Grad school backdoor?

March 20, 2008 2:28 PM

Say parents regularly donate to a university. Does this have an effect on their kid getting into its Grad School?

It seems to be a given that parents donating to a school results in the kid getting in for undergrad. In fact, the person I'm asking for was accepted to the University to which his parents donate $$ (and one parent went to) when he applied for undergrad. (He didn't go, though.) He's now interested in going there for grad school, and is wondering whether the fact that his parents donate will help him get in.

Anecdotal evidence welcome; information, directly or indirectly, from people involved in admissions would be best, though. Thanks, all.

posted by sentient to education (19 comments total)

Grad school in what?
I can imagine huge grad programs like law might consider influences like this. (not my area of experience).
But in smaller programs like humanities PhD programs, grad school admissions decisions are made by the relevant department, not the centralized admissions staff of the school. The department might not even realize his family are donors. If they are donors in the sense of having buildings named after them, I can imagine that the administration could bring pressure to bear on the department, but I'd think it would get ugly. I've never been involved in such a case and in my experience departments resent administrative attempts to influence graduate admissions, so even if this worked your friend would be entering a program with some powerful faculty members already annoyed with him.
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:35 PM on March 20

Shorter answer: unlikely. The smaller the grad program and the higher quality it is, the more unlikely that donor/legacy status would have any impact (unless as a tiebreaker between him and an identically-qualified candidate).
posted by LobsterMitten at 2:38 PM on March 20

I think it would partially depend on the school--some of the more traditional schools are concerned about "legacy" students, where their parents also went there. My university had a bit of that going on, and it does in fact have some sway in the admissions process (at least for undergrad), but I don't know how much.

If it's relevant, I went to the University of Virginia, which has been around for close to 200 years. More newfangled schools might not give legacies the same kind of weight.
posted by LionIndex at 2:45 PM on March 20

Most of the people making admission decisions are at the department level and not at the university level. In my experience, there has been no information about donation history anywhere on the application. It's possible that people would know if the money was earmarked directly for that department, but its unlikely to make any difference.

Think of grad school this way, it's a lot more like getting hired for a job than getting into undergrad. Undergraduate admissions is all about finding well-rounded people who will add to a varied student body. A competitive graduate school is more about finding people who already know what they want to study and who can perform at an expected level. These recruits will of course be taken to a higher level of skill, but the important thing is finding the best students with the most potential. This goes double for any program where the committee is looking for good research and teaching assistants to keep the department running.
posted by Alison at 2:46 PM on March 20 [2 favorites]

Round here, grad admission is up to the department and unless person is eligible for some extra money - minority, etc. - the university has nothing to do with it.
posted by k8t at 2:47 PM on March 20

Yeah I agree with everyone else here: it's quite unlikely to help. I did have a friend who managed to get away with noise complaints when he had rowdy parties in grad school as his parents were benefactors, but that's hardly the same thing.
posted by ob at 3:14 PM on March 20

The way that it could help is if the parents were major enough benefactors (or potential benefactors being courted by the development office) that some high-up administration official sent a note to the department saying "please keep us in the loop about X's application; we are very interested because of a potential major gift." I can assure you that that application would be read most carefully, although admission is hardly guaranteed. One possible outcome, among many, is that the department would say to the president's office "sure, we'll admit X, but with funding coming from your office and not out of our limited budget."

I can imagine that happening only in really unusual cases, where the potential gift is large enough to notice -- giving your $20 every year isn't going to get your kid into law school.
posted by Forktine at 5:36 PM on March 20

Speaking as a director of graduate studies in the humanities at a major university, I would add my voice to the chorus that says "no influence whatsoever" in our situation.
posted by Rain Man at 6:07 PM on March 20

I dunno.
It was common (whispered, of course) knowledge in my small dept. as an UNDERGRAD that one of our students received entry into our program (B.F.A in Theatre) because his old man, a multimillionaire, gave a very generous donation to renovate one of the smaller campus theatres. This guy was not burdened by talent, to put it mildly.
And the son of the school's Dean, who already had a building named after him, got ALL of the leads in the Grad program (M.F.A.).
And another of my classmates' mother was on a hit 70's tv show (playing a smart-alecky maid on a Norman Lear series) and he didn't audition for a spot in my program either.
This was a large private university in Los Angeles, with many ties to the entertainment industry.
It happens.
posted by Dizzy at 6:12 PM on March 20

I helped out with admissions in my department in grad school. All the decisions were made by professors and grad students; the university at large had absolutely nothing to do with it at all. As a few people above have said, the donation amount would have to be really, really huge for there to be any influence at all, and even then the department would still have the final say.
posted by Nelsormensch at 6:14 PM on March 20

Like k8t said, at my university, the departments make their own admission decisions. We're not the kind of school that cares about legacies, either.

I suppose I could see Forktine's scenario happening, although I doubt there would be a note. A phone call from some bigwig would be much more likely. For the department I work in, this kind of attempt to sway our admissions committee would probably backfire badly. My faculty is stubborn and have very high standards. None of them want to be saddled with with an entitled idiot for four years, especially if they're paying him.

However, this kind of donor scenario has never happened to us. The closest thing I've seen is that colleagues at other universities do ask about their kids' applications on occasion, and our faculty will make sure to read the application. Doesn't get them in if they're not qualified, though.

Oh, and I once received a phone call from someone in admissions in another division at my university. His department was very interested in recruiting a young woman whose boyfriend (or husband or whatever) had applied to our department. This guy who called me basically said, "It'd be great for us if you could admit Mr. Boyfriend!" My response was pretty much, "No." The application was weak and the request was ridiculous.
posted by Squeak Attack at 6:22 PM on March 20

How much money? What type of grad program?
posted by betterton at 6:23 PM on March 20

Nope.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 6:59 PM on March 20

If it did, that's not a grad school I'd want to go to.
posted by TomMelee at 7:48 PM on March 20

Maybe I'm wrong here (and my only data point is totally anecdotal), but it seems like most of these answers are with respect to admissions for doctoral programs. An acquaintance of mine got into an MBA program for which he was woefully under-qualified pretty much as a result of his parents largess. I could see this happening in other sorts of Master's programs too (probably those with an applied rather than academic bent).
posted by solipsophistocracy at 8:41 PM on March 20

Nthing this: no way, at least not at any grad school you'd want to attend.
posted by fourcheesemac at 2:55 AM on March 21

And yes, I am referring to MA/PhD programs.
posted by fourcheesemac at 2:56 AM on March 21

I worked in college advancement for 13 years before leaving. The answer, as stated above, is no. The advancement folks have no sway over admissions at any level. In fact, the opposite holds true. The fund raisers are interested to see when a legacy is admitted and thrilled when a prospective student's parents are already donors. This makes the cultivation and solicitation process that much easier because there is already an established affinity between the family and the institution.
posted by onhazier at 5:35 AM on March 21

Donate a few hundred bucks?
or
Donate a new library?
posted by thetenthstory at 8:27 AM on March 21