Flags and Tags: Development/VIP Cases
In plain English, development, means “I will give vast fortunes of money to your college if my child gets accepted.” This does not mean a few thousand dollars; typically, it means an amount in the millions. As mentioned earlier, sending in your yearly donation of one thousand dollars to your alma mater will not give your child a greater chance (that is, not greater than the already-high 40 percent legacy rate) of getting in.
If one of your parents is the CEO of a major company and makes it clear to the development or alumni affairs office that he plans to fund the new chemistry building, the alumni office would contact the admissions office. You would then receive a development flag, meaning that your folder would be encoded with a number that corresponds to a development case. Unlike the tags that are stuck right on the front of your master card, a flag is just a numerical code that gets entered on the master card, in essence flagging your file. The special-talent cases I mentioned in the previous chapter get a flag, not a tag. In rare cases, that flag would make a huge difference, but you'd still have to be in the right Al ballpark—that is a 4 or above.
I was surprised to find out that the real development list includes only big donors—of the almost 11,400 applications Dartmouth received in a recent year, only about thirty people were on the full development list, and of those roughly one-third were accepted. Thus, under 1 percent of incoming freshmen got in because of their parents. Part of this relatively low number again has to do with the director of admissions.
The number of development cases varies substantially from college to college. Dartmouth's director is very strict in that he does not believe in accepting subpar students because of their parents’ giving potential. I saw only one case of a student who really did not deserve admission, but his family was one of the biggest donors in Dartmouth's history. Is it worth it to accept development/VIP cases? I'd argue that development cases make up such a small number that, yes, they do help the institution. It's not a big deal to accept one weak student if the other 4,200 students can enjoy a better library, for example.
I am convinced that most people think development or VIP cases make up a much greater percentage than they actually do. The vast majority of students do not fall into this category, so it's not very productive to devote much space to it. Yes, they exist, but only in a very limited number. The best thing to do would be to contact the alumni affairs/development office, since it puts together the official list and submits it to the admissions office. The director of admissions still has total autonomy over the admitted class, so the decision depends upon who the director is. I'm sure other Ivies take more development cases than does Dartmouth, but the total percentage pales next to the number of recruited athletes.
The VIP label (as opposed to strictly development) is reserved for celebrity applicants, such as the son or daughter of the President or Vice President of the United States or Arnold Schwarzenegger's offspring. Unless the student was a doorpost or fell way below the Al cutoff, most colleges would snap up the offspring of a major celebrity because it attracts money and the attention of the national press to the college.
This flag is relatively rare, though, and after the application goes through all the regular reading channels, the director would still have the final say.