Children of the wealthy and related are receiving special admissions fees at some elite US universities, according to new filings in a class-action lawsuit originally filed against 17 schools.
For example, the then-president of Georgetown put a prospective student on his “president’s list” after meeting her and her wealthy father at an Idaho conference known as “summer camp for billionaires,” according to court documents Tuesday in the lawsuit price agreements. in Chicago federal court in 2022.
While such favoritism has always been assumed to exist, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the often secretive deliberations of university heads and admissions officers. They show how schools admit otherwise unqualified wealthy kids because their parents have connections and could potentially donate large sums later, raising questions about fairness.
Stuart Schmill, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a 2018 email that the university admitted four of the six applicants recommended by then-board chairman Robert Millard, including two who “we really would not have admitted otherwise.” .” The other two were not allowed in because they “weren’t in the ball park, or because the pressure from him wasn’t as strong.”
In the email, Schmill said Millard was careful to downplay his influence on admissions decisions, but he said the chairman also sent notes on all six students and later met with Schmill to share insight “on who he thought was more of a priority.” ”
The filings are the latest salvo in a lawsuit alleging that 17 of the nation’s most prestigious colleges conspired to reduce competition for prospective students and reduce the amount of financial aid they would offer while receiving special preference given to the children of wealthy donors. .
“That illegal conspiracy resulted in the defendants providing far less assistance to students than would have been possible in a free market,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Gilbert.
Since the lawsuit was filed, 10 of the schools have reached settlements to pay out a total of $284 million, including payments of up to $2,000 to current or former students whose financial aid may have fallen short over a period of more than 20 years. They are Brown, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Yale.
Johns Hopkins is working on a settlement and the six schools still fighting the lawsuit are the California Institute of Technology, Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, Notre Dame and the University of Pennsylvania.
MIT called the lawsuit and the claims of favoritism admissions baseless.
“MIT has no history of favoritism in its admissions; quite the opposite,” university spokesperson Kimberly Allen said. “After years of discovery during which millions of documents were produced that provide an overwhelming state of independence in our admissions process, plaintiffs were able to cite only a single instance in which a board member’s recommendation influenced decisions for two students.”
In a statement, Penn also said the case is meritless because the evidence shows that students whose families have donated or pledged money to the Ivy League school are not favored.
“Plaintiffs’ entire case is an attempt to embarrass the university over its alleged admissions practices on issues completely unrelated to this case,” the school said.
Notre Dame officials also called the case baseless. “We are confident that every student admitted to Notre Dame will be fully qualified and ready to succeed,” a university spokesperson said in a statement.
However, the school in South Bend, Indiana, apparently admitted wealthy students with substandard academic backgrounds.
According to the new court filings, Don Bishop, then the associate vice president for enrollment at Notre Dame, wrote bluntly about the “special interest” in a 2012 email, saying that year’s crop had poorer academic results than those of the previous year.
The 2012 group consisted of 38 applicants who received a “very low” academic rating, Bishop wrote. He said these students made “an enormous contribution to the strength of family ties and funding history,” adding that “we let their high or potential gifts influence this year more than last year.”
The last line of his email: “I hope the rich raise some smart kids next year!”
Some of the examples cited in this week’s lawsuits showed that just being able to pay full tuition would put students at an advantage. During a statement, a former Vanderbilt admissions director said that in some cases a student would get a head start on the waitlist if he did not need financial aid.
The 17 schools were part of a decades-old group that received approval from Congress to come up with a joint approach to awarding financial aid. Such an arrangement might otherwise violate antitrust laws, but Congress allowed it as long as the colleges all had “need-blind” admissions policies, meaning they would not consider a student’s financial situation when deciding who to attend. comes in.
The lawsuit alleges that many colleges claimed to be blind to need but routinely gave preference to the children of alumni and donors. By doing so, the lawsuit says, the colleges violated Congress’s waiver and tainted the entire organization.
The group was disbanded in recent years when the provision that allowed the collaboration expired.
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