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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Would admissions or financial aid contact the development office if they thought an applicant's family would make potential donors?[/quote]
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 [i]prior/current[/i] 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.[/quote]

no this also works for prospective donors, who get connected to the development office through a mutual contact, though they haven't made a donation yet (they usually aren't affiliated - yet). Now if you don't have a contact or aren't important enough to be connected, maybe they do this database thing. but that seems like a pain.

anecdotally, admissions and development are VERY close at Penn.
and
admissions and development have a WALL at Northwestern. You do not cross it.

Heard the Dartmouth president speak once - he's in a new position - at he was commenting about how he'd get calls ALL THE TIME from big donors with "names" - he wouldn't get emails only phone calls, and he'd write them down and then have to call admissions. Crazy how he just said it out loud at an event[/quote]

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