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To get into the top colleges like Harvard, Brown and Stanford, you need good grades, and even better SAT scores, right? Well, not if you happen to be the son or daughter of wealthy donor or celebrity. And there are some other back-door policies that may surprise you, Pulitzer prize winning journalist Daniel Golden wrote all about it in his new book "The Price of Admission : How America’s ruling class buy its way into the elite colleges. Mr. Golden is the Deputy Bureau Chief in Boston for the Wall Street Journal, and he joins us now from that city.

Thanks Dan for joining us.
Thanks for having me.

Err, now, we've heard about legacy applications all the time, you know,the,the kid of , you know, some of the alumni of the college always get into the front of lines, so to speak, but you seem to be saying that it's worse than that, and more widespread than that? Knock it down for us.

Yea, the, the preference for the rich, err, children of rich is not limited to alumni children. There is also a college admission euphemism called "Development Preference" which is the preference for children of politicians or, celebrities or corporate executives who you might e..e.. expect to give a lot of money if their children are accepted. Then, there is all the "Athlete Preferences" that favor kids that play blue/black sports, you know, squash, sailing ,ah, women's crew ,or men's crew, too, equestrian events , even Polo, ah, athletes in those pep school sports get, get preference as well.

Err just to take other side for a minute. Say I am a wealthy donor, I am not, but let's just say. (ok) I am, I am a wealthy donor, right, you know, my kid is, say, a B student, but you know, boy, I love my kid, I am a great parent, I am out there batting for my kid. You know, apparently, colleges pay, even the tuition is 30,000 dollars, the college actually pays 40,000 for a kid to really educate them. What's wrong with me giving, well I think a million dollars is the going rate, my kids get in and that money helps all the other students ?

Well, first of all , it's , it's fundamentally unjust, I mean, these colleges are nonprofit, they're supposed to be err, educating the diamonds in the rough, and fulfilling goals of, you know, upward mobility and equal opportunity. So, for every kid they allow in, like your son, the B-student, they're passing over 8 or 10 A-students with tremendous test scores who just don’t have the money to pay up , so there is the unfairness there. The other thing is that, err, they can raise money in other ways besides,err, lowering their admission standards. In my book, I document how Caltech (加州理工) and some other schools, they raise plenty of money, they have sizeable endowments, and yet, they don't use these preferences, they don't give an edge to alumni's children, or children of corporate executives who can give them a lot of money. They assess student strictly on merit, and yet, they're able to raise money. So, it's not a, it's a false dilemma to say the only way they can raise money is by giving a break to B or C students who happened to be rich.

Is it really the case, Daniel, that president Bush's daughter Lauren applied the Princeton, sent the application in a month late, a month late, and was accepted? And I see my friends' kids are applying to schools ,they're sweating bullets, prep testing for SATs, begging, pleading , doing everything they can, trying to make themselves.. And here she is, just sort of throwing it in, a month late and get in. That's outrageous.

Yeah, that's right, I mean, she, she did apply late, and that's not an isolated instance, I mean, the children of the very rich and powerful, they have completely different admission experience. Err,for example, they are much more likely to have an interview directly with the admission's dean, err rather than with a staffer, the president of university might show up to escort them around the campus. Ah, if they're wait listed, they often get preference taken over the... off of the wait list, Harvard even have something called "the Z list" where it puts children of alumni and, and big donors where they are wait list, although sometimes, they have assurance of be eventually accepted. And at the end of year after everybody goes home, and, and the, the rejected students can't complain any more, they quietly accept not for that September, but September after , after they take a gap year So ,there're all kinds of mechanisms that colleges, ah, use systematically to favor, ah, wealthy children.


Ok, speaking of "the Z-list "to Harvard. (Yes) You went to Harvard.
Yes, I did.

When, when …(were you on the Z-list, Dan?) , Yeal, when did you get interested in this school or there is something at Harvard maybe that make you start thinking something was going on?

Well, maybe / to certain extent within my subconscious when I was at Harvard because I was not the legacy or a kid of preference, I was not a member of the elite social clubs. So I noticed there was a world that I was not really a part of . But, it just, err, of all, you know , years later , just a few years ago , for my reporting for the Wall Street Journal on the Michigan affirmative action case where, you know whites students were suing University of Michigan saying , "hey, we got rejected, and we should've been accepted, because we have better records than, err, black students who got in ". and I started to look at the affirmative action for some of the privileged white students at Michigan and many other elite universities.
And, err, we're running out of time here, but, I want to get to, who gets hurt in this kind of process and situation? I mean, we’ve talked about very stratum ..very ethnic groups. Who get hurts in this?

Well, the biggest victims are the kids who are not connected and particularly Asian-American students. I interviewed one young woman, Asian-American, got, you know, tremendous SAT scores, 15 something out of 1600 . I said "congratulations". She said "no, no, we called that an Asian fail, if you don't have 1600 and you're Asian, you're not getting in the Ivy League. "Cause there 're so many tremendous Asian-American candidates, and then also outstanding middle class and working class, err white students who don't have a connection. You know, these colleges say, we take one of out ten. But if you don't have connection, you put your odds probably one in 20, one in 30, one in 40. You know , it's a very uneven ,err, unfair system that they're , they're applying to.

Very good material.

uneven and unfair system is existing in everywhere.including the most developed country USA .say nothing of our country~

thx for sharing~