I have met a lot of Harvard grads, and the place is chock full of people like Jared. Harvard attracts Jareds from across the United States and around the globe. That is who they select for. And, I thank them for the public service. If Harvard didn’t behave this way, Jared and his friends might end up at a school that I would like to have my daughter attend.
Over here we have a virtuoso violinist, and here’s a best-selling novelist… and in the corner there’s a mathematician with a mean fastball. That one? No, he doesn’t work very hard at anything or know very much. He’s more of an ATM for the real students. Legend has it he can spew out 25 thousand $100 bills at a time.
I am the parent of a third year Harvard student and we visit often. The kids we have been introduced to by our daughter there have been consistently wonderful, bright, energetic and humble. Lots of first generation kids and URM’s and members of the LGBTQ community. My point being that the student population is very diverse. A number of these kids have been guests in our home. I cannot say enough about what I would call the overall quality of these kids.
Are there kids that come from privilege? Of course. Are some of these kids people you would not want to associate with? Of course.
My perspective is that Harvard balances their admissions process remarkably well, and the instances of the type of consideration occurring that is being discussed is far more infrequent than some would like to believe.
I truly understand the mindset. When a school is so incredibly selective every inequity whether perceived or real is magnified enormously.
The main reason that I am still posting on this thread is not that I am surprised (in response to #91), but that there keep being exchanges like #97 and #98. I do not imagine that it is possible for a wealthy parent to make a donation that will guarantee that his/her child is accepted to Harvard, if the child is not adequately qualified. I do strongly suspect that the combination of a major donation and a student who is among the thousands of applicants who are academically qualified and could succeed at Harvard will pretty much guarantee acceptance (provided that there is no significant non-academic problem with the student). This means acceptance in preference to others among the thousands of well-qualified applicants. Is this in dispute? I can’t quite tell whether lookingforward is challenging this specific view, or not.
Also, it seems to me to make sense to expect a higher level of accomplishment from an exceedingly wealthy student. As I understand it, a student’s accomplishments are evaluated in relation to his/her environment, by colleges that admit holistically. Upper middle-class parents are generally assumed to confer advantages on their children, which generally leads to the expectation of greater accomplishment. (I recognize that some students from poor backgrounds do great things; that doesn’t contradict my main point.) Why would one not expect exceptional accomplishment from a student who is exceptionally rich, if the same philosophy continued to apply at that level of wealth?
Perhaps the extremely rich student has to spend a great deal of time managing a stock portfolio, and it is recognized that this is more time-consuming than varsity sports?
In response to GreatKid, I think the issue is something a bit different from inequity, per se. I think there is a concern about a society in which the very wealthy do not operate on a level playing field with others. Of course, there are many things that money can buy directly, and it would be irrational to object to the advantages of wealth in that regard. On the other hand, even though in practice the U.S. is very far from achieving this standard, I think that most Americans think that “equal justice under law” should not be an empty slogan, but that “blindfolded justice” should be the ideal, and that we should move as quickly as possible in that direction. There have been some advances relative to the past, even though as a society we fall short.
Then, the question is whether Harvard admissions is basically a commodity, or whether Harvard admissions should operate on a “wealth-blind” basis.
Whether Harvard needs to admit wealthy students in order to provide scholarships to students in less advantaged circumstances is not at all clear to me. Harvard’s endowment is huge. I would be interested if anyone offers numbers to illustrate that the donations of a quite small number of very wealthy donors are actually needed.
That article discusses two very different things. Being the child of faculty or top administrators is one of the strongest hooks there is. A qualified facbrat gets in, period. Everywhere. I have even heard reliable accounts of situations where admitting a child was part of a pitch to get a faculty member to switch universities. Of course, faculty children tend to be pretty smart kids who are academically successful and sophisticated about college education, so in my experience they tend to be very successful applying to colleges where they have no hook, too.
Being the child of a donor who has given $500,000 (or $1 million, or more) over time gets you some form of special treatment, but that and $3.00 will get you a small coffee at Starbucks. Plus, maybe, a courtesy place on the waitlist. I have seen that happen. The real special treatment is being coddled enough so (they hope) you don’t stop giving if your child is not admitted. (Of course, there are applicants in this category who are super applicants and would be admitted in their own right Now, if you have been giving $100,000 a year or more for some time, and you are willing to step that annual gift up to $500,000 for a few years . . . that could move the needle, I suppose.
@LadyMeowMeow (and others): The core mission of elite universities isn’t to be “proud” of their students or to take credit for the students’ achievements. Their core mission is their own long-term sustainability and growth, as well as (of course) supporting a faculty that expands knowledge and scholarship and influencing leaders in society through education. To accomplish that, they want the donors of today, and they want the donors of tomorrow, too. They want to have educated the movers and shakers, too, and it’s not necessary to suggest that those movers and shakers wouldn’t have moved or shook had they gone to a different college.
JHS, while I agree with your post #105 with regard to a donation of $500,000, at some donation point between $10 million and $20 million, I think the tide shifts.
An unattributed comment about 500k.
My complaint is how certain some are that there is quid pro quo, based on hearsay. And the outrage that goes with it.
Sorry, but much on CC shows how little people understand about what it does take to be among the 5-10% admits. And all this (this thread, in particular,) based on a young man posters know little about.
I read the Golden book a few years ago. I find (and found at the time I read it) his approach to admissions to be simplistic at best. In his book, he seems to regard SAT score and class rank to be absolute determinants of an applicants’ worth. I just don’t think that is true, especially when you’re comparing candidates with above-average records.
I’m pulling from a post on CC of my own from two years ago, but in one section, which was also a Wall Street Journal article, he described a number of students from Groton who got into prestigious colleges, (allegedly) because they benefitted from some sort of hook. Forbes McPherson was one of those students. According to his Businessweek profile,
Some of his classmates, mentioned by name in Golden’s book, went on to do things like found elementary schools, or teach in New York public schools. I believe in holistic admissions. When used well, it allows admissions teams to create student bodies with a variety of interests, who go out to change the world.
Of course there is a minimum level of academic talent. An admissions officer could probably tell you where that lies for their institution. However, SAT scores and class rank are not going to tell you who will end up with an adult record of accomplishment like Renny MacPherson or Jared Kushner.
Are there development candidates who are given preferential treatment? Of course. But I think it will be interesting over time to observe the careers of the people named in the book as “undeserving.” Some of the most successful and influential people I know were not valedictorians.
A modest proposal: Six degrees of Jared Kushner
It seems to me that part of the argument for admitting students of wealth is that they bring a unique perspective to class discussions (hmmm, “class,” unintended double meaning).
So, I think it would be extremely interesting to analyze the current financial positions of students who were enrolled at Harvard when Kushner was a student there. (I realize that this is an experiment that cannot be performed, but please bear with me.) Have the students who roomed with Kushner (if there were any), took classes with Kushner, or participated in EC’s with Kushner become any wealthier now than their Harvard contemporaries who did not? Extending this to the second level, did students who were not in classes with Kushner, but who were in classes with students who had been in classes with Kushner, gain any financial edge? Then extending it to the third level, a classmate of a classmate of a classmate?
This probably needs to be corrected by major, since on the whole, I would expect Harvard economics majors to wind up wealthier than Harvard sociology majors. It also needs to be corrected for the social circles of other very wealthy Harvard students, but they are probably few enough in number that it would not be impossible.
Does anyone recall anything that Kushner said in class that made a difference? Did other students do better in their subsequent financially related courses, after they were in a class with Kushner? Did Kushner take any of his newly acquired Harvard friends on eye-opening trips? Did he ever loan a student money to take a trip home, that the student could not otherwise afford? Did he inspire a higher level of charitable donations among the students who knew him?
lookingforward frequently cautions us against making assumptions. At present, it seems to me to be an untested assumption that other students benefited in a substantial way from Kushner’s presence on campus.
(At Oxford, some years ago, but within living memory, there was a young Lord who would not speak with anyone who was not listed in Debrett’s.)
Best I can do for you in terms of sources on the $500,000 donations having an influence at Stanford, lf:
http://patch.com/california/paloalto/inside-stanford-s-exclusive-admission-path-c38ea20a
The sources were said to be “connected” with Stanford’s admissions office, but requested anonymity. (I’ll bet they did!) It could be phony news. I don’t think $500,000 moves the needle at Harvard.
I believe lookingforward has it right. I also think QuantMech is actually defining inequity in their description of what they are objecting to.
In my opinion there are very few families buying their kids way into Harvard.
I think most people would be shocked when finding out the “pedigree” of some of the kids who are rejected. I know I have been.
@QuantMech : I absolutely agree that at some donation point the tide shifts. I am a little skeptical that $2.5 million was that point at Harvard in 1999, but I am confident that such a point existed, then and now, and it wasn’t (and isn’t) necessarily orders of magnitude higher than $2.5 million. Your estimate of between $10-20 million seems high to me. And whatever the magic number may be at Harvard (or Stanford, Princeton, Yale), it will be meaningfully lower elsewhere.
Here’s a recent Atlantic article comparing colleges by the number of ultra-high net worth alumni: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/the-10-colleges-most-likely-to-make-you-a-billionaire-harvard-is-1/273627/.
Harvard leads the pack in the number of such alumni, but it is not the top in the percentage of UHNW alumni who owe their wealth exclusively to inheritance.
However, QuantMech, I think you’re being too limited in the possible value a scion of a noted property developer could have for his classmates. Surely some of his classmates are interested in public service; maybe they’ll take up a life improving living conditions in New York. Or maybe they’ll find a life working for Jewish philanthropies.
Just another tidbit. Wealthy people have been donating money and sending their kids to elite universities for a long time. How that is “manipulating” admissions anymore than entry to private clubs or getting their kids great jobs is beyond me. It is the world we live in. The editor in chief of Town and.Country Stellene Volandes is a diehard Liberal Democrat who openly supported the Clinton campaign. Check out her Instagram site where she lives a “let them eat cake” lifestyle and makes occasional political statements. Many of T&Cs recent articles were pointedly negative about Trump etc. I just find it offensive that they are blurring into political/class shaming. Is it a valid topic for discussion? Sure but to pretend this is news is silly
You raise an interesting point, Periwinkle: There could be reactions to Kushner’s presence that push students toward life’s work that is charitable, and emphatically non-remunerative. Some of his classmates may have decided to renounce material wealth entirely. I’m open-minded.
Kind of interesting that NYU has a relatively low percentage of ultra-high-net-worth alumni from inherited wealth, considering that NYU’s high price and poor financial aid tend to make it less affordable to students from non-wealthy families than most of the other schools listed.
There seems to be an unspoken assumption by some that Harvard has all the money it needs, and therefore financial considerations shouldn’t be a priority in considering whom to admit - or that it’s wrong, and against Harvard’s mission to do so. The corollary to this is a belief that the educational quality for everyone else wouldn’t be affected if Harvard admitted no development cases and replaced them with more virtuoso violinists, etc. If only it were so. Per Harvard’s annual financial report (see here: http://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/harvard_ar_11_12016_final.pdf):
and
At this point, continuing education and executive programs bring in more revenue than undergraduate tuition (although I’m not sure how much of the former goes to the College - I would guess a lot is HBS-related). Undergraduate tuition, much of it from full payers, still accounts for ~$300m/year, subsidizing everyone else’s education. By the way, the size of the endowment is also a major reason for Harvard’s AAA rating, which enables it to borrow at low cost for capital projects that advance its mission.
Separately, from the same report:
There are difficult trade-offs in admissions decisions. If an acceptable kid who seems like he’s going places, is a full payer and whose family has or is likely to make multi-million dollar donations is admitted, and that enables many other kids to receive a better education at Harvard, who are we, really, to tell Harvard it was wrong, particularly since we don’t have access to everyone’s admissions files in order to compare them, or understand the totality of Harvard’s institutional requirements in assembling its class?
I can agree that my earlier post defines “inequity,” but I think that people are concerned much more broadly about it, than simply with regard to college admissions. The irritation about college admissions just reflects the wider concerns.
One can take Center’s view, "It is the world we live in,"and accept it (many do), or one can figure out how it might be changed.
My personal guess is that people are not too concerned about inequity if they perceive that people who are less-advantaged have enough. At the point where less-advantaged people start to really struggle, no only they, but also people who are concerned about them (without necessarily knowing them personally) start to find the inequity really troubling.
Re DeepBlue86, post #117: From the size of Harvard’s endowment, you can make a rough estimate of how much the endowment funds gained in one of the good days post election. Then that can be compared with $300 million (your estimated total of Harvard’s tuition in one year). It would also be interesting to know what per cent of the return from the endowment Harvard actually spends in a year vs. re-investing.