Legacy is a real advantage in applying to college, but not everybody wants to go to their parents' alma mater. What if we turned that inherited privilege into cash?
Love it. And if we're breaking the sanctity of admissions in education, the not-so-ridiculous corollary of this theory is for universities to take their existing "back door" admissions to the front. I.e., most/all universities have a "We'll accept your child if you donate $[X]m" policy managed by a handful of college admissions "power brokers." Why not just have a landing page that auctions off seats at the top universities on a rolling basis?
Thankfully, there'd still be a market for the above -- the price would be a fraction because it lacks guaranteed admissions (and adoption, mental duress, habitation challenges, etc., lol).
This absolutely happens - universities don't publish numbers for obvious reasons, but I've seen rumors that a development admits costs around $10M. Which actually feels both very low and very high?
I love the direct auction idea; I actually wonder if there's a "bleed rich students" case for it. Section off 10% of seats to be auctioned off, let them go for millions, and use the money to give everybody else free tuition. The hard part might be social; students admitted via auction might face some social stigma if it becomes public. But the social stigma still might beat having to join a new family
In terms of auctioned seats, you probably could do far less than 10% (depending on university caliber) to cover the rest of the student body's tuition, though I think 10% could cover full university operating budgets. If you had 10% of the class on golden tickets, I'd probably fear the alternative: you might create an elite class that doesn't want to intermingle with the student body (I suspect this already exists to varying degrees).
Oddly enough, I went to an elite private high school and ended up meeting with one of these college advisor "power brokers" (this was a friend's parent's mistake, we were not in that tax bracket), but HYP was $12-15m... And that was ~10 years ago.
It would be cooler if they instead directly allocated a fraction of slots by auction, a fraction of slots by standardized test score, a fraction by charisma or whatever and a fraction for impressive academic or business accomplishments. Explicitly, I mean.
I dig this, because it sort of happens anyway under the guise of having a well rounded class. If it were explicit, I could at least know whether to focus on charisma or a good SAT score.
Might be an urban legend but when I was applying to undergrad (circa 2018) I remember hearing tales about wealthy people paying to have their kids legally adopted by people in places like the Dakotas because colleges care a lot about having kids from "all 50 states" and not many North Dakotans apply to Harvard or w/e
I didn’t think of it, but geographic diversity would probably be a big factor in auctions! It makes sense that a Harvard legacy living in North Dakota might be more valuable than one living in New York. Maybe there’d even be some arbitrage from moving for 6 months if it added enough to the legacy sale price?
My senior year I had a friend who worked in Admissions at my college (small new england liberal arts but not ivy or anything), and they told her that South Carolina was "nearly extinct" meaning that there was only one South Carolinian and they were about to graduate, so they *had* to let someone in from SC. If you had data on the student body and applicant pool granular enough, geography could be nearly a 100% chance of admission at a lot of schools
As an admissions counselor, thank you for this. Incredible stuff.
I’m here to advise if your university is ready to pioneer this innovative approach
Love it. And if we're breaking the sanctity of admissions in education, the not-so-ridiculous corollary of this theory is for universities to take their existing "back door" admissions to the front. I.e., most/all universities have a "We'll accept your child if you donate $[X]m" policy managed by a handful of college admissions "power brokers." Why not just have a landing page that auctions off seats at the top universities on a rolling basis?
Thankfully, there'd still be a market for the above -- the price would be a fraction because it lacks guaranteed admissions (and adoption, mental duress, habitation challenges, etc., lol).
This absolutely happens - universities don't publish numbers for obvious reasons, but I've seen rumors that a development admits costs around $10M. Which actually feels both very low and very high?
I love the direct auction idea; I actually wonder if there's a "bleed rich students" case for it. Section off 10% of seats to be auctioned off, let them go for millions, and use the money to give everybody else free tuition. The hard part might be social; students admitted via auction might face some social stigma if it becomes public. But the social stigma still might beat having to join a new family
In terms of auctioned seats, you probably could do far less than 10% (depending on university caliber) to cover the rest of the student body's tuition, though I think 10% could cover full university operating budgets. If you had 10% of the class on golden tickets, I'd probably fear the alternative: you might create an elite class that doesn't want to intermingle with the student body (I suspect this already exists to varying degrees).
Oddly enough, I went to an elite private high school and ended up meeting with one of these college advisor "power brokers" (this was a friend's parent's mistake, we were not in that tax bracket), but HYP was $12-15m... And that was ~10 years ago.
It would be cooler if they instead directly allocated a fraction of slots by auction, a fraction of slots by standardized test score, a fraction by charisma or whatever and a fraction for impressive academic or business accomplishments. Explicitly, I mean.
I dig this, because it sort of happens anyway under the guise of having a well rounded class. If it were explicit, I could at least know whether to focus on charisma or a good SAT score.
Might be an urban legend but when I was applying to undergrad (circa 2018) I remember hearing tales about wealthy people paying to have their kids legally adopted by people in places like the Dakotas because colleges care a lot about having kids from "all 50 states" and not many North Dakotans apply to Harvard or w/e
I didn’t think of it, but geographic diversity would probably be a big factor in auctions! It makes sense that a Harvard legacy living in North Dakota might be more valuable than one living in New York. Maybe there’d even be some arbitrage from moving for 6 months if it added enough to the legacy sale price?
My senior year I had a friend who worked in Admissions at my college (small new england liberal arts but not ivy or anything), and they told her that South Carolina was "nearly extinct" meaning that there was only one South Carolinian and they were about to graduate, so they *had* to let someone in from SC. If you had data on the student body and applicant pool granular enough, geography could be nearly a 100% chance of admission at a lot of schools