Lawsuit Says Top Universities Favored Applicants Based on Parents’ Donations

A court filing last week in an antitrust lawsuit accuses some of the nation’s most elite colleges of favoring student applicants for admission if their families donated generously to the schools.

The former students are seeking compensation of $685 million in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Most of the eight Ivy League schools are named among the 17 defendants. Also listed are Georgetown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame and Caltech.

The schools claim they accept students without considering their financial circumstances. They call it “need blind” criteria.

The plaintiffs say the schools colluded to limit financial aid to students from middle and working class families while showing favoritism toward applicants whose parents gave them donations.

U.S. antitrust laws could triple the amount of money the plaintiffs receive if they win their lawsuit. The class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 224,000 students allegedly cheated out of financial aid over 20 years.

Georgetown is singled out in the lawsuit as an example. It says longtime president John J. DeGioia put 80 students each year on a special “President’s List.”

Rather than being admitted because of their academic or athletic accomplishments or teacher recommendations, they were chosen for their family’s wealth and donation potential, the lawsuit says.

DeGioia would write “Please Admit” at the top of the special list, nearly ensuring all of them would gain admission, the plaintiffs say.

The lawsuit accuses the universities of violating an expired law that allows them to agree on financial aid formulas but not to engage in “price-fixing.”

Collusion between the schools named as defendants helped them to increase their endowments by $165 billion, according to an attorney for the plaintiffs.

The colleges say the damages estimates in the lawsuit are based on flawed data. They say the calculations represent “junk science.”

The universities asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit. They say they have forfeited hundreds of millions of dollars in tuition to benefit underprivileged students.

The court filing this week adds to a lawsuit former students started in January 2022. It said the schools raised tuition on students from poor or middle-class backgrounds.

"Elite, private universities are gatekeepers to the American Dream,” the original lawsuit says. “Defendants’ misconduct is therefore particularly egregious because it has narrowed a critical pathway to upward mobility that admission to their institutions represents."

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