The wealthy are already getting a huge leg up in admissions, without paying all that much, and without benefitting anybody but the already wealthy.
So long as the number of developmental admits is small, expensive, and the money goes to benefit all of the students, I’m good with it.
Kids from the top 5% by income make up almost 1/4 of all students at Berkeley, and over 20% of all of the universities in the audit. They are getting in by spending money on stuff which the low SES students cannot afford.
They do so by being able to spend about $700,000 on each child, versus the average of about $230,000. So why is that any different from spending $3,00,000 to increase the chances even further?
So long as admission criteria to college are directly related to the amount of income that a family has, this is nothing more than the same thing. In fact, it’s better, since in this case, at least, the money is going directly to benefit all students at the college, rather than to the same set of counselors, programs, wealthy school districts, and wealthy private schools that serve the same set of wealthy kids.
When we look at the top 5%, we’re talking about some at least 10,000 students who were accepted over those years, whose stats and other profile aspects would likely not have been good enough had their parents not bee able to afford all of the extras that money can buy. Compared to that, those 42 are absolutely nothing.