operation Varsity Blue and some parents are serving time in jail as a result
The parent in the linked article makes that look like child’s play. The article alleges that the father hedged all aspects of the children’s lives–they didn’t realize that the family owned several apartments in the building all staffed with assistants who smoothed their paths throughout the day . . . . for example.
The father spent about $31M sending donations to the top schools so that his children would be able to choose their Ivy like ordering from a take-out menu.
It’s like buying fancy presents for 8 pretty girls to see which one likes you the most. And the value of the presents are determined by the perceived order of attractiveness.
That’s nothing for a billionaire. Plenty more where that came from for his children, right?
No surprises here, IMO. When you are in that stratum of wealth, money does buy things - development cases in college admissions, smoothing the path for you and your loved ones. Nothing new at all.
Plus, those colleges are benefitting from generous contributions. At least he’s gifting some of his wealth. It’ll fund nice things or FA for many students.
Well, he has his quirks for sure, but if I had his money, my daughter would be a “development case” too. Not in Varsity Blues style, but in the development-office-conducts-admissions-interview-over-lunch style.
Seriously, $31 million buys a lot of scholarships. Rather than a silly dance with development, I don’t see why these schools don’t auction off a couple of seats each year. Bidding can be restricted to those with a minimum GPA and test scores (which could be lower than the college’s numbers at large, though) - and anonymous to protect the safety of the student who wins the spot as well as. Amount of the winning bid would be published, and all money would fund the following year’s scholarships.
Thanks for posting - really interesting article. The waste described in this article bothers me probably more than anything else. Purchasing duplicate flights to make sure that the flight was going to be efficient and comfortable for Mr Shaw is ridiculous to me. Donating a bunch of money from his foundation to colleges his children may want to attend is more palpable then having an apartment of people living upstairs that are planning the quality of a rug for one of their kids bedrooms, etc- that is astonishing. I wonder how well-adjusted these kids grew up living in that kind of environment.
There wasn’t a lot of information on what people thought of him on a personal level (outside of his neurotic over-researching behavior). Did his staff think he was a good person? Is he a narcissist? I wonder how much the kids knew and know now about the family dynamic. it must be tough for the youngest one to have an article like this out on the internet and be a high school/ soon to be college student.
Life is always better than fiction- lol and thank you for posting this, made my first really cold Friday morning fun!
“ At one point in the aughts, of the five employees in the D.E. Shaw mailroom, three had degrees from Columbia and one was a concert pianist from Carnegie Mellon, according to a former worker.” - you can’t make this stuff up. ?
“I also just changed my mind on the billionaire tax due to this db.”
Stop with the socialist BS.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to put a glass-lined empty moat around your whole house? Since I just had my own anti-tick moat installed, I can tell you it ain’t cheap.
$100 million a year just doesn’t go that far these days. $31 million in donations, tick moat, Ivy League nannies. There’s almost nothing left to pay Lizzie’s wealth tax.