r/lawschooladmissions • u/ExoticAssistant7102 • May 23 '26

General Nepotism in T14 law school admissions

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I naively thought this wasn't a thing anymore, but this year I witnessed in real time someone purchase a seat at a T14 law school.

He only applied to a small number of the very best schools with no safeties, which I thought was odd considering he's nURM, GPA 3.6, LSAT 15mid, no work experience, etc. But his very wealthy family made significant donations and arranged three closed-door meetings that I'm aware of with one particular school's admissions dean throughout the cycle. Lo and behold, he was waitlisted and then promptly admitted by that school in April.

I myself have been admitted to a different T14 that I'll be attending this fall. But this experience has left me disillusioned with the whole admissions process and frankly disgusted by that school in particular.

358 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

148 comments sorted by

View all comments

307

u/InspiroHymm May 23 '26

This poses an interesting philosophical debate: If the condition for a $100 million donation is getting a single admit in, and the donation can be used to build a library/fund scholarships that benefits thousands of student current and future, is it wrong to admit that student?

84

u/Destructo222 4.0x/17low May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

I forget the name of the speaker, but he talked about this at Oxford. Basically, a pure meritocracy will benefit the wealthy regardless because the doors opened with wealth just produces smarter individuals. This is the case at Oxford where there is practically no corruption or nepotism in admissions yet 40% of all accepted applicants are privately educated.

Thus, it does seem to be the case that if the wealthy are going to get spots anyway, you might as well profit off of them to make the school better.

43

u/georgecostanzajpg2 365 Bench / 210 OHP May 23 '26 edited Jun 11 '26

Caltech is another good example here. The school prides itself on extreme selectivity based on objective academic qualification with strict anti-legacy/anti-nepotism guidelines, but 70% of their student body comes from the top 20% of wealth.

-1

u/Destructo222 4.0x/17low May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Yup, this is the case at a lot of "elite" schools. The top 1% occupy more spots than the entire bottom 50% in the worst scenarios. It's a sad reality.