@jhs I appreciate your guesses as to what might happen if Harvard threw down the gauntlet as I’m suggesting. In your first scenario, other institutions (and maybe legal requirements) go along and Harvard at least temporarily reaps the benefits. That’s approximately what I’ve been predicting and it doesn’t bother me at all. Good for Harvard and anybody else who stops selling seats in their institutions. Everybody adapts to the new, more ethical normal. Your second scenario (based on the parallel with the early admissions programs) seems more tenuous to me. Early admissions plans have the power to shape whole classes, so abolishing/ reinstating a plan can have a deep, serious impact on the class. Eliminating developmental admissions, however, is largely, but in this case potently, symbolic.
I still dont see how the Harvard quote precludes wealthy kids who meet that standard today. But I get that somehow some posters do. Lol.
Foo, not distinguished, but if a kid is aiming for a tier of colleges, the effort to know what they’re applying to isn’t going to kill him.
Maybe it’s because I have a kid who would kill me if I did it, but to me dropping $2.5 million on a college entrance represents a poisonous intervention in a teenager’s life. If you have 2.5 million to blow, then your kid doesn’t need whatever extra advantage you think comes with wearing crimson. How about raising them to understand that they need to earn what they get? Few people seem interested in the long-term impact on these kids’ of having daddy buy them a college entrance, but it’s a teachable moment.
“Outside of a blinkered few, most people aren’t going to begrudge Daddy Warbucks’ $2.5M check to his alma mater to ensure Annie wears crimson. Most people will intuitively understand and accept that people who write large checks to non-profits are afforded a favor or two. Ethically, I suppose you could consider it like buying an indulgence into heaven but this is a poor comparison as they still need to attend, complete the work and graduate.”
@ucbalumnus - I have no idea whether LACs skew wealthier than the Ivies or not. I added that comment so that nobody would think that I have some vested interest in my children attending H or that I am mad because they didn’t get in H.
lookingforward, it’s not a question of whether the wealthy student meets the standard for admission to Harvard, but whether the donation gives the student a significant admissions advantage relative to the thousands of other students who also meet the standard. At some level of donation, I am fairly certain that it does, even beyond the unusual life experiences and mode of thought that the wealthy student has by virtue of being wealthy, which could also give a boost to the odds.
I don’t think I changed the premises of the question to the point it wasn’t worth dealing with, @LadyMeowMeow - having answered yours, I just posed a different, but related, one to you. You seem to think it’s damaging to Harvard’s brand to admit some number of rich kids primarily because they’re rich. I disagree, for reasons @blossom expressed better than I ever could (“Harvard-rich” - I’m going to use that).
Of course Harvard should provide an unparalleled academic experience to its budding geniuses as well as its quarterbacks and everyone else there, but, as @blossom says, parents around the world want their kids to go to Harvard because they want their kids to be kids who go to Harvard, with all of the advantages conveyed thereby (which include, in addition to taking classes with Nobel-laureate professors, hanging out in the common room with Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund III for four years and having him as a contact when you’re looking for investors for your hedge fund).
Parents from Muncie to Mumbai aren’t dreaming of their kids getting a Harvard diploma because they have an abstract notion of Harvard as some sort of citadel of moral purity and the fount of all knowledge - they want their kids to live in the same stairwell as people like Mark Zuckerberg (and the Winklevii), Conan O’Brien, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Rashida Jones so that they can grow up and be like them, and a large proportion of the kids want the same thing. And, by the way, they want them to make powerful and influential friends there to help them on their journey through life. THAT is the brand of Harvard that you think some development admits are damaging: “success” (and the frequent corollary of “rich”). It bleeds crimson from the mission statement.
So I asked you, since you seemed to think it was a big deal that I condoned Harvard putting a price on admissions in certain circumstances, what your price was - because I think you must either have one or you have a very different idea about what Harvard is than I do. My scenario included the Platonic ideal of one version of Harvard success - Bill Gates - who would shock few by leaving his entire estate to his alma mater (he’s made the Giving Pledge, after all). If he were to do that, he would almost certainly put some conditions on it, which might include, for the sake of argument, admitting a few slightly-dim-but-in-the-range-of-acceptable kids that he designated. I wondered if you were the president of Harvard and had the power to agree to this and designate the use of the proceeds, whether you’d do the deal (and defend the consequences of not doing it if that’s what you decided). It doesn’t seem an unreasonable question in the circumstances.
@LadyMeowMeow - The thing you have to understand that if someone gives a few million dollars so that his children can be accepted at H the few million dollars stays with the institution to do whatever. Many times the money provides long term benefits to everyone who attends H. I think that providing admission to a handful of kids is worth the tradeoff of the good the money can do for the institution.
Different people make different decisions. Doesn’t make any of them right or wrong necessarily. Just different. Particularly true when raising kids. And what some view as a negative is viewed as a positive by others.
So how do institutions, businesses, etc. manage in that reality? They make decisions which they view are in their best interests (ideally long term but not always). Some people will disagree, would have made different decisions, etc. That’s life and what makes it interesting.
If you disagree with those decisions, pick another institution, business, etc. Write letters to them expressing your concerns. Maybe they will make changes.
@DeepBlue86 As I’ve said too many times, Harvard is and will remain “wealthy in, wealthy out” no matter what happens with developmental admissions. I don’t know where anybody got the (ridiculous) idea that rich kids damage Harvard’s brand because they’re rich. Quantmech says it (roughly) just above you: it doesn’t freaking matter how rich an applicant is – what matters is the moral evil that takes place with the large donation.
Your scenario, in line with the Ayn Randian juggernaut view of Harvard, leaves out any consideration of the impact on the student. You also added the premise that kids who were granted admission thanks to Bill Gates’s billions would fit in seamlessly… which I believe would be impossible. It would be a defining fact of their lives and everyone would know it, including every press outlet. If I were the president of Harvard I’d take any proposal from Bill quite seriously but I’d ask him to rethink the wisdom of screwing with these kids’ lives.
Moral evil? Give me a break. There are kids growing up in Bridgeport CT, a few exits off the interstate from Greenwich (one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country) who graduate from HS reading at a 3rd grade level. There are kids growing up in Camden and Trenton NJ (close by Princeton) who can’t multiply when they graduate from HS. This isn’t rural Arkansas or Appalachia. Go check the census data on HH income in CT and NJ.
I could make you a list of moral evils vis-a-vis education in the US and “pay for play” at Harvard, Princeton or Yale wouldn’t even make it to the top 50. Not even a rounding error.
Impact on the student? Every year ESPN does some expose of a college football player or basketball player who has a 3.4 GPA but has never taken an exam, can’t write a coherent paragraph, and has zero employment prospects outside of the sports world.
You want a moral evil in the university system, I can show you evil- largely African American kids who are being exploited by big, money making college sports factories and getting zilch education in return for playing.
A few reasonably smart (but not Harvard-smart) kids who are living it up at a Finals club?
Please.
That argument works pretty well in many – the vast majority – of institutional contexts. A point of disagreement on this thread is the extent to which it really applies to Harvard. Is it more ethical of Harvard to turn down the money to be earned by naming houses… while taking admission bribes?
“Many times the money provides long term benefits to everyone who attends H. I think that providing admission to a handful of kids is worth the tradeoff of the good the money can do for the institution.”
I don’t know why there is an entire thread devoted to the fact that Harvard & others admit a small handful of development students each year. It’s like getting upset that the biggest donor to the Met gets free tickets to an exhibition.
Honestly, I think it’s just another symptom of the fetishization of elite colleges by many posters.
At most, what’s at stake is a few spots in Harvard’s freshmen class.
We’re not talking about denying students life-saving brain surgery.
No one is going to die if they or their kid doesn’t get into Harvard and instead has to slum it at another top-20 university. Jeesh. Get over yourself. As far as I know you don’t even have any connection to these schools and haven’t contributed time, effort, or money to supporting them or their students.
I agree with @blossom and @JHS 's posts 192 and 193, especially this -
The only difference is that I would say that the presence of the rich and powerful’s offspring at schools like Harvard is about 1/4 of the brand, not 100%. But it’s still important. After all, Malia Obama - who probably could have gone practically anywhere - didn’t enroll at the Rocco school of typewriter maintenance; she enrolled at Harvard. She matriculated because of the brand - and her matriculation builds the brand too.
Of course colleges give preferences to legacies and even greater preferences to development admits (who are mostly legacies too). I think it’s absurd that some posters try to deny this. You can still think that schools like Harvard are great institutions without having to deny the obvious or to pretend that the admissions decisions are always 100% strictly meritocratic.
Look, my wife and I are very active alumni and been chairs of our local schools committee in a region that is one of the biggest feeders to elite schools. Probably seen thousands of admissions results over the last 10 years. I have a pretty good sense of which alumni are very involved with the school and which alums have been significant contributors. For these alums, I could have predicted which of their children were going to be admitted when their kids were in middle school and been 80% accurate. Mostly based on the parents, not their children (however, their children were generally well qualified for admission too). Same thing for quite a few development admits too.
Any graduate of these schools who’s attended a 35-year class reunion can testify to this.
Facts are facts. To pretend otherwise is absurd.
With all due respect, I think Harvard is infinitely more knowledgeable about how to manage its “brand” than most people on this thread. They seem to have done an OK job of it over the past 380 years. After all, people with absolutely no affiliation with the school seem to be heavily invested in what they do 
And we’ll see where Bill Gates’ kids end up going to college.
Somehow, I don’t think it’ll be the state flagship … 
2Simon- I agree with your post in its entirety but wanted to clarify that I never meant to suggest that Harvard’s entire brand was Rich Kids. And I think it’s less than 25%. (but not zero). There’s also the intellectual stuff (again, not 100% of the brand, despite what some alums would like you to think) and the Gentleman-Athlete (or Gentlewoman) and the deep commitment to service-- government, peace corps, TFA, Supreme Court/Federal bench positions when private practice pays multiple times more, etc.
But Rich cannot fall to zero, in the same way that even during the era of quotas and anti-Semitism and all that stuff which has been well documented, Harvard had Jewish faculty AND staff AND students. Harvard recognized that the great-great-grandchildren of those who came over on the Mayflower or similar, and the Cabot/Lowell’s and their ilk were not enough to keep Harvard being Harvard. And similar recognition with other ethnic and religious groups. And that’s not about money or donations or endowment or development- that’s making sure that in every Nobel announcement there is someone with a Harvard connection, and that when the big moonshot research is being done on cancer there is someone who graduated from Harvard college (not just the med school) and that when the Rhodes are announced USA Today can do an entire story on a woman from Arkansas State so they can say, “see, you don’t need to go to Harvard to win a Rhodes”. And making sure that Marshall’s, Truman’s, White House Fellows et al all have their share of Harvard grads.
So 4 or 5 rich kids a year who bought their way in? Yawn.
I’ll rephrase, @LadyMeowMeow. I’ve understood you to say that you think it’s damaging to Harvard’s brand to admit kids whose family made a big donation that sealed the deal. That’s certainly what I meant when I said you thought “it’s damaging to Harvard’s brand to admit some number of rich kids primarily because they’re rich”. I’m sorry if you think I mischaracterized your views. To be clear, I disagree with you that this damages Harvard’s brand - but, as I’ve said, that’s for Harvard to determine.
Having met a few developmental admits over the years, I have no worries about the impact on the Gates admits (or any other developmental admits) themselves, who I have no doubt will be just fine. They’ll make lots of friends, many but not all of whom will also be rich, and will have a grand old time, unruffled by any doubts as to whether or not they belong at Harvard. After all, they may well be more articulate than the defensive lineman down the hall.
On the other hand, the students who tend to be plagued by self-doubt and drop out in the largest numbers are the first-gens and URMs who find themselves in seminars with kids from Exeter who actually downshift academically at Harvard but are intimidatingly smart (and socially-skilled) enough to make these poor kids feel like they landed on another planet where everyone’s speaking a different language. The greater “moral evil” might be admitting these kids and then not providing them adequate support.
The scenario in the (still unanswered) question I posed to you assumed that Bill Gates identified these kids privately to Harvard and they were subsequently admitted. Why would it be otherwise? It’s actually potentially more embarrassing for the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund IIIs of the world, because their family name tends to be plastered on a building after the donation is made. But if word got out about the identity of the lucky Gates beneficiaries, I doubt many would care, any more than they generally care about Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund III and the background to his admission.
@DeepBlue86 has had many posts with various financial numbers for Harvard and two caught my eye.
There was another paragraph in another post which mentions that Harvard collected 301 million or so through tuition. It also said about 50% (?) or so have some financial aid.
These two show something very important.
Harvard can’t afford to run undergrad school at this time purely using endowment money. Most of the endowment is targeted funding like the $350 million above. I don’t believe they can fund even a single undergrad tuition out of that money since it is targeted towards a graduate school where the money will help the graduate students with RA scholarships. The 5% of the endowment money spent each year has to support many targeted allocations including the many graduate schools, research institutions, construction projects etc.
http://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard/harvard-glance
So they seem to be spending 170 million while collecting 301 million which shows how much more money they need to fully fund everyone’s tuition through endowment. They need to keep raising money and find donors who will have development kids.
Q and Al2, the thread is predicated on the idea these are quid pro quo admits, “bribes.” Initially, that Jared would not have been accepted without his father’s donation. And then that some high number of wealthy donor kids, likewise, “take someone else’s place.” Based on what?
No one seems to be speaking hypothetically, but no one really knows. This chat hasn’t discussed this as “edge,” but with outright certainty that something foul is going on.
A couple of times, it’s been pointed out that we’re talking about- what?- 1, 2, 4 kids? Far more are “substantially disadvantaged,” QM, by their home locations and high schools (geo diversity,) the need to balance the number of kids aiming for various majors, and other factors.
Did a little Googling. Turns out that Bill Gates only has 1 child who’s old enough to have gone to college.
She’s currently at Stanford.
The Gates Foundation has given in excess of $50 million to Stanford. In addition, Bill gave a big enough donation that they named the Computer Science building after him.
Not sure if many people think that either Bill Gates or Stanford University suffered very much.
However, if anyone has a spare $50 million then I’d be happy to suffer too
Honest question -
Let’s say that Podunk U. admits some qualified students. But a significant factor in their acceptance is that they’re full pay or their parents gave money to Ol’ Podunk. (Of course, since it’s Podunk U. instead of Harvard we’re probably talking about a $100,000 donation instead of a $10,000,000 donation).
Are the people who are upset if this happens at Harvard equally outraged if it happens at Podunk?
This goes back to @QuantMech 6 degrees of Jared Kushner experiment. Do middle class kids at HYP actually end up rooming with some future Saudi Prince and using that connection to get some high powered job as an oil lobbyist, or is that just some Ivy league myth that persists in middle class suburbia?
al2simon, I am interested in the viewpoint that you posted in #211, but I have to take exception to two of the opening sentences:
- I don’t know why there is an entire thread devoted to the fact that Harvard & others admit a small handful of development students each year.
I think the point of lookingforward’s post #215 and earlier posts is to deny that this is even the case–that is, that there is no quid pro quo involved, and these students would have been admitted with or without the donation. (I don’t speak of Kushner specifically–as I wrote earlier, I have no opinion about his admission to Harvard.)
- It’s like getting upset that the biggest donor to the Met gets free tickets to an exhibition.
Actually, I think it is quite different from that. Tickets to an exhibition at the Met are typically for sale, aren’t they? So if a donor gets “free” tickets, the donor is providing money through a different channel. I have no objection to this. The reason that the donor-related admits at Harvard (assuming that they do occur) are different is that Harvard admission is not generally for sale.
(Or maybe we should view it as being for sale, but if you have to ask the price . . . )
Again, QM, misinterpreting me. I’ve taken the position that people are pretty hot about something they don’t know, that Golden’s innuendo isn’t sufficient. I get the worries, but not the conviction.
These kids may NOT have been admitted, despite the donation.
Frankly, I worry more about the hundreds of good kids sifted out by geo diversity.