New money means wealth that was mostly based on efforts (not due to passive investments) by the current holder.
micromacrofoot1 was trying to distinguish “a lot of money” from “a little bit of money”, but old money is not the correct term for that.
From Wikipedia, the varsity blues scandal was about 33 sets of parents paying ~$25M total. That is chump change compared to donating a whole building, which new or old money can do, because they would have access to tens of millions of dollars.
fair, though I was thinking the context that "old money" is usually old because there's a lot of it... but new/old signaling quantity is probably less true now than ever
there's also some behavior involved, traditionally it would be a major social faux pas to ask for special treatment in a traceable way
