Suit Accuses Georgetown, Penn and M.I.T. of Admissions Based on Wealth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is baffling is people rich enough to donate millions, why do they need to go to mit or an Ivy League. They are already rich.. their kids will be fine.. why do this too?

They don't need to wear a rolex either.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Not surprising at all - there is a lowered requirement for those kids that does not apply to the rest of the world.

Not sure about Penn and Georgetown, but if you are "unqualified" at MIT you are going to get destroyed. Your life will be miserable. Unlikely you will graduate.

Seeing as almost every person who enters MIT’s halls exits in 4 years, this just isn’t true

"Almost every person" isn't an unqualified rich kid who bought their way in, idiot.

Laughable that you think that kid needs anything to be a success. The name on the degree is smoke and mirrors for the millions they start out with in life. They don't have the same goals or life path as the rest of the kids.

I did not say they did, idiot. I said that the kid will struggle at MIT if they did not have the same qualifications as the usual admits. Pay attention!

MIT students can cross register at Harvard.
If they're rich and moderately intelligent, they'll fit right in with some of those crowds.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Rich/poor is not a constitutionally protected class. Schools give priority to poor kids (at the expense of middle class kids) - I do not get the objection to admitting rich kids who actually pay full tuition and then some.

Way to not understand the lawsuit. The schools were taking advantage of an antitrust exemption to share financial aid information. That exemption required that they be need blind.

But they are need blind.

They are not favoring these kids because they have the ability to pay the tuition, they are favoring these kids because a well connected banker is asking that these kids get special treatment and might lead to a lot more than a bit of tuition.

I don't like that money can buy access to pretty much anything but we do not have a merit based admissions process, never did.
It seems a bit hypocritical if we are only bothered this fact that now that affirmative action has been outlawed.
Were we really only looking the other way on all this crap because we were giving preferences to black and hispanic students over asian students?

The exemption required them to be need blind with regard to all students. Without the word all, maybe they could argue about the interpretation, but the word all kills that argument

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rich/poor is not a constitutionally protected class. Schools give priority to poor kids (at the expense of middle class kids) - I do not get the objection to admitting rich kids who actually pay full tuition and then some.

Way to not understand the lawsuit. The schools were taking advantage of an antitrust exemption to share financial aid information. That exemption required that they be need blind.

But they are need blind.

They are not favoring these kids because they have the ability to pay the tuition, they are favoring these kids because a well connected banker is asking that these kids get special treatment and might lead to a lot more than a bit of tuition.

I don't like that money can buy access to pretty much anything but we do not have a merit based admissions process, never did.
It seems a bit hypocritical if we are only bothered this fact that now that affirmative action has been outlawed.
Were we really only looking the other way on all this crap because we were giving preferences to black and hispanic students over asian students?

The exemption required them to be need blind with regard to all students. Without the word all, maybe they could argue about the interpretation, but the word all kills that argument

They are blind. The admission is processed before financial aid is.
I don't think this should go anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not surprising at all - there is a lowered requirement for those kids that does not apply to the rest of the world.

Not sure about Penn and Georgetown, but if you are "unqualified" at MIT you are going to get destroyed. Your life will be miserable. Unlikely you will graduate.

You know you can get a poly sci degree at MIT, right?

Or a history degree.

Or a literature degree.

It's like having an entire meal made up of side dishes.

They still have to do the Science Core, which is no picnic. I'm actually surprised there are any rich slackers that are using their wealth to gain admission to MIT. It's not easy for anyone, even the English majors, which is actually a really strong program at MIT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would admissions or financial aid contact the development office if they thought an applicant's family would make potential donors?

Good question. My understanding, previously, was that no, it doesn't work that way. For most universities, if an applicant was supported by a big donor, the donor would get in touch with their development office contact, which would then contact admissions. That would only be relevant for prior/current donors to the university

That before I understood that there are databases that may identify potential donors at various levels. I am not familiar with DonorSearch and similar databases, but it seems plausible that with the right tools, one could run a simple search on a list of names. On the other hand, universities get thousands of apps every year.

So, to answer your question, it sounds plausible that a subset of applicants could be searched. Such as, for applicants who did not apply for financial aid at need-aware schools, or for applicants whose parents have a graduate degree or meet some other combination of criteria.

Separately, I am aware that development offices do this annually for, say, all new parents who didn't apply for need-based aid - seems like a fairly secretive process but that's what I was told when I got a development call when my oldest was a freshman. We turned up. I really want to know about applicants, however.

It's right here on Slate's website. Slate is the application review platform used by most colleges.

"Technolutions has partnered with DonorSearch to quickly import screened prospect and donor data into Slate. The method to screen records involves two processes:

Exporting data from Slate and uploading to DonorSearch
Exporting screened records from DonorSearch and uploading to Slate"
https://knowledge.technolutions.net/docs/donorsearch-research-integration

Now, this doesn't mean that colleges actually use this feature on the list of applicants. But, it looks like it might be realistically possible to do so.