Remember When Jared Kushner's Dad Donated $2.5M to Harvard?

[RandySF]

Turns out that wealthy people including actresses, actors and business folks have been involved in a scandal that includes all kinds of crazy allegations to get their children into prestigious institutions.

But it looks like the president’s son-in-law, holder of Ivanka’s hand and a security clearance he didn’t earn, was ahead of the curve. Author Daniel Golden put Jared Kushner’s game on front street in his 2005 book, The Price of Admission, where he questioned how Kushner, a mediocre student at best, was accepted to one of America’s most prestigious institutions: Harvard.

“My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their underachieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations,” Golden wrote for the Guardian in 2016.

“It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school, which at the time accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of 20).”

A former official at the Frisch School in Paramus, N.J., where Kushner attended, told Golden that there was no way that Kushner was going to Harvard on merits alone.

“His GPA [grade point average] did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought, for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.’’


https://www.theroot.com/remember-that-time-when-jared-kushner-s-dad-donated-2-1833241931

[msongs]

1. harvard is a private school and can do what it wants for the most part, outside of

discrimination against protected classes of people (race/religion etc)

[RandySF]

2. Yale and Standford were implicated today.

[donkeypoofed]

3. Why, oh why, is this a surprise ?!?! It's nothing new !

This is all due to a poor system of distribution of wealth. It started in the 80's with the rich getting richer and all that. It's been going on for decades. The people going to Court does this stuff today in CA is just making an example of them. Thousands have been pulling this stunt for years! It is no surprise at all.

[Staph]

4. It's been going on a lot longer than that.

The Ivy League schools have had legacy preferences or legacy admissions since the early twentieth century, to keep down the number of those nasty middle-class, immigrant, and Jewish students. I suspect that they quickly discovered that letting Junior in despite his "gentleman's C" grades meant that Senior would drop a big check in the mail.

Currently, the Ivy League institutions are estimated to admit 10% to 30% of each entering class using legacy admissions. For example, in the 2008 entering undergraduate class, the University of Pennsylvania admitted 41.7% of legacies who applied during the early decision admissions round and 33.9% of legacies who applied during the regular admissions cycle, versus 29.3% of all students who applied during the early decision admissions round and 16.4% of all who applied during the regular cycle. In 2009, Princeton admitted 41.7% of legacy applicants—more than 4.5 times the 9.2% rate of non-legacies. Similarly, in 2006, Brown University admitted 33.5% of alumni children, significantly higher than the 13.8% overall admissions rate. In 2003, Harvard admitted 40% of legacy applicants, compared to the overall 11% acceptance rate. In short, Ivy League and other top schools typically admit legacies at two to five times their overall admission rates. Among other top universities, the University of Notre Dame is known to weigh legacy status heavily in its application process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

[obnoxiousdrunk]

5. Admission based on

a donation made to the school is legal. Heard on NPR ...