<p>Do connections such as these really help students get into college...</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Knowing wealthy, affluent alumni that will write letters (They may or may not donate to their school, I haven't asked them)</p></li>
<li><p>Having connections with a state representative that is also willing to write a letter of recommendation</p></li>
<li><p>Belonging to a very wealthy family</p></li>
</ul>
<p>...Please keep in mind that these circumstances are for college applications to top selective universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, NYU among others.</p>
<p>(This question is completely hypothetical and I'm not saying any of this applies to me at all. I'm just curious I don't need a bunch of "haters" in here.)</p>
<p>"Knowing wealthy, affluent alumni that will write letters (They may or may not donate to their school, I haven’t asked them)</p>
<ul>
<li>Having connections with a state representative that is also willing to write a letter of recommendation"</li>
</ul>
<p>Probably not. Public officials will write letters of recc for probably anyone who asks them who isn’t a felon. Wealthy alum probably have extr pull only for their own kids – and that would be true only if the alums have been big donors to the school.</p>
<p>“Belonging to a very wealthy family”</p>
<p>Only if that family is at least, for instance, multimillionaires, and has made large donations or promises to do so if you’re admitted.</p>
<p>A top 5 school admittance is like a major award. Would you give a major award
to someone because they ‘knew’ someone? only under the remote chance that
‘the acquaintance’ is going to go bat for the applicant in a major way. This
will likely not happen with politicians or neighbors.</p>
<p>Belonging to a wealthy family (as in being the scion) will have a major impact.
… But then you would probably not be on CC trying to learn how to get an
advantage would you? ;)</p>
<p>I do know an admitted student who was ‘the cousin’ in a family that had donated
a ‘wing’ to a HYPS school. He was waitlisted and eventually admitted when some equivalent
peers from my HS were admittted straight away. Equivalent peers on the waitlist
apparently did not get in.</p>
<p>Like i said Synth i’m not saying this question is my situation. And just a side note, i don’t know why CC wouldn’t be a resource for the wealthy along with middle and lower class. It is a large well known source of information and one of the top results from google when searching for info about college.</p>
<p>With a $300 mm** net worth, Junior will have a college counsellor with
a pedigreed admittance record helping him out typically from his
soph year.</p>
<p>Also Junior would have already been put on an athletic or research
track in his freshman year in hs to ensure that the family scion will end
up in the right college.</p>
<p>**An arbitrary number- $300 mm - the kind of net worth that could possibly turn
heads at top 5 schools- not the mill of the run millionaire practioners of medicine
or others.</p>
<p>Even though I obviously have no experience in this (if I had that kind of cash why go to college lol?) if someone promised to donate one or two million dollars to a school in return for acceptance wouldn’t the top schools love it if the applicant is reasonably qualified? Especially with the lack of liquidity top schools have in their endowments and the fact that one million dollars alone would be able to fund twenty full need kids’ expenses for a year wouldn’t these schools be willing to do it? It seems sort of odd that people are mentioning 300 million net worth, but then again, maybe the price of these spots is actually really high?</p>
<p>99% of colleges would take a million. They don’t hide the fact. Duke accepted Ralph Lauren’s kid with the promise of a gift and then only got half a million…so far anyway.</p>