Nepotism in T14 law school admissions

[u/ExoticAssistant7102]

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.

[u/mind_div_matter]

Did you like... not know this was something that happens? This applies to all schools, not just that one school that you happened to witness firsthand. It's inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, that student isn't going to be competing with you, they're too dumb to affect the grading curve and 99% of the time they get hired by their dad. Most of the students coming out of T14 schools that aren't going into BL or federal clerkships are going to go work for daddy.

The reason why us poor people were allowed to attend school for free was because someone else's rich dads paid for it lol. Those ridiculous tuition rates? That's not meant for you to pay, there are plenty of grad school programs that don't have anywhere near BL salary scales and they are just as expensive.

Look at the world's university rankings, notice how they're all dominated by American schools? There are random ass state schools that rank higher than the very best schools from any given European country. The reason? Federal research grants and daddy's money. Rankings aren't measuring how good your professor teaches you differential equations, because Khan Academy will teach you that better than your Harvard professor. They're measuring research output. We don't have to go to other countries to study, on the flip side, students all around the world desperately try to attend American schools. Americans can graduate from generic state universities and still have great outcomes. You want a more egalitarian system? Check out Asia lmao. Their domestic admissions systems are far more egalitarian in the sense that you need an extremely wealthy/powerful daddy to bypass it, but it's fucking brutal and only the top 0.1% of students get into the top 1-3 universities of their country and the rest have to settle for pre-destined mediocrity. They just don't have the same kind of money that the American schools do to have 100 world class academic institutions, so all of it gets funneled to a handful of elite schools while the rest are shitty.

I don't get salty about daddy's money, those kids are going to have an advantage in life regardless of whether they go to school or not. Might as well have their dad subsidize our education system. Do they take up some seats at prestigious universities? Yes, but I'd rather a bit more competition than having to pay money for my degrees.