<p>Is it?</p>
<p>Like does it give legacies a boost in admissions? </p>
<p>Like does it help with donating legacies? </p>
<p>Ivy League </p>
<p><a href=“Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson”>Legacy Admit Rate at 30 Percent | News | The Harvard Crimson;
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<p>To answer your second question, donating legacies are called “Developmental Cases” and I imagine it takes a significant sum of money – northwards of $30M – to guarantee acceptance. When you donate that kind of money, Harvard names a building after you and the doors open for the donors son or daughter. To view some of Harvard’s recent big donors, see: <a href=“http://alumni.harvard.edu/stories/harvards-recent-major-gifts”>http://alumni.harvard.edu/stories/harvards-recent-major-gifts</a></p>
<p>If you not a legacy or have parents who can afford to donate that kind of money to the school, why concern yourself with this, as none of it effects YOUR chances.</p>
<p>I do have both , so is why I am considering this </p>
<p>If you have sufficient money, development trumps legacy. If your family really giving a school a $50 mm building, they couldn’t care less if your parents went there. </p>
<p>True. So is donating good amount of money a way to get in? </p>
<p>Of course merit ideally would trump everything else, but schools like Ivies and Stanford have to think long term with donations and loyalty as well as commitment. </p>
<p>I think someone told me upwards of $100000 every few years can get someone in if they’re also legacy status . </p>
<p>Do people agree with this? </p>
<p>IL2020: If you have to ask, then you can’t afford it. To be frank, if you’re atop these kind of riches and already don’t have any connection w/H development, I don’t think you’ll get much traction. And NO, $100K every few years is less than another student’s tuition. PG said $50M – how did you arrive at $100K?</p>
<p>I was just wondering. </p>
<p>What about 300000$ every year?</p>
<p>No. $50M up front. Now go ask your parents to write a check (a wire transfer would be better) and then go do your homework.</p>
<p>^^ I’m in agreement with skieurope; 100k or 300k per year will NOT do it. Unless your parents are willing to donate millions upfront (not thousands) there is no guarentee of acceptance. </p>
<p>My goodness, I find threads like this absolutely perplexing and really distasteful. It would seem that such an unseemly topic – the blithe attempt to bypass the full scrutiny of the admissions process while tens of thousands of others actually spend the whole of their high school careers working for such an admissions opportunity – might best be broached privately and with discretion through the Development office. </p>
<p>I don’t mean to be rude, but this is a topic – how to bribe your way into Harvard – that seems in such poor taste on a public forum and should remain a private matter between you, your parents, and the Harvard Development Office. There are no brokers here.</p>
<p>I want people to exhibit some common sense. If a mere $100,000 every couple of years would do it, they’d fill their class with that, no? Do you know how many people have that kind of money? Plenty. </p>
<p>But NO. We are talking on a much grander scale, and if you don’t already have these connections to a development office, you are not going to find them on CC. </p>
<p>It also begs the larger question. If you really come from a family who can afford to donate a $50M building, what on earth do you need Harvard for? What, to open doors? To impress people? Lol. You’ve already “made it” and a Harvard degree may be a fun cherry on top but that’s it. See, here’s the secret. People from that kind if money can send their kids to Harvard or South Montana State, and it doesn’t matter. They have all the life prospects and open doors they need. </p>
<p>IvyLeague2020: If your family truly has millions to donate, they should contact: <a href=“http://alumni.harvard.edu/ways-to-give/planned-giving/staff”>http://alumni.harvard.edu/ways-to-give/planned-giving/staff</a></p>
<p>I think each year some of the top schools should have assigned seats to give to the highest bidders, like a dinner with Warren Buffett type auction but with a base price.</p>
<p>I’m not saying my family has the money lol, it’s just that kids always talk about “buying their way in” to places like Harvard and Stanford. </p>
<p>I wanted to get the facts and I agree with the fact that donations to guarantee admissions to Harvard and Stanford are huge.</p>
<p>I agree with @Pizzagirl and I think if the only reason someone gets into Harvard is because of money, they’d probably be miserable there. </p>
<p>There was a boy near me who managed to do this, but he never told me how much his father paid.</p>
<p>I believe his family owned the Chicago Blackhawks and his mother had major influence in politics in DC.</p>
<p>Assuming he is still there today, you are right he probably isn’t very happy.</p>
<p>So does being a regular legacy or one that donates time and money (not in the millions) not help that much? </p>
<p>It’s just to tip legacies in if HYP is deciding between 2 of the same types of applicants?</p>
<p>All things (GPA, test scores, etc.) being equal, a legacy might get a slight preference in admissions. It has been described as a feather on the scale.) These are, after all private institutions which depend on regular support from alumni. </p>
<p>And to the poster who thought the money issue is distasteful , well reality is not always so tasteful. But it is common knowledge that the minimum for top Ivy development attention is in the 8 figures. (Used to be $10,000,000.- but it now sounds like even that is not enough anymore.)</p>
<p>As for miserable legacy students, there was one case we saw where a guy just squeaked by after many semesters of academic probation and much unhappiness. </p>
<p>The most unhappy person I knew in college (at Yale) was someone who was the grandchild of a member of the Yale Corporation (i.e., an alumnus and major-league donor). He couldn’t both study effectively and train effectively for squash and he wound up doing neither, so he lost his place on the squash team and squeaked through the college with mostly Cs. He felt awful about himself all the time, and he couldn’t even talk to people about it because it made him feel so dumb. (He talked to me about it one night after we ran into one another, because we had been really tight friends in elementary school and neighbors, before my family moved and his packed him off to St. Grottlesex, but we barely knew each other anymore, so there was no chance anything he told me would get back to his actual friends.)</p>
<p>lol… St. Grottlesex? I go to a Hades, and that even sounds dumb ;)</p>