Some people become concerned, others do not. Sometimes, less advantaged people are seen as actual or potential competition, so people who hold that viewpoint (who may be less advantaged themselves) may want to keep them less advantaged. Sometimes, others (who may be more advantaged themselves) prefer if less advantaged people fight among themselves instead of paying more attention to whatever inequity there is.
@DeepBlue86 Count me in the skeptical group. Harvard has a rather small undergraduate body and a massive endowment. I don’t see anybody quoting Harvard documents to the effect that “developmental admits” are a necessary cost of doing business. All I hear are people minimizing it (“it’s within a rounding error”), normalizing it (“that’s the way it is”), pretending the (overrepresented) wealthy scion is somehow comparable to the (underrepresented) minority, or else concocting unlikely scenarios where hand-wringing admissions officials ruefully reject the poor violinist in favor of the minimally qualified rich kid because they’re worried about the financial stability of an institution sitting on some $40,000,000,000. Harvard is in many ways and for most students a fabulous place. The developmental admits are a weak and embarrassing point, an obvious one to many, and none of the reasons for them given on this thread justify them. Presumably that’s why none of those reasons can be found in official Harvard documents.
In terms of the inequities in the world (or even in the US) this seems to me to rank very low on a priority list. Numbers of kids impacted at Harvard is a handful per year (likely at most) and less than 2,000 kids enroll per class. Millions of kids have no shot at Harvard no matter the admit policies. If the goal is to reduce the number of inequities in the world (or the US) seems to me energies would be better spent elsewhere.
@QuantMech, actually, some of that can be answered from Harvard’s disclosures:
Over the past five and ten years respectively, Harvard disclosed that the cumulative annualized returns of its endowment were 5.9% and 5.7% respectively. It’s therefore paying out nearly as much as it’s earning (recently more, since it lost money last year), and what it spends accounts for more than a third of the university’s operating budget. Over the last twenty years returns have been higher (10.4% annualized), but there’s certainly no guarantee that they’ll ever get back to that level.
The total revenues from undergraduate tuition last year were $300.7m, per the university’s financial statements. As for what the endowment earns day to day, that’s impossible to estimate with any degree of precision, given that it’s invested in a mix of stocks, bonds, hedge funds, private equity and natural resources, among other things, and a lot of those assets are illiquid, priced monthly or quarterly, and can’t be cashed out at will. In fact, the endowment itself comprises over 13,000 separate accounts, of which 80% are tied to one of Harvard’s twelve schools and only 30% by value are unrestricted (see here: http://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard/harvard-glance/endowment).
Again, very well written @LadyMeowMeow.
@saillakeerie as long as no Forum rules are being violated I would think discussing “college matters” is within bounds.
I don’t believe discussion world inequality and world poverty are subjects that belong here. I may be wrong too…
It’s not just about where privilege butts against unfair. The problem starts with not understanding what does apply to your own kids, all the assuming that your top x% kid, top scores, wow, he founded a club and etc, is all it takes.
Of course you feel helpless and fearful. And then blame “others,” usually URMs, now the wealthy.
None of that emotion and outrage advances your kid’s chance. It’s misdirected energy.
@lookingforward I don’t think its fair to be so dismissive to all the parents/students that want to debate this topic. If what the Ivies are doing is indeed so “one off” or fair why do they feel the need to defend? 
I don’t understand why people should quit debating this topic. Not many are as uninformed as you seem to have decided they are. Not all opinions are based on misinformation “Someone said so, so I believe so”. Not true!!
Unless Forum rules are being violated and/or someone crosses the line in their post, I don’t see what the problem is…
In some regards, I do feel helpless and fearful, lookingforward; but none of that has much of anything to do with college admissions. I think that the country is rather polarized, and that overlooking the concerns of people who feel marginalized, for one reason or another, is harmful to the country. I also think that I have seen some examples of quite boorish behavior by quite wealthy people.
Where this intersects with college admissions and the topic of this thread is that special privilege based on inherited wealth is not part of the American philosophy, as I was taught it. The view “This is the world we live in,” while probably more sophisticated than my own, seems to me to promote accommodating oneself to the system as it is, rather than questioning it, or even where applicable, working to change it. Would it be wrong for Harvard to institute a policy that admissions can’t be bought at any price? Or what if Harvard suggested that the intended donation be directed to Food Banks across the country, rather than to Harvard itself, and it could still be credited equally?
Of course, current year applicants have to live with the system as it is.
If you don’t do things from time to time that are a little embarrassing to talk about but which you believe are in your and your family’s best interest, @LadyMeowMeow, well, you’re a better person than I am (you probably are anyway). I would argue that’s how Harvard views development admits (and, frankly, the sausage-making aspect of the admissions process as a whole).
In any case, Harvard, which - again - isn’t a for-profit institution, thinks its process for satisfying its various institutional needs - financial and otherwise - is appropriate. I understand you don’t agree, and why, but I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, given my outsider’s perspective on what those needs are and how they match up with the applicant pool.
Not everyone in this thread has a kid applying to Ivies. I surely don’t.
@BoiDel Where did I say I thought the thread should be shut down or that this discussion is out of bounds? All I did was say that in terms of the list of unfair, inequities, etc. in the world (or US) I think this issue ranks very low. Presumably that statement can be part of this debate too, right?
“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. So what, really.”
“In terms of the inequities in the world (or even in the US) this seems to me to rank very low on a priority list. Numbers of kids impacted at Harvard is a handful per year (likely at most) and less than 2,000 kids enroll per class. Millions of kids have no shot at Harvard no matter the admit policies.”
Recently talked with a parent of a very talented HS athlete. Great kid who has worked very hard at the sport. But the kid was also quite lucky to be born highly coordinated, big (6’2" and 225 pounds) and to parents that had lots of resources to devote to the sport (camps, travel teams, equipment, boarding school, etc.).
Harvard’s middle 50% ACT is 32-35. For this kid, Harvard said 26 ACT would be just fine. For an unhooked kid, a 26 ACT would never get you into Harvard. But Harvard knows that a 26 is likely more than enough to get a kid out of Harvard. It’s Harvard’s choice to make.
Life isn’t fair. Some are born smart; some rich; some talented in athletics or something else. All those winners in the birth lottery are going to have a better chance at getting into Harvard. First world problem.
I’m not being dismissive. Nor do i think this is just a simple vote-- who is sure there’s quid pro quo and who doesn’t know? If you think it’s so, show me. For real.
That’s it. You can’t. At least, not for Kushner.
Meantime, if you’re worried for your kids (mentioned earlier,) then learn more about what these colleges do value and look for. Don’t sit on your hands griping about some.kid from 1997-8. Learn what Harvard et al, today, do look for. Try to understand it, see if your kid does have that.
Roxbury Latin in 2016, from a class of 52, sent 7 kids to Harvard.
How many legacy? How many professor kids?
Lets put it this way, the odds of 7 of the most academically qualified coming from one class from one school are so vanishingly small.
I’m all for people recognizing that life is unfair. I’m all against using the idea that “life is unfair” to justify unfairness, when fairness would be just as easy.
I have no opinion about Kushner. I don’t know any super-rich people. I only know a few people whose giving capacity exceeds my net worth. I do know a Harvard faculty member who gives occasional donor + child talks/tours (as mentioned above), and I am pretty sure that there have been at least a few admissions “quids” on offer, over a long period. Of course, I have no hard proof.
At my university, I am occasionally called upon to help to recruit a student who is highly desirable academically, because we are not inundated with applicants of that type. Perhaps my Harvard friend is just helping to recruit the occasional academic superstar to Harvard, and the fact that the parents are donors is totally beside the point. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
So you dont know about the relationship beyween H and its local community?
A large part of that is due to impact from past financial decisions and its relatively recent transition from being a local commuter school for middle class kids(ended sometime in the early '80s) to being a national/international school with elite U/Ivy aspirations.
NYU was in the middle-end of that transition when I was attending HS in the early-mid '90s. Back then, it still was known as a commuter school…cept for rich/financially foolhardy kids with -B averages.
At my public magnet back then, with the exception of Tisch(Performing arts) and Stern(business) it was regarded as just a tiny step up from the CUNYs so the only kids who accepted admission offers either received full-rides(not too many as they’d often receive admission to Ivy/peer elites with equivalent FA packages) or were wealthy/financially foolhardy kids closer to the bottom of our graduating classes(majority).
This does make me wonder a bit about Kusher’s father’s massive donation to NYU in the same period.
Back then, other than Tisch and Stern, NYU would have still only been a hard admit if one’s cumulative HS GPA…especially from a respectable/elite private/boarding school was exceedingly bad(talking mid-2.x and lower territory here).
@DeepBlue86 I don’t think there’s much daylight between the two of us. I respect your reading of Harvard’s complex admissions equation, especially your (seemingly unique) willingness to quote Harvard’s own documents in support of your analysis. You’ve taken this conversation much farther than those who simply deny there’s anything embarrassing about developmental admits – or that they even exist!! – while simply accusing posters of misdirecting energy. But while I understand your logic, I find it too complacent and conservative – too accommodating of unnecessary and damaging hypocrisies – for an institution with high ideals and an enormous bank account. In fact the reasoning on much of this thread is redolent of an earlier age, i.e. the old Harvard where the absurdly high percentage of WASPs in the student body was justified by, well, the “process for satisfying its various institutional needs - financial and otherwise.” That situation was not improved then, or ever, by repeating that life isn’t fair, that’s how it is, it’s a business, etc. or that people pointing out inequities are somehow wasting their time.