My family is like JHS tons of Harvard legacies. Of this generation. My older son got in. (800’s on SAT scores, top 1% of his class, impressive ECs), my younger son did not (top 6% of class, 690 Math, 790 Verbal score rest above 700, less impressive ECs). I thought Harvard called it right and we still give the modest $50-$200 a year we always have. My brother’s daughter applied and was rejected. She was a solid applicant - number 3 in a large class, good but not perfect SATs, nice activities - her interviewer thought she was the best applicant he’d seen in years.) My brother stopped giving. (He also only gave modest amounts.) One of my cousins - all their kids went to Harvard. No idea what their grades or scores were, but since my cousin had worked in the admissions office, been a tutor at Harvard and now works in a prep school admissions office I think they had pretty good application. I know they had good ECs and all three are world class athletes in an unusual club sport.
Several kids in our high school were admitted to both Yale (not a legacy) and Harvard ( legacy) during the years my kids were there. They were all in the tippy top of the class, with top scores and more than solid ECs. @californiaaa I didn’t see any discrimination.
A couple of nuances that haven’t been discussed much in this thread (although a few posters have touched on them):
Every year practically every elite university admits a handful of "development" cases whose academic skills are marginal under the university's normal standards -- as @Hunt says, that's been known forever. But it's really a handful. I doubt you could find a dozen in any university's class in any year, and most classes wouldn't even have half that number. The effect of this practice on whatever the university's normal admissions process may be is negligible, not even a rounding error.
One childhood friend was a development admit in my class at Yale. He was miserable the whole time he was there. Things that came easy to everyone else were difficult for him. But I knew a couple other people in the same category who were wonderful students and community members. I took a class on nonprofit organizations where one of the students was the grandchild of a major philanthropist. The student's mother was a board member at a major university (one commonly referred to on CC with a single initial); an uncle was CEO of a brand-name international charity. You can bet that student brought a perspective and focus to class discussions that were unique and extremely valuable.
Which leads to two points: First, what makes Harvard Harvard -- what makes the elite American colleges so special -- is not just smart students associating with one another and with smart faculty members. It's also the close connection between all those smart people and the other smart people running the country, running its businesses, and creating its culture. Those of you who aspire to go to Harvard (or who aspire to see your children at Harvard) *want* there to be some Jared Kushners there -- it makes Harvard College more valuable for you.
Second, Harvard and its peers are not indiscriminate in the development candidates they accept. There is no price list somewhere that says for $5 million you can get one kid accepted. I know of situations where a Master of the Universe parent or grandparent has been told not to embarrass the college and themselves by having an unqualified heir apply, including trustees, and one family whose name adorned a building and several professorships. Standards get bent for development candidates, sure, but not completely disregarded. And part of that is a recognition that the standards themselves are far from perfect in identifying the future leaders and producers – in many fields – a university hopes to educate. A young person with sufficient but not dazzling intelligence, but unlimited capital, is a far better bet to make an impact on the world than someone who maxes out the SATs and does well in some math contest.
Also, they are not indiscriminate in the families they accept. The Jared Kushner story is a little hard to believe because it involves a one-time donation. Based on what I know and have heard, that’s not the way Harvard has ever usually operated. A donor/family becomes valuable because of sustained high-level support over time, with the capacity and track record to suggest that more will follow. One-off transactions, even of several million dollars, do not fit the bill. Charles Kushner, for all his other faults, clearly had a track record of sustained generosity to other educational institutions, which probably had an impact on Harvard. And I suspect that his support for Harvard did not stop when his son was admitted (or perhaps would not have stopped but for his legal woes and criminal conviction).
Hunt, I don’t think the prep school quotes were “lies.” I think they were selectively included in Golden’s book, to make a point, to enhance his book, its aura of authority and sales. (If anyone isn’t aware of how this works in writing, think about it.) I don’t believe they are necessarily representative of how the school felt or indicative of his LoRs.
I also think it’s critical that we do not have Jared’s actual record, just hearsay. (And this circular argument that Golden said it, so it must be accurate. After all, it got published! After all, it’s been bought many times! It can’t possibly be snake oil!) How many times on CC do we hear an aggrieved kid or parent state, “Well, he wasn’t so great,” as if that’s Gospel. As if all that matters is making a declaration or two.
No one here is privy to Jared’s actual record. Was he a C student on warning? What were his scores? Too many here are just wanting to go on Golden’s writing. (Golden who? He’s not an adcom, he’s a writer and frankly, plying that trade quite well, to have so many accept him at face value.)
I can tell you, from ime, that very few top donors have kids applying in a given year. Maybe one or two.That’s not enough to posit some inner golden handshake for all wealthy. I can also tell, ime, that, like it or not, 2.5 mil is small potatoes and if the kid were truly subpar, this would have been nipped in the bud.
Well, I guess the relatively small donation is some evidence that Jared’s stats may have been better than Golden suggests. And he was able to graduate from Harvard. It’s my opinion that even the super-rich will not get a break from Ivy League professors just because they are rich.
So perhaps one takeaway is to tell people that you shouldn’t expect to get into Harvard just by ponying up a paltry 2.5 million bucks.
Question: I’m sure Harvard doesn’t have a price list, but is there some amount that would get a reasonably-qualified student a firm commitment for admission? (I know that nobody actually knows the answer to this question.)
With the exception of the few Ivies known for their intense workloads(i.e. Cornell) or peer elites(Caltech, MIT, CMU, UChicago, Swat, etc), the academics according to my own experiences taking summer undergrad and taking grad classes at two elite Us and moreso those of my HS classmates and relatives who ARE ALUMS is that the academics are usually manageable so even someone with marginal/subpar HS stats should be able to graduate in 4 years with decent grades(3.0 cum or greater). Even with honors considering 90% of Kusher’s graduating class did so according to the article in OP.
And those who would have struggled at Ivies other than Cornell would likely have struggled at comparable or colleges ranked a tier or more down.
One case I personally know of is an older college classmate who was admitted to one as a legacy despite having subpar HS stats for an Ivy* due to having a grandparent who was a noted alum AND donated millions in the decades since her graduation. Ended up turning it down because of concerns he couldn’t handle the work and assuming our LAC would be “much easier”.
Only thing…he was wrong about our LAC as he ended up crashing and burning academically to the point of being placed on academic suspension for a year and having to repeat several intermediate/advanced courses in his major.
And he struggled with the readings and completing assignments despite the fact he was repeating those courses whereas I was completely puzzled as I didn’t think the readings/assignments were a big deal and was taking those courses for the first and only time.
In fact, he would repeatedly asked me and a few other classmates “How do you guys finish those readings/research paper drafts so quickly?” during the semesters when we shared the same intermediate/upper-level courses together. And those courses were in his major whereas I was only minoring in it.
I should also add that he spent more time in the library than I did during my undergrad career. However, he wasn’t very efficient with the use of his study time from what I’ve seen the few times studied together.
I've actually seen the transcript and compared it to the stats of students admitted from his boarding school and my public magnet during his graduating year. If he wasn't hooked, his HS GPA/SATs were such there's no way he'd have been admitted to that Ivy from his boarding school or mine had he not had the legacy hook he did.
And on paper, his HS GPA was much better than my HS transcript (top 10-15% of his boarding school graduating class) and yet, struggled through the very same course assignments/exams I dispatched without difficulty even though he was repeating them a second time.
One Prof at an Ivy where I took a summer class with whom I developed good rapport and had 20+ years at the time would disagree with that.
S/he experienced several cases where the dean, higher admins, and coaches placed pressure on him/her to give higher grades for legacy/developmental or athlete students than the mediocre or worse quality of actual work/exams would merit. Of course, this all took place behind closed doors and they’ll all deny it if asked because they understandably don’t want to confirm anything which places their institution and themselves in a bad light.
@JHS, I have no reason to doubt the number of “development” cases you cite, but I also haven’t seen any credible study to support it. 6-12 in every class? Maybe, maybe not. Any number above zero hurts the brand, in my opinion.
As to “wanting” there to be some Jared Kushners at Harvard, I’ll politely disagree. You take Harvard with the 6-12 Richie Riches per year, and I’ll take Harvard with the 6-12 kids they would have admitted instead of them. Please note that I do not assume that my 6-12 would be 2400 / 4.0 kids. They’d be outstanding students in their own ways – statistically, they’d be wealthy – and I’d much rather have them in my classes than the ones who gamed the system.
I just wanted to reiterate that there are many routes through Harvard. A developmental admit does not need any breaks from the faculty to succeed in some of the easier ones.
I have no idea about Kushner’s high school record–Golden could be completely wrong about it. In any given developmental case, one has no idea whether the student would have been accepted had the student been merely a Mech and not a Gotrocks (of Gotrocks Hall, Gotrocks Library, and Gotrocks Lacrosse Practice Facility).
But it beggars belief to deny that there is no special consideration for the children of major donors. It has been made pretty clear that a large fraction of Harvard’s applicant pool could succeed academically at Harvard. So provided that the “sponsored” student is among the capable subset, I think the odds of his/her admission become quite high.
I agree with JHS that a very wealthy/connected student brings a special perspective to class discussions, for those who happen to take classes with that student. “The very rich are different from you and me.”
@LadyMeowMeow - Part of the appeal of these super elite schools is that there are super elite people there who can help you with your career. You really do want those super duper influential people there.
Also, wanted to add that I agree with those who have suggested that a one-off donation of $2.5 million will not do the trick. It’s the prospect of future gifts, as well.
I have traveled with a development officer from my home university, and several other faculty/administrators, on a fund-raising trip. We had everyone’s 20-year donation records, including our own. Collectively, the university employees going out to raise money had given substantially more than the people we were going to ask. On the other hand, the people that we were traveling to see had much greater giving capacity.
Meh. Some kids get into Harvard because they’re truly geniuses, some because they can row a boat or throw a ball really well, some are natural leaders and some bring a lot of money.
We have no family applicants to Harvard in 3 generations. So at one level, I don’t care at all what Harvard admissions is doing.
I do appreciate honest representations of the admissions process anywhere, though. I certainly don’t need to know on an applicant-by-applicant basis. But I think I have a pretty good picture overall, and in my picture, a family’s donations do have an impact on the admissions likelihood of an applicant who is qualified at a basic level.
It would be interesting to see whether a very wealthy family that did not donate any money to a given university, and that had announced plans to give all of their future donations to Heifer International (or some other charity with no university affiliation) would have the same admissions success for their children as an actual donor family would have for their children.
The scion of the very wealthy family would presumably still have the mindset of the “Masters of the Universe,” the connections, and the “savvy” that comes from being wealthy.
A study of this phenomenon would go some way toward defusing the “pay for play” view, if the odds are the same for both family’s children.
I’ve had access to donor correspondence, too, for every undergrad endowment. And including the actual irate letters when that wealthy family learned it had no pull.
“Consideration” is neither a promise nor a guarantee.
Perhaps savvier, yes, QM. Wonder who the Kushners used as a college consultant.
But for those with hs kids, the energy could be better put into understanding what the colleges do value and look for, rather than these sidelines about who’s going to best them with these speculative shortcuts. Most kids don’t know more than their own hs standing.
@Proudpatriot Yes, elite schools are attractive in part because they have elite students, but we seem to have a different idea of what that means. Personal wealth, political connections, legacy status? Meh. Any kid who has to rely on those to get into college is entering with an ethical deficit.
Many students want to go to school with people who have personal wealth and political connections to help them establish their own personal wealth and political connections. I don’t see how using being politically connected to help with admissions is any different than any other group that is given preference in admissions.
and a quote from me, on another, similar thread - apologies to those who are seeing it again:
Harvard admits 2,000 kids a year, who comprise the mix that best satisfies Harvard’s various institutional needs as it perceives them. If Harvard doesn’t take one particular high-stats kid, it’s for one of two reasons: (i) their credentials didn’t qualify them for the proportion of the class that’s allocated to pure brainiacs; or (ii) having not qualified as a brainiac, they were competing based on their total mix of attributes and there were other people Harvard felt it needed more, for any number of reasons. The vast majority of these reasons have nothing to do with money; see @Hunt’s quote upthread regarding athletes, for example - Harvard recruits about 200 of those a year, representing over 10% of each class.
I recognize some views upthread differ, but I think a lot of people who are disgruntled about not enough high-stats kids getting into Harvard wouldn’t necessarily want to send their own high-stats kid there if the only people she were going to meet were other kids who were there primarily because they had the highest stats. They’d prefer to have her go somewhere that would give her a top-flight education (including the kind that takes place outside the classroom) while enabling her to rub elbows with people who are going to grow up to be the future leaders of the country in a variety of academic, social and cultural spheres. Ironically, people like this want Harvard to stay Harvard - just for Harvard to give a slot to their kid that it would prefer to give to someone else.
Being politically connected and/or wealthy shouldn’t be disqualifying in and of itself, but if the point of holistic admissions is to evaluate applicants relative to their opportunities, then well-resourced social elites should be held to the very highest, not lowest, standards. Being wealthy and connected is an artifact of birth, not a personal achievement, so given the resources available to Jared Kushner, he should’ve been admitted to Harvard only if he was an extremely high-achieving applicant. (This includes but is obviously not limited to GPA and test scores.) Needless to say, his father’s donation to the university should not have been a factor.
@DeepBlue86 “They’d prefer to have her go somewhere that would give her a top-flight education (including the kind that takes place outside the classroom) while enabling her to rub elbows with people who are going to grow up to be the future leaders of the country in a variety of academic, social and cultural spheres.”
Exactly. I don’t know where the false dichotomy between “wealthy and connected” and “high stats” came from. My point is that whoever was shoved out of line to let Jared Kushner in – find me that kid – was odds-on a better bet to “grow up to be the future leader of the country in a variety of academic, social, and cultural spheres.” I’d much rather have my kids rub elbows with that unnamed, undoubtedly fabulous, casualty of the process.
As a former STEM student, with future STEM student kids, the presence of wealthy, well-connected kids in my quantum chemistry class would not have made it any more or less valuable an experience.
Jared is about to become the son-in-law of the President of the United States. Seems unlikely that unnamed kid whose place Jared took would have provided better connections in terms of money, power and influence.
Just like what college is “best” will depend on the goals/abilities of a given student, the benefit of wealthy, well connected kids will vary based on your goals.
And there is a significant difference when wealth is being discussed in terms of billionaires and millionaires.
There’s a lot more to college than chemistry classes. The whole point of Harvard’s residential college system is that you get to promote community among everyone at Harvard, scholarship kids and those born with silver spoons in their mouths.
Today I did a cryptoquote puzzle and the author of the quote was someone I knew at college - she probably got in via affirmative action, but she’s gone on to become quite well known. How cool is that?
