<p>I’m not sure why I feel this way, or I get this feeling from the stereotypes, but out of HYP, I get the feeling there’s less kids who get in because of large donations at Harvard. This doesn’t really correlate with the 32b endowment, though.
My question is, are HYP about equal in terms of kids taken due to endowments…or not?</p>
<p>You are talking about developmental cases more than nepotism. Nepotism is favoritism shown to one’s relatives. An example would be if the Dean of Admissions admitted his own son or nephew or other family member over other qualified candidates. I suppose legacy admissions could be considered a form of nepotism. But since it is favoritism shown to the relatives of others (for the sake of maintaining good relationships with the alumni community) rather than to one’s own relatives, I guess it would be indirect nepotism or nepotism once removed. </p>
<p>You’re talking about favoritism shown to rich people in the hope of a future donation. That sort of thing goes on to some degree at pretty much every private college. Whether it goes on at Harvard more or less than at its peer schools I have no idea.</p>
<p>It’s hard to tell, because my impression is that none of these schools would ever have more than 15 “development” kids–those admitted because of their parents’ ability to or track record of making large donations–per class. Even if the schools would take more, there aren’t THAT many billionaires with children academically qualified to go to HYP each year, so the pool of potential candidates is not even that large. And none of these places would take somebody who’d drop out–no matter the money, taking a C/D student is going to be a bad idea for both parties.</p>
<p>So if Princeton takes 15 out of 1300 and Harvard takes 9 out of 1600, neither of those is still going to impact your life very much.</p>
<p>This is a bizarre thing to speculate – were there wealthy people when I attended my HYP college? Sure. Could I have told you if any or none of them were development admits? Never. Whether H has fewer than Y or P means WHAT to you or any applicant?</p>
<p>SMH</p>