Through their easy access to Harvard, the children of COUR members don't just gain intellectual polish. They also acquire a prestigious career credential and high-powered friends and spouses, consolidating their families” place in the American aristocracy. “Last year we completed a double ‘hat trick” when my youngest daughter, Morgan, married Harvard classmate John Stafford,” investment banker Ralph Hellmold, a member of the Committee on University Resources, boasted to his Harvard classmates on their fortieth reunion in 2002. “Thus, each of my three daughters has not only graduated from the college, but married her own Harvard man.”

  Executive committee member James O. Welch Jr., former vice chairman of RJR Nabisco Inc. and a Harvard alumnus who endowed a professorship in computer science, leads the way in the admissions sweepstakes, with six sons who graduated from Harvard. Welch declined comment. Similarly, Finn M. W Caspersen's generosity has not gone unrewarded in admissions to Harvard Law, a school whose preference for children of well-heeled alumni was satirized in Legally Blonde. The heroine of the hit 2001 comedy, played by Reese Witherspoon, learns from a classmate that her dim-witted ex-boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, “got wait-listed when he applied. His father had to make a call.”

  Caspersen, a Harvard Law alumnus who also sits on the COUR executive committee, formerly headed consumer lending giant Beneficial Corp., which specializes in making high-interest loans to consumers with poor credit. He and his wife have endowed several faculty chairs at the law school and donated to its library, where the rare-book room is named after them. Caspersen, who now runs a private investment firm, chairs a $400 million fund-raising campaign that the law school launched in 2003. Four Caspersen children—Finn junior (who also has a Harvard bachelor's degree), Erik, Samuel, and Andrew—have enrolled at Harvard Law. The Caspersens declined comment.

  Professor David R. Herwitz, who served for years on the law school's admissions committee, told me that Caspersen's sons were fine students and “totally admissible.” He added, “Any school, particularly one with a long tradition, becomes something of a family. What kind of a crazy world would it be if people who had gone to the school and made contributions would be told: your kid is very close, but not close enough?”

  UNDOUBTEDLY SOME children of COUR members were superb candidates whom Harvard might have admitted even if they were unhooked. For others, the preferences of privilege outweighed test scores or grades below Harvard norms. These fortunate candidates with marginal credentials—like many minorities aided by affirmative action—are often saddled with self-doubt, wondering if they deserved their Harvard admission.

  Most COUR children at Harvard have been legacies—a group to which Harvard acknowledges giving at least a small admissions boost. Harvard accepts one third of alumni children, nearly four times its overall admission rate. Legacies constitute 13 percent of the student body. William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard, who has been a guest speaker at COUR meetings, told me that he personally reads all applications from alumni children. He said the average SAT score of legacies admitted to Harvard falls just a couple of points below the school's overall average, and that he uses legacy status as a tie-breaker between comparable candidates. Asked how he defends a policy so little rooted in merit, Fitzsimmons, a 1967 Harvard graduate, said the school's alumni “volunteer an immense amount of their free time in recruiting students, raising money for their financial aid, taking part in Harvard Club activities at the local level, and in general promoting the college.” He added, “They often bring a special kind of loyalty and enthusiasm for life at the college that makes a real difference in the college climate … and makes Harvard a happier place.” Therefore, he said, “when their sons and daughters apply, we review their applications with great care and will give a ‘tip” in the admissions process to them.”

  Loyalty and volunteerism aside, the biggest reason for Harvard's legacy preference is money. Alumni donations drive Harvard's endowment, and the ability and willingness of graduates to donate to the university influence the size of the preference given to their progeny. The better than one-in-two admission rate for COUR members” children in my survey indicates that children of big alumni donors enjoy more than the tiebreaker edge Fitzsimmons describes. This finding corroborates a 1991 study by David Karen, now a professor at Bryn Mawr College, which concluded that alumni children at Harvard lose most of their admissions advantage if they apply for financial aid. In other words, if alumni want their children to have an admissions edge at Harvard, they should become bankers, lawyers, or dentists—not social workers, teachers, or ministers. “My interpretation was that if you couldn't parlay a Harvard degree into an income sufficient to pay for your kid's education, Harvard was less likely to make the same mistake twice,” Professor Karen told me.

  The boost for children of alumni on the University Resources committee can amount to far more than a couple of SAT points. Harvard alumnus and Boston venture capitalist Craig L. Burr, a member of the Committee on University Resources, gave his alma mater at least $1 million in the mid 1990s; his son, Matthew, applied in 1998. Matthew Burr ranked fourth in his class at the Groton School but had an SAT score of 1240. Three-fourths of Harvard students have SAT scores of 1380 or higher, and the average freshman score is about 1470. Matthew applied to one other college, Williams, which rejected him.

  “I just don't test well,” Matthew told me. He wrote an application essay about a family safari to Kenya—a likely tip-off, if one were needed, of the Burrs” wealth to admissions readers. His Groton counselor, he said, made it clear to him that his family connection would “help out” with Harvard admissions.

  Craig Burr told me his donation to Harvard had “absolutely nothing to do” with his son's acceptance. “Matthew did not need any help because he had phenomenal grades,” he said.

  “I was qualified in getting in to Harvard,” Matthew said. “At the same time, I do think legacy helped me. I don't think legacy is a fair criterion for people to get into college. But for me, that was the way it was.”

  Like Matthew Burr, Jessica Zofnass had excellent grades in prep school but an SAT score (1410) below the Harvard average. Jessica, who enrolled in 2004 (followed by her sister Rebecca in 2005), is the daughter and granddaughter of Harvard alumni; her father, COUR member Paul Zofnass, endowed a scholarship in environmental studies. “I don't think I got into Harvard for my SAT scores,” Jessica told me. “Hopefully it wasn't just legacy. More of what I did at Choate [Wallingford, Connecticut, prep school Choate Rosemary Hall] was being well rounded, captain of a lot of sports teams, president of the French Club.

  “It's really exciting for me to be here. But it's a very unjust society if the people who already have the benefits and the advantages and already have a wonderful life get an additional leg up. I'm very torn. If I were born into a family that was less advantaged, I would feel very bitter about the legacy status.”

  Paul Zofnass, a financial consultant to environmental firms, donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to Harvard in 2003-4, when Jessica was a senior at Choate, and says he is also “very committed” to raising donations from his Harvard classmates. Zofnass told me Jessica “clearly had the credentials for someone to get into Harvard. I've also known plenty of kids who were every bit as good as her and they didn't get in. Why? My involvement helped a little bit. Had I had nothing to do with Harvard, she probably would have gotten in, but I'm not sure.”

  Another COUR member's son, a Harvard undergraduate, told me that he graduated in the middle of his prep school class with an SAT score in the 1300s—“not too good by Harvard standards,” he acknowledged. His father, an alumnus, donated more than $1 million to the 1990s campaign, plus half a million in his son's freshman year. Still, the student said he felt no qualms over his admission.

  “Definitely legacy was a factor, but I don't feel like someone else should be here instead of me,” he said. “I don't feel guilty. A lot of people I know at Harvard are very, very, very, very intelligent, but they just sit on their asses. With my work ethic and potential, test scores that may be a little less than some others shouldn't get in the way of possibilities for me and my life.” He said his father donated to Harvard out of love for the institution, not to sway admissions.

  Most of these upper-class legacies went to prep schools, where they participated in aristocratic pastimes such as squash, crew, and sailing. Largely played by affluent whites, these sports offer a college admissions entree unavailable to most public school and inner-city students. Some of the COUR children were skilled enough—and had the right pedigree—to impress Harvard coaches who submit lists of potential recruits to the admissions office.

  Frances Cashin followed her father, COUR executive committee member Richard M. Cashin Jr., not only into Harvard but also onto its crew team. Once a standout rower for Harvard and the U.S. Olympic team, Cashin is managing partner of the investment firm One Equity Partners. He and his wife, Elizabeth, also a Harvard graduate and University Resources committee member, have given generously to Harvard, including at least $1 million during the 1990s campaign and a $5 million pledge in 2004. Frances, a fifth-generation Harvard legacy, scored 1440 on her SATs, slightly below Harvard's average, and ranked in the second quartile of her class at Deerfield Academy, a western Massachusetts private school. She rowed on the Deerfield girls” crew team but was not heavily sought after by college coaches. She said other Ivies did not pursue her because they expected her to go to Harvard.

  Shortly after her junior year at Deerfield, Frances told me, her father arranged for her to meet Fitzsimmons, the Harvard admissions dean. The dean does not officially interview applicants but chats informally with at least one hundred a year—many of them, like Frances, children of key alumni. She and the dean talked for half an hour during her lunch break from a summer rowing camp on the Charles River. Frances told me that Harvard men's crew coach Harry Parker, her father's former mentor, and women's coach Liz O'Leary, a former Olympic teammate of Cashin's, recommended her as a recruit for the crew team. She enrolled at Harvard in 2003 and rowed on the women's second varsity boat in 2004-5.

  Frances told me that legacy preference is a “valid thing for a college to do. Any college has to be careful about the students it lets in from a social perspective. If you let in too many of any one group, it can affect social co-hesiveness. At one time, Harvard had too many Asian American students.” As described in Chapter 7, Harvard admissions has long slighted Asian Americans, holding them to a higher test-score standard than whites. Frances did not explain how Asian American students, who for years have made up between 15 and 20 percent of the Harvard student body, hurt the university's cohesion. Instead, she continued, “It's important to Harvard to have people who know what it means to work hard, make good friends, and go out at night. A lot more alumni children are well-rounded kids, probably because they come from more stable families.” Frances's first cousin, Elizabeth Demers, enrolled at Harvard in 2005 from Phillips Academy Andover and also joined the crew team.

  The combination of a well-connected family and an upper-crust sport ushered in Elizabeth Berylson, granddaughter of former Harvard governing board member Richard A. Smith, a movie theater and department store magnate who reaped $648 million from the sale of Neiman Marcus in 2005. Elizabeth did not rank in the top 20 percent of her class at Milton Academy but showed enough talent on the squash court to be recruited by Harvard coaches. Her mother, Harvard alumna and COUR member Amy Smith Berylson, endowed a professorship in engineering during Elizabeth's freshman year, 2004-5. Elizabeth, whose older brother also went to Harvard, declined comment, saying she was “running out the door to play squash.”

  Not all of the COUR members” children who enrolled at Harvard were legacies. Some were development cases—children of wealthy non-alumni whom Harvard viewed as potential donors. While Harvard has never officially confirmed that it gives preference to such applicants, insid-ers say that, as at most universities, these candidates are included on a list of priority applicants that the development office sends to admissions.

  Although her father, oil magnate Robert Bass, is a Yale graduate and her mother went to Smith College, Anne Chandler Bass (known as Chandler) entered Harvard in 1996 from the Groton School. Harvard administrators say Chandler, who was also accepted at Stanford, has a vivacious personality and athletic skill; as a freshman, she played field hockey for Harvard. Still, a former official told me, Harvard admitted her “in the hope of favors yet to come.”

  Those favors did arrive. After his daughter enrolled, Robert Bass became cochairman of Harvard's parent fund-raising committee, and he and his wife, Anne T. Bass, later joined the Committee on University Resources. Following their daughter's graduation in 2000, the Basses gave $7 million to endow two professorships. Government Professor Michael Sandel, who had been one of Chandler's teachers, was named Harvard's first Bass professor in 2002. Chandler herself received a Harvard fund-raising award that year.

  Legacy preference at Harvard is supposed to be limited to a graduate's children. Yet the impact of major donors—alumni or not—on Harvard admissions extends far beyond the 336 students from their immediate families. They lobby, often successfully, for children of relatives, friends, neighbors, and clients. William Fitzsimmons, who himself served a stint in Harvard fund-raising as executive director of the Harvard College Fund from 1984 to 1986, immediately before becoming admissions dean, is receptive to such donor overtures. The late COUR chairman Robert Stone— a shipping executive who served on Harvard's governing board from 1975 to 2002 and chaired the search committee that picked Summers as president—told me in 2005, a year before his death, that he sometimes recommended candidates to Fitzsimmons.

  “I never write a letter for a kid unless he comes around to talk to me,” said Stone, two of whose children went to Harvard. After interviewing these candidates in his New York office, Stone told me, “I give my impressions to the admissions office. Is he hungry? Will he contribute to the class? Will he come to Harvard?” Asked about his batting average in gaining admission for applicants he recommended, Stone said modestly, “Pretty good.”

  COUR member Thomas Payette, a Boston architect, acted as an intermediary for a Japanese client who owned a construction company and wanted his son to attend the Harvard Graduate School of Design. According to Payette, a design school graduate who sent two of his own children there, the Japanese builder donated $1.25 million apiece to Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology around 1990 to induce them to admit his son, a less than stellar applicant. Payette did not recall whether the gift swayed MIT, but said the youth was accepted to Harvard's landscape architecture program, which had more openings than other design school divisions.

  I asked Payette whether COUR members pony up to Harvard to boost their children's chances for admission. “I imagine there's a little of that,” he said. “We don't talk about it much. Right now most of us are at an age—it's our grandchildren we worry about.”

  THE ACCESS enjoyed by COUR members points up a fundamental problem with Harvard admissions. Other selection systems in our society have built-in protections against conflicts of interest. Doctors conducting clinical trials of promising drugs don't know which patients are given the new medications and which are taking a placebo. Cities hire police officers and firefighters based on civil service exams. Judges disqualify themselves from cases if they have personal or business relationships with lawyers or litigants, while the voir dire process ferrets out biased jurors. But Harvard— tied with Princeton for first place in U.S. News&World Report's 2006 ranking of America's best universities—relies on the discretion of its admissions staff to ensure that each applicant gets a fair hearing. With few safeguards against a rigged system or even natural human biases, it's hardly surprising that well-connected candidates edge out unhooked applicants.

  Every year, Michael Holland runs the Boston Marathon with his close friend admissions dean William Fitzsimmons. “We have a long time to talk about everything,” said Holland, a money manager and member of the Committee on University Resources. He and Fitzsimmons, he added, “go all the way back to college.” Holland graduated from Harvard in 1966, a year before Fitzsimmons.

  Neither Holland nor Fitzsimmons has ever regarded their friendship as a reason for the dean to remove himself from considering the applications of Holland's children. On the contrary, Holland said, Fitzsimmons personally interviewed one or two of his sons. Three of Holland's six sons enrolled at Harvard.

  Fitzsimmons “doesn't recuse himself,” said Holland, who endowed a scholarship fund at Harvard; he and his wife donated between $500,000 and $1 million to the Harvard campaign in the 1990s and between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2000-1. “Just the opposite. They look for any input from people. If you have a nephew or a niece applying, and you have a piece of information, they want to know it.”

  Fitzsimmons told me he knows so many Harvard alumni that it would be impractical for him to withdraw from considering their children's applications. “We say to anybody, whether it's a Harvard person or not, if they feel they can add something to a student's application, send it in,” he said. “We're in the information business. If you have someone who knows Harvard well and knows the student well, they can add something useful in terms of a match between the two.”

  Like the dean, a significant portion of Harvard's undergraduate admissions staff consists of alumni who often know a legacy applicant's parents or siblings. Those familiar with admissions deliberations say it's quite common to hear such comments about a candidate as “He may not look great on paper, but his father was a late bloomer too.”