Can you "Pay off" a college?

<p>Say if you had $100,000 (one hundred thousand) and you weren't that great of a student could you just pay say an Ivy league university such as Cornell, Harvard, or Penn to get accepted? If so how much would it take???</p>

<p>Officially speaking, no. But like anything, if your family is a "generous" donator to a school and well known by them theyll likely make room for their kid no matter what. Usually its not just the fact of donating money, but its also knowing people in high places.</p>

<p>Sort of like why interests groups give money to politicians; they dont "officially" sponsor a candidate to do stuff (thats illegal), but donators expect said politician to be sympathetic to their concerns.</p>

<p>Oh as for how much money? I'd say someone that has more money than they know what to do with would be a good start. Hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of dollars of contributions.</p>

<p>100 K - 1 mill should do it for most schools</p>

<p>Ya that sounds right. And before people go taking the moral high ground those contributions go to a lot of the things that schools do (adding dorms to add more students, research, buildings, professors, etc). Kind of like don't bite the hand that feeds you.</p>

<p>I dunno, but I think it's going to be hard enough to pay for tuition + room and board lol!</p>

<p>100,000 will not get you into an ivy league school.</p>

<p>try more along the lines of atleast a few million for Cornell, Brown, etc</p>

<p>and around $10 million for Harvard, Yale, Princeton.</p>

<p>Consider that a kid got rejected - not referred but rejected - from NYU after his dad donated $10mil - NYU!!!</p>

<p>well ex-president summers once said that it would take $50 million to get an unqualified applicant accepted to Harvard.</p>

<p>A 100,000 gift is peanuts. A lot of people get that in finan aid over four years.</p>

<p>I read in a magazine article about a reporter who asked the president of Harvard how much somebody would have to donate to Harvard in order to affect the admissions process. The reporter said that the president thought about it for a minute, and then said $50 million. I suspect that this is a bit high, but it gives you the idea.</p>

<p>People who are helped this way are called "developmental cases." There is an office on campus who manages them and intercedes for them in the same way that a coach might intercede with the admissions office for an athlete.</p>

<p>given that 4 years at an Ivy or many privates is $150K, they would laugh if you thought they'd admit you for another $100K.</p>

<p>Why are they called "developmental cases?" Because their money helps develop the school?</p>

<p>the very last page of the USC application packet is a "donation" sheet, where you write down how much money you are going to donate to the school. :) i think it's the same for harvard and some other private schools</p>

<p>ONLY $100k? You got to be kidding...
$250k at least in order to change your situation in the admission office...</p>

<p>I had a friend (older than me); his father found a financial aid foundation (about $80 million) exclusively for an Ivy school.
And he got in, undoubtedly.</p>

<p>200+k is spent overall by a student with no financial aid for 4 years.</p>

<p>At least 30-50 million for top schools.</p>

<p>
[quote]
well ex-president summers once said that it would take $50 million to get an unqualified applicant accepted to Harvard.

[/quote]
Aha, so that's around how much it costs for George Bush Jr. to get into Yale...</p>

<p>Yale is different... losing its touch evidently...</p>

<p>anyways, 100,000 is more than enough to get u into an Ivy. Soend that money on a good HS and earn ur way in</p>

<p>
[quote]
the very last page of the USC application packet is a "donation" sheet, where you write down how much money you are going to donate to the school. i think it's the same for harvard and some other private schools

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Haven't seen USC or Harvard ... but I have seen Yale, Brown, Penn, Stanford, Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, and WashU. I've never seen a donation sheet.</p>

<p>Harvard definitely doesn't have anything like that on their application.</p>

<p>
[quote]
the very last page of the USC application packet is a "donation" sheet, where you write down how much money you are going to donate to the school. i think it's the same for harvard and some other private schools.

[/quote]
I'm not sure where USC has a donation request in the application. I went to their website and checked the app forms that can be downloaded.
<a href="http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/admission/forms/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/admission/forms/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I applied to USC and I don't remember a donation sheet.</p>