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Buying enrolment to top schools in the US?

Cyc

Cyc

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In a recent TDS Thread it was speculated that top US schools enrolled students from wealthy families, regardless of SAT scores, or other merit-based criteria. I was skeptical, and surprisingly, Google wasn't very much help. Maybe someone can help give me an understanding of how higher education in the US works, and how the acceptance criteria meshes with academic meritocracy.

For example, if your parents went to Harvard, and donated lots of money to the school, would their children have a better chance of being accepted than some other hopeful, with better SATs and ECs, but whose parents had not attended the school?

If things like this do take place, I'm curious as to why this isn't a highly publicized issue, as institutes of higher learning are understood to be the paragons of meritocracy.

Hopefully someone can shed some light with personal experience.
 
Followed you here /stalk

My only knowledge on the subject is the usual jokes you get in comedies about 'legacy' applications to Ivy League colleges and they usually imply you've got no chance unless your parent(s) went to the school. Obviously smart/dedicated people get in without any nepotism but it seems like it definitely exists.

Just picking up on some differences from country to country; in Australia you can buy your way into our top universities if you can afford to pay all your fees up-front. Our colleges are a really weird mix of people at the undergraduate level. It's about half Australian kids who studied their asses off to get in on merit and about half international students (mainly from Asian countries) who buy their way in. The big difference is, the vast majority of Australian students don't pay fees upfront (they tax your fees out of your salary when you start earning decent money) while the internationals pay thousands per semester.

The Australian government used to fund our universities a lot more (about 20 years ago there were no fees at all) but the long-term conservative Howard government changed that up. Now universities are forced to fund themselves through the full fee paying international students. They are all heavily reliant on these students to stay afloat.

I taught at one of (if not) the best colleges in Australia and there was a terrible culture of grading blatant F assignments/exams from international students as passes so they didn't get kicked out as it would mean the university would lose the fees from these students. There were assignments that were literally illegible that I was told by my professor to give passing grades to, along with a referral to an English as a Second Language course.

The low point was when I busted two international students in my class of 12 who had identical assignments that were 100% copy/pasted from Wikipedia. I brought it to the attention of the prof as it was clearly cheating. The official policy of the faculty was cheating of that magnitude meant an automatic fail for the subject. He rationalised it as 'poor referencing' and told me to give them both a C- for their assignment and tell them not to do it again. I was pretty pissed off but I guess the university relies so much on the full fee-payers that if they failed every person who did that they'd end up going broke.

Yep, a good, honest system we have here in Australia...
 
^ Yikes. That actually made me cringe.

I wonder what value these international students take from a system that artificially inflates their grades to keep tuition money rolling in.

I mean, they could stay home and fake an education for free. Why pay all this money?

FWIW: Asian students also make up a highly disproportionate amount of the University campus population here as well. I wonder what their criteria is for admission. I should go find out.
 
I just looked up China, but it looks like admission for UWinnepeg is 60%, along with letters of recommendation, and an English literacy and language test. As well as all tuition money up front.

I think a certain chunk of seats are set aside for international students.
 
Its all about your ACT score here in the US. I finished at the bottom of my class in high school with a 1.5 gpa but made a 24 on the ACT had no problems getting into a state university. Granted its no Ivy League school but its also no community college.
 
So something like University of Michigan would be a state school, correct?

And I believe a 24 is 3 points above the national average of 21. So what would be considered the cutoff point for a state school, given the ACT exam is the only criterion?

Also, did you have to pay your tuition up front, or were you allowed to collect funding such as Pell grants, loans, etc?
 
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yea Michigan is a state school state schools are partially funded by the state. I had to pay tuition upfront this semester (7000 dollars) but I should be getting a pell grant for next semester.
 
WTF is the ACT's? I never heard of that before. Is that a new thing?

(I made it to 9th grade, so go easy on me for not knowing this.)

I dont usually post in here but i accidentally clicked on this forum and saw this topic.

cyc, you didnt think that cops in the US plant drugs either;)

Look at our last president. GW bush had a horribly low GPA and a C average. he went to Yale. He would NEVER been accepted with the grades that he had if his dad wasnt also a former president and former student of that school.
EVERYBODY KNOWS that this is how it worked. It aint no joke out here, this is common. Its unfortunate that its how it works....the reason you dont see all these things about it or news or w/ever is cuz its common knoweldge. Its just well known, it aint something that people ask for explanation , it aint like they say 'i want sources!" becuz everybody knows thats just how it is, you feel me? nobody asks for sources the same way they wouldnt ask for sources if you told them that "its common for high school athletes who play extremely well to make it thru high school with low grades, becuz teachers let them pass becuz they are the star athletes." nobody questions it becuz they KNOW its true, G-dubya's situation is the perfect example of how it happened right in the public eye and the whole world knows it. Nobody complains cuz thats just the way it is and people know that shit just sucks and there aint shit they can do about it.
 
I don't go t o an ivy league, so I can't offer first hand information, but from my understanding this is less of a factor than it used to be. You can't get in just by being wealthy or a legacy, but it will be an influence.

It certainly gives extra incentive for the merit-based students to get in better schools, as they will be networking with people who will be successful by default.

Also, not to sound elitist, but those who are wealthy do have a tendency to be quite smart too, so you would naturally have wealthier students in better schools, even if it had no direct impact.
 
The ACT is very similar to the SAT and most colleges accept test scores from either. As a general rule, the material on the ACT tends to be a bit more qualitative versus the SAT which is more quantitative.

I only took the ACT and never took the SAT because I did well on the ACT and my college counselor told me not to bother with taking anything else.
 
I go to a top 20 school in the US and I've noticed huge differences in highschool grades/ SAT/ACT / recommendations... ect.

Basically, what a university is looking for is graduates who are going to be successful in whatever they plan on majoring in. Whether you show that by having a 4.0 or your father being a senator with a lot of connections, doesn't seem to matter too much. They want people who are become renowned and when people ask for their background, their university comes up.

Also (especially private universities) are looking for students who are going to be able to donate back to their university after they graduate.

I have never heard of anyone "buying" their way into these schools, but knowing people in the school admissions department, getting a recommendation from a professor there (whether it's because your daddy bought them a new lab machine, or because you interned is regardless).
 
As you know the USA worships private institutions. Therefore it is up to the discretion of enrollment staff. Like Tr1p said, if your family has donated money you are more likely to get in. State schools have minimum cut offs based on GPA and SAT/ACT.
 
its unfortunate that these schools even charge money,
it should just be based soley on grades, or aptitude tests, no interviews no hand shaking, none of that bullshit, first come first serve,
there shouldnt even be private schools,

the education system is fucked, shitty teachers get sent to shitty schools, and good teachers get sent to richer areas,

you always here about these"ghetto as schools where none of the teachers care" that isn't fair, everbody should have the right to a fair and equal education, not some lop sided bullshit
 
Yeah... I could use my ACT score to get into a better school, but I'm taking it slow and community college is cheap. I've found community college teachers to be worse on average than the high school teachers I had.
 
Before University I went to a public College for 3yrs, and I would say that the teachers were definitely better than HS. They cared much more, and worried about their reputation quite a bit.
 
I just read the OP and skimmed the thread, so a lot of this may have already been said, but here's my understanding:

Public schools don't usually (ever?) consider 'legacy status' or financial status for admissions (paying for school is sometimes another story - plenty of lower income students get in but don't get enough aid money to be able to go, but I digress). Some private schools do. From what I know, it's almost never an outright "you're rich and/or the child of a successful alum, so you get in no matter what." It just adds a couple 'points' on whatever metric they use to judge students. If the student is the child of someone REALLY important - a high administrative official at the school, a US Senator *cough*Bush*cough*, something like that - then that might make them close to an auto-accept at some schools.

Private schools in the US are ultimately run as businesses. Their reputation for academic excellence is integral to their 'brand' and profitability, but a school like Yale can afford to let in the occasional less-than-stellar candidate if big money is at stake. That said, if a school became known for being easy to buy your way into, then it would have a very difficult time maintaining its reputation as a good school. Also, without seriously compromising academic integrity and the school's reputation, you can't really prevent professors from flunking students who deserve it, so people who *really* don't belong there might still fail out or at least never matriculate.

It's an unfortunate side effect of the power of wealth in our country, and it contributes to the privilege and advantage that the de facto aristocracy of the uber-wealth enjoy, but I don't think it's nearly widespread enough among reputable universities to undermine their academic credibility.

At my school (University of Rochester, a small, private liberal arts school in upstate NY, highly selective and pretty expensive, but generous with need-based aid), I didn't know anyone there who seemed like they weren't at all qualified to be admitted and only got in due to wealth or connections.
 
I just got done with undergrad and grad school at the "Ivy League of the South" (I'm sure you can figure out what school that is with a simple google search)
Anyways, I found that the students who got in on merit based aid with financial assistance were, for the most part, much better students than others.
ie... I got a 33 on my ACT (that's one point off perfect) with a 3.8 from High School, and there were students there paying full price who were out of high school with 3.0's or even 2.8's and like 26-28 on their ACT scores, or 1200's on their SAT's ( I got a 1430 on my SAT).
It's basically a business - the rich kids subsidize the cost of the merit based scholarship students, the merit based students go on to hard-working and good careers, while the rich kids get a jump start in a parents company and don't have to work as hard, both usually end up in the same place, albeit it takes some of the merit-based students a while longer to get there.
It is most definitely a business in higher ed, especially in private schools.
ie. I got into my state University no problem but was offered 0 financial aid, and got into a school that costs $50,000 a year but with scholarship help, ended up being cheaper than my state school.
So, in essence, state schools, i think, have become an even more business based enterprise than private schools. My state U's out-of-state tuition is a little over 35,000 a year USD, while at the private school I attended, it's $50,000 a year no matter where you come from, and the state U's are giving out even less financial aid.

Overall, higher education is a completely fucked situation, and my degree which is supposedly worth $300,000 is such an incredibly inflated cost of education that it would take any full-payer who wasn't rich or from a legacy family many, many years of work at the top of their field to repay.
 
I heard that in-state university students only pay about $5,000yr tuition on average.

I find it strange that with your marks you weren't given full or partial scholarship to your state school of choice. This confuses me even more.

What you said about people with 2.8 GPA getting into Ivy quality schools is a problem, and needs to be addressed at the federal level. Money should have absolutely zero factor in who is admitted. Where are the watchdog groups for this?
 
Well, I actually applied to several state schools, but was most surprised that I didn't get financial aid in-state. I'm sure if someone wanted to find out my identity, they could, so i'll just say it.
University of Colorado at Boulder is 15,000+ for in-state tuition, and very few students get scholarships. It's basically a deal of "we've got super heady weed here in Colorado and tons of drugs and acid is super cheap, etc..." so every fucktard from the midwest and california wants to come here for school, thus they can charge out the ass for tuition and choose only the out-of-staters from which they will reap mad money.
I also applied to University of Washington, Cal Poly, University of Michigan, and University of Texas Arlington and Austin. I didn't get a single cent of financial aid at any of these public schools. Not exaggerating, no money.
I also applied to Washington U in St. Louis, Northeastern, Syracuse, Brown, McGill (up in Canada, eh), and Tulane University in New Orleans. I was offered financial aid at all of these schools, up to 85% of tuition at Tulane which is where I ended up going, an experience I will always remember and never regret, even though I was there for Katrina.
Higher ed is truly fucked in the United States.
I taught during my Grad school years at Tulane, and there were several cases of plagiarism, I know one of which resulted in the expulsion of two students, one of whom was re-instated after what I assume was a generous gift from their parents ( I know one was an alum).
In another case, one of my clasemates failed studio (You can't continue with architecture school unless you get at least a C- in studio) 3 times, and because his parents were large donors, he advanced every time.( Don't worry, you are safe - he'll never pass the architecture exam)
On a tangent, Architect is actually the most difficult profession in the world to get certified in, more than a doctor or lawyer - 4 years undergrad, 3 years grad, 3 years of internships, then 7 tests which you must pass in sequence within a 1 year period. If you fail one, you go back to the beginning. Less than 10% of candidates pass on the first try.
Sorta makes sense, since if a Doctor fucks up they only kill one person at a time, if I fuck up (or the Architect I work under since I'm still an intern) everyone in the building could die, which could suck significantly.
 
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