How often do rich bribes getting into Ivy League schools really happen?

33 comments

1. i don’t know. but i definitely heard of rich parents giving certain schools “donations”. and because of that they let their children in.

   American schools want money more then anything. so they won’t pass up a rich person giving huge donations

2. It is pretty uncommon for a straight up bribe to happen. Frankly its unheard of.

   However, legacy families who have a longer history of giving money to the school for new buildings, providing scholarship funds, or even just having significant success after graduating themselves, their children naturally get a leg up in admissions.

3. Bribes? Extremely rarely and actually prosecuted by the government with jail time when discovered.

   But colleges can also receive donations, and donating to the college without an explicit demand that it result in admission but with a tacit understanding is both legal and moderately common.

   Colleges also accept lots of rich foreign kids because they can charge them the full tuition with no financial aid and often an international fee on top of that.

4. It’s not common but it does happen.

   I knew a guy that was a legacy application at Harvard. He got waitlisted and his dad worked his alumni connections hard and made a fairly large donation.

   I’ll never know if that is what got him off the waitlist and on to the acceptance list but it surely didn’t hurt.

5. Bribe in a strict sense are uncommon. But a lot of clubs at these schools are high cost activities that only rich people can afford. And then they’ll give you a spot “for that club” but really it’s just cuz they know you have money. Donations as bribes and connections being pulled are much more common.

6. The thing about bribery and other quid pro quo situations is that they only work when no one knows about them. I suspect that most of these things are done in a way that they are not technically illegal, even if they violate the spirit of the law.

7. My mom worked admissions at a pricy private college, but not Ivy League. She said if the parents could write the tuition check in full, plus donate, those kids got in a little bit easier. They also wanted kids who came from well known families though it was rare to choose their school but Ivy League does this all the time so that they can attach the family name to the school.

8. It might happen at some schools where legacy parents *donate” to get their child in the door, but schools like MIT, Stanford, or any top flight engineering school it’s probably not feasible. When I was a freshman at a engineering school (that’s been rated the best small engineering college for 24 years in a row) 4 guys who hadn’t taken calculus in high school were enrolled (out of 350 newcomers). They were gone by the end of the first quarter. I won the calculus award in high school; we had already covered everything I had learned in one year in high school in 7 weeks at college

9. From my understanding, a [very] wealthy family has a child apply to the school, and the family just so happens to also offer to leave a generous grant for a new building/program/scholarship etc. around the same time

10. All the time. But they all them “donations.”

11. “My son really wants to attend your school. I know his grades aren’t quite up to par, but I think he’s got what it takes, and I hope you’ll give him a chance. Also, I hear you need a new library. Where would you like it?”

    Technically, not a bribe.

12. No no, we don’t call them bribes. You’re just going to make a large enough donation.

13. Its It’s literally the point of those schools

14. Felicity Huffman went to jail for it.

15. Well, if they go through official channels they are called “donations”, rather than bribes, since bribery is illegal. But it definitely happens.

16. More common than one would think, but rarely prosecuted. My wife and I have been approached with offers to lie about one thing or another to bolster students’ chances to get in far more often than we would like. We simply explain that this is the sort of thing that put people in prison and that we will only provide verifiable, documentable information in any recommendations we give. If they come to us, the teachers with bribes, I am sure they go to admissions staff with them as well.

17. Well, the interesting thing, if you look at the “Varsity Blues” scandal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal) is that the majority of schools being bribed or otherwise defrauded were *not* Ivies. They were good schools, but USC, for example, is a state university of California.

    Colleges in general tend to favor *wealthy* exchange students (in general) because they pay full-price for their tuition, something that domestic students (as bad as tuition gets) often get breaks on in the form of in-state tuitions, financial aid, and other things like that.

    And for extremely wealthy parents, the “Here’s an endowment to open a new gym or library, I’m sure my kid will get a lot out of it *when they attend*” is not unheard of, but it’s not standard.

    It should be pointed out that several Ivies have taken steps to eliminate the “Ivies are for rich people” stereotype- Princeton ladles out tons of no-repayment grants, Brown eliminated tuition altogether for households earning less than 60,000/yr, etc. This sort of thing is solely about people paying to get past the entry requirements to attend- if anything, less-endowed schools (esp private ones) would go for the “full price” thing.

18. I know a rich gal that got into an expensive private school who didn’t have good grades in high school. She flunked out her first year. I think the rich can get their kids in. But it’s harder to get them to stay. Because unless the university gets unethical, the students have to have aptitude.

19. Look up legacy admissions. If your parents donate enough, you just get in, period. You can be a shitbag the whole time, skip every class, and still get an ivy league degree. I worked with some of these people. They are human garbage.

20. The term in university parlance is “development case” (as in the university’s development office is involved) and at the most elite universities it requires “name a new building” money.

21. There is a lot of misinformation and sour grapes on this thread. I went to an ivy but not HYP, and we didn’t have tutors or test prep or crazy amounts of money. I was certainly privileged – grew up with 2 professional parents in a nice suburb- but the kinds of families that have “name a building” wealth are exceedingly small. The kids at HYP were by and large a level above academically those at my school.

22. Bribes will typically not work. They will also typically involve the person trying being reported to the police.

23. Yes and no. Money talks and so do connections. Yes. Just asking some random admissions person to take a quarter million for admission. Good luck. Operation Varsity Blues is an epic story but not a great movie. Pay to play but you gotta be inside…

24. I think the bribing happens earlier. To HS teachers so their kids had inflated GPA and test scores. But they don’t bribe they offer donation to the universities

25. They’re called donations. A sitcom star was busted paying a school to get her kid in that long ago.

26. When I scheduled an interview with the ivy league my parents attended the alumni office contacted them and said they noticed my parents hadn’t been donating regularly. They suggested that it wasn’t too late, they would be notified before my interview of any donations that came in. My parents asked me to cancel the interview and not apply there. I don’t know if that would’ve been considered a bribe. I had the grades, extra curriculars, was accepted at every school I applied to.

27. I feel like here in California it’s not about money. You need to have a completely unbiased opinion on who your letting in weather they have tons of money or none at all.

28. A friend of mine who worked in admissions said this was common. Of course it’s always dangling a lucrative donation to the school, which is legal.

29. The is a hilarious part in the movie Back to School where a parent gets into college by donating enough money to build a new building.

30. “Bribes” no. “Donations” maybe.

    This is secondhand, but an extremely wealthy family friend said of the Felicity Huffman scandal, “These people just weren’t wealthy enough for a direct dean admit.”

    It was an offhand comment and I didn’t pry, but I took it to mean that the dean of a private university can directly admit you if you donate enough or have enough of a reputation where they want you at the school.

    Not sure how much that would be though. I’m nowhere near that level.

31. I mean probably pretty rare as far as fractional bribes. One of the things America is really good at is formalizing the informal, particularly with regard to corruption. There are so many more valuable ways to repay favors than with dollars.

32. Well, when you have the time, that’s the wealth

    So all the time

33. There was a media frenzy over a scandal that involved rich and famous families getting their kids into prestigious universities via bribery. Over 50 people were charged. This case was centered around one guy who ran a racket. I’m sure there are others who do this as well.