Isn't the purpose of these donations to help your children, and their children, to get into the school? To establish your family as part of the tradition of that institution? To say that you like what that school is and does and that you want to connect yourself and your descendants to it?
Not really - most schools are pretty explicit (behind closed doors) about what it costs to get your kid in...submit an application, admissions looks at how qualified the candidate is, tells development, and they come up with a "suggested donation" a at Harvard a kid with good grades and SATs etc that would be a shoe in for say a top tier small liberal arts college (but wait list/rejection at Harvard) might cost ~$500k to $1M...so when you see people making really large donations it usually has more to do with legacy...or believe it or not appreciation for the opportunities afforded to them by their alma mater...that being said the whole notion of student aid is skewed by inflated/fake tuition prices...it's like paying $500 for an aspirin in the hospital the Medicaid patient paid 2% of that price, the Medicaid patient paid 10% private insurance 50% and cash 80-100% how much does an aspirin cost?
So either my high-school classmate was extraordinarily lucky to get admitted in spite of the fact that there was nothing spectacular about his academics/extra-curricular activities, or he was admitted because his father was alumni. Call me a cynic, but I'm still leaning towards the latter.
In reply to you and yajoe, obviously it doesn't hurt to be the child of an alum. But first MIT has to decide if you can do the work, e.g. the calculus and calculus based physics all students must take.
That sets a pretty high bar. The last time I checked, which was before the Great Recession changed the game and increased applicants, MIT was getting 13,000 applications a year despite the extreme amount of self-selection, of which they judged 3,000 could do the work. From that they construct a class of around 1,100 students.
Nice to clarify that, is there a list that seperates higher education institutions based on the preference of legacy admissions? Maybe someone at wikipedia could add legacy admissions yes or no in the right side panel of each university there is data. Ofcourse then universities will just say they don't consider legacy but they will do this anyway under the table...
Transparency on the alumni relations of each student is the only way to go I guess...
The most brutal school for admissions, where they look only at the students' performance and not at creating any kind of "well-rounded student body," is Cal Tech. I don't know how the others fall under them, but Cal Tech is on top of that particular list.
It should be noted, though, that this does not mean Caltech is unconcerned with a "well-rounded student body". They just do not use that as a factor when they are actually processing applications. If they want to change the demographics of the student body, they do so by trying to change the demographics of the applicant pool.
For instance, when I was a student there (class of '82), the biggest demographic problem within the student body was the severe imbalance between men and women. The undergraduates were only around 15% women. That's frustrating for pretty much everyone.
Caltech addressed this by trying hard to (1) get more qualified women to apply, and (2) convincing more of those who were accepted to choose Caltech over the other schools that accepted them. Essentially, they would treat a bright high school girl with a talent for math, science, or engineering the way schools with effective sports programs treated outstanding high school athletes.
Nowadays, around 40% of undergraduates there are women.
Indeed it is, and their requirements for all students go a fair amount beyond MIT's, including rigor. E.g. the last time I checked a few years ago you must show up on campus knowing single variable calculus and they start you on Apostol, although there's a later more practical track.
Similar to another poster, the only person admitted to MIT from my high school 10 years ago out of a class of 1200 from a wealthy suburb was the daughter of an alumnus who ran the interviews for the region. I just find it hard to believe Legacy doesn't play a factor even if there is no checkbox on the admission forms. The father stopped running interviews the year she got in.
Even Harvard, Stanford, and Yale each admitted 3 people that year (which, interestingly were different people -- it's as if they colluded to induce enrollment).
> Isn't the purpose of these donations to help your children, and their children, to get into the school?
There is certainly a subset that thinks like that. "Legacy" admission to a top tier school is probably not doing anyone any good, but that is a separate can of worms.
But to your point above: There are a serious number of donors who believe that they are doing a small part in improving society. As an example: Few people outside of tech know the name Cecil Green, but his donations have had lasting effect on several generations of students.
> Well it presumably helps the donor and his family.
Only in some ways. Folks definitely know they are legacy admits, and it wasn't clear to me that the resulting college experience helped either the donor or the family compared to more sensible placement.
As for the university, it might help in the short run financing, but eventually the admissions committees might notice that the legacy folks are taking up spaces from future donors of higher caliber.
Well then you really can't talk about a "meritocracy" with a straight face. Unless you define "merit" to mean "your parents have lots of money", which is a big part of how many people would argue "merit" is truly defined in the "real world" (along with race and gender).
The implicit premise of the author is incorrect. The majority of these donations are not about helping the poor. If some of the money ends up doing so, well, that's gravy, but not the motivating intent.
I think the author is trying to imply (somewhat ineffectively, imo) that because Ivy Universities are now seen as bastions of progressive thinking, that perhaps people think giving them money would further the progressive cause, whereas in reality, it is contributing to the widening wealth gap.
