How much influence can a donor recommendation have..

SJ2727
Sun, 09 Dec 2018 22:46:56 +0000

“To that end, if I was running the college, I would make any request by this guy a top priority. Tell him no on something and potentially piss him off? No thanks! And that’s generally how business works, and these schools are a business. Why jeopardize the gravy train and the reciprocal good will?”

Taking this argument at face value, even someone in the 1st percentile could get an offer if that was all it took. Somewhere on the continuum of grades vs how much you piss the donor off (and how close the relative needs to be to really piss the donor off) vs rather granting admission to one of the very many well qualified applicants with no donor connection is where the decision gets made. You’ve chosen 25th percentile because that’s where your son is, but it could be far off from that.

By the way, I hope your son doesn’t know any of this, because if he does get admitted he’s going to spend his college career knowing it was a favor rather than on his own merit; imposter syndrome is enough of an issue at these colleges even without a “real’ reason to be feeling it.