| > . I was always under the impression that you can just buy into most unis in the US? This is true at the richest levels. If you are willing to write a multi-million dollar check as a donation (name a building/room after your family), you will probably be admitted. In 1999, apparently a $2.5 million donation secured Jared Kushner's admittance into Harvard. This has to be adjusted not just by regular admission but also by the increased competition (it is more than twice as competitive). So I would expect we might be getting closer to a $10 million donation. Although schools would probably cap it/auction it off if they got too many donations. This is by far the minority of admissions. Other cases where people "pay to get in" are literally bribes, and people can and have gone to jail. > There's the scholarship programs, but I was also under the impression they're often through sports rather than grades There are a lot of scholarship types: academic, need-based, interest based (an engineering may spend money to help aspiring engineers), corporate (we'll pay your tuition if you work here for 2 years after), and athletic. Not all schools offer all types, and some (like interest based scholarships) are unaffiliated with any school (although athletic scholarships are). Also, athletic scholarships are limited to your undergraduate (pre-law or pre-med or your BA/BS in X). In all cases, the scholarships help you pay for school, but tend to be different from the actual admittance process. So the correlation would be between someone good at Football and someone who can afford school. Which, if you think about it as a job (they make the school a ton of money) is fair in a way. |
Generally switching schools requires a year off, but there are some loop holes by applying to a grad major that is not present in the original school. Basketball and football players seem to use these often. You can google for more information, and I believe it still wouldn't work for law/doctor programs, but I haven't looked into this.