Caroline’s parents both attended Stanford and, naturally, they dreamed that Caroline would spend her undergraduate years at Stanford, too. Caroline’s parents, considering donating millions to Stanford to boost their daughter’s case for admission, were unsure how to navigate the development process. With New Ivies’s help, they decided against donating a large sum to their alma mater. Caroline got in anyway.
SITUATION
Caroline had top grades in the most rigorous courses offered at her school (and then some since, at our urging, she went above and beyond the offerings at her school). Also through our direction, for the second half of high school (she came to us as a junior), she got involved in wonderfully weird activities reflecting a singular hook that effectively dared admissions officers not to offer her admission. We’d share more but for this particular case study, we wanted to exclusively focus on the donation element since there are other parents in Caroline’s parents’ shoes.
Caroline’s parents had donated money every year to Harvard since their graduation over 25 years earlier. Their donations began in the hundreds of dollars and, over time, rose to five-figure donations to the Ivy League school. Their largest donation to date was $85,000 made three years before.
But Caroline’s parents had the ability to make a much larger, $2-3 million donation and so asked our advice on how to navigate making that donation through Harvard’s Development Office. After all, they didn’t wish to simply donating for the sake of donating. They wanted the donation to substantially improve Caroline’s odds of admission, but they weren’t sure how to make this explicitly clear to the Development Office.
Goal Schools
Harvard University
CHALLENGES
Caroline’s parents had one goal and one goal alone: Harvard, Harvard, Harvard. Stanford, Yale, Princeton who?
In fact, Caroline’s parents were intent (and we mean intent) on donating $2-3 million to Harvard. They seemed to believe that this would put Caroline over the edge. But we knew otherwise. We knew from our 30+ years of experience in elite college admissions that making such a donation within a year of Caroline’s application to Harvard would be perceived by Harvard as a transparent attempt to boost Caroline’s case for admission. It would be viewed as an attempt at quid pro quo and we’re never in favor of that since it will not serve Caroline’s case for admission.
Would a parent really want Harvard’s admissions officers to think to themselves, “You thought you could buy your way in?” And for $2-3 million, it would not warrant inclusion on Harvard’s famed Z-List, the secret backdoor for the ultra-rich. Harvard will, of course, send a nice “thank you” note after bestowing such a gift, but it will not improve a student’s case for admission. To boot, it can absolutely backfire.
HOW New Ivies HELPED
Over the course of a few months, we cajoled Caroline’s parents not to make this donation to Harvard. We told them, in fact we implored them that making such a donation would be perceived precisely how they fear it would be perceived: they’re trying to buy her way in. If they wanted to give money away so badly, we urged them to give their money to us rather than to the institution with the largest endowment in all the world. After all, we’d find a suitable cause for their dollars.
We told them that beyond the poor timing of the donation (within a year of Caroline’s application when donations should be more evenly distributed over a period of years if parents are seeking to boost their child’s odds of admission), $2-3 million simply wouldn’t move the needle. At Harvard, we have only seen $10 million donations move the needle. If the children of those donors aren’t strong enough applicants to earn admission to Harvard in their own right, they’ll make the cut for Dean Fitzsimmons’ coveted Z-List (do read more about Harvard’s coveted Z-List as New Ivies has been quoted on it quite a bit over the years and even did a podcast with Malcolm Gladwell on the subject).
After much discussion, Caroline’s parents ultimately chose to heed our advice. Instead of donating $2-3 million shortly before Caroline submitted her Harvard application, they made a donation that had become almost typical for them in recent years: $90,000. And while such a student would never qualify for inclusion on Harvard’s Z-List, Harvard admissions officers can see every donation that a family ever made and they appreciate loyal, regular donors as well. So even though it doesn’t earn (we know, funny word choice) a student a spot on the Z-List, it’s not chump change and it can still boost a student’s case for admission.
COLLEGE RESULTS
Caroline applied Early Action to Harvard. Midway through the Early Action round, Harvard requested to see Caroline’s research paper. While we didn’t tell Caroline at the time since we never wish to get a student’s hopes us, we did tell her parents that whenever Harvard requests to see a research paper that was detailed on the application, it’s almost always a good sign. Indeed, Caroline earned admission to Harvard in mid-December via Early Action.
But lo and behold, Caroline was then thinking about submitting Regular Decision applications to Stanford and Yale. We, of course, talked her out of it. As we expressed to both Caroline and her parents, it was Marsha, Marsha, Marsha for you Brady Bunch fans. We mean Harvard, Harvard, Harvard. We don’t like when students apply to colleges simply to collect feathers for their caps. She had no intention of attending Yale or Stanford. She would go to Harvard without passing “Go.” So why take the slots of other deserving students? Ultimately, Caroline’s parents were swayed by our argument. To our understanding, she never submitted any Regular Decision applications before matriculating to Harvard (at least we hope she didn’t).
